Pens/Red Wings: Exhibition game, take two

Rosters and details on the make up game for the Pens going to Detroit

The Penguins couldn’t make it to Detroit in time on Saturday to play due to a mechanical issue with their plane. The game was postponed until today. Per the Pens, here are the rosters for both teams tonight.

For Pittsburgh, this is a very similar group to what was originally scheduled on Saturday. The main difference is Tristan Jarry was going to start that game, but he played last night against Ottawa and is no longer a part of this roster for the Red Wings game. The other change for Pittsburgh is that Sam Poulin is now on the roster for the makeup game (replacing Boko Imama).

Here were the lines used in Saturday morning’s skate, which could stand to look close to what Pittsburgh goes with tonight, depending on if they want to find a place on the fourth line for Poulin again, or potentially have John Ludvig play.

Drew O’Connor - Lars Eller - Valtteri Puustinen
Vasily Ponomarev - Tristan Broz - Rutger McGroarty
Emil Bemstrom - Noel Acciari - Jesse Puljujarvi
Avery Hayes - Corey Andonovski - Jimmy Huntington

Owen Pickering / Jack St. Ivany
Sebastian Aho / Ryan Shea
Ryan Graves / Mac Hollowell

While the Penguins elected to make very few changes to their initial lineup, it’s a different story for the Red Wings. They decided to use the postponement to load up today’s roster. Top players in Lucas Raymond, Vladimir Tarasenko, Moritz Seider were not going to play in Saturday as originally scheduled, but are playing tonight. Dylan Larkin and Patrick Kane remain in tonight’s lineup.

But, as to be expected, the home preseason team is built with more NHL talent and looks stronger on paper than the visitors. That will make for a strong challenge for the Penguins tonight.

The postponement makes this a busy week for the Pens, playing last night in Sudbury and making this game up today. Then the original exhibition schedule continues, with the Red Wings coming to Pittsburgh tomorrow, followed by a day off on Wednesday and then a home-and-home with Columbus on Thursday/Friday to close things out.

That makes for a hectic week of games and will require some balancing for the Pens to get through with careful and intentional roster selections for this period where they’re playing a ridiculous stretch of five games in six days. Ahh, gotta love NHL preseason.