Pregame report from Stockholm: Odd start times throw off players body clocks; who's in, who's out
Posted by ESPN.com
STOCKHOLM -- There are a lot of things that are out of the ordinary for the St. Louis Blues and Detroit Red Wings as they get ready to open the NHL's regular season here tonight.
First of all, naturally, is playing in Europe.
Second is the start time, 9 p.m. local, which will present a challenge for players in terms of adjusting their game-day eating and napping rituals.
"We moved our meal and I think it's real important as a player because now you usually go back, have a meal and sleep, but you better not be sleeping," Detroit coach Mike Babcock said after the team's morning skate, a ritual that was held about an hour later than usual. "I'll tell you, though, our body clock is so screwed up, I don't think it makes any difference.
"This is what a Vancouver game normally is like for us. We go all the way out there, our body wants to go to bed and now we're supposed to get pumped up to play. If we can ever survive to get woken up, then we're usually pretty good. It's no different, but it's the same for them as it is for us. You gotta play the game. The thing that kind of resonates with me this morning is, you wake up, and some teams are up one and some teams are down one. That's how quickly it happens, so don't ever kid yourself. It's real now."
Look for Chris Osgood, who seems to have put a case of the flu behind him, to get the start in goal for the Red Wings, while Justin Abdelkader will be in the lineup with veterans Kris Draper and Kirk Maltby. Darren Meech and Patrick Eaves will be out. For the Blues, Chris Mason is expected to get the start in net, while rookie defenseman Alex Pietrangelo is expected to be a scratch. Interesting to note that defenseman Erik Johnson will make his first appearance in a meaningful game since the last game of the 2007-08 regular season, a span of 544 days.
Time for answers
Given the concentration of Swedish players in the Red Wings lineup, the Blues may not feel like they're getting much of a bargain out of this "home-and-home" series, which concludes Saturday night with another 9 p.m. game.
St. Louis Blues coach Andy Murray wasn't looking for any sympathy, although he did joke the Red Wings could be expected to have dinner with the king while they were in town. "They were there last night," he joked this morning.
"We just need two points, and if anybody knows how important two points are early in the year, it's us because what we had to do at the end of last year most people would have said was impossible," Murray said. "If you'd told us in December what our record had to be in the second half to get into the playoffs and that we had to win nine out of 10, we barely made it. So it's all about two points. I don't care if we're playing in Moscow or Souris, Manitoba, where I'm from. I don't care who we're playing against, it's about the points."
Friday's game starts the long process of answering what has, to this point, been unanswerable, Murray said.
"I don't care if you're the Red Wings, I don't care if you're San Jose, there's question marks," he said. "Until you answer, there's question marks on every team because there hasn't been a game played this year. How are certain guys going to play? Are they going to play at the level they played at last year? Is Nick Lidstrom as good as he's always been, which we expect him to be, but there's always question marks. But you just don't know. How healthy is your team going to stay? We just need to get answers."
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