Wings vs. Panthers GP...

Wings vs. Panthers @7:30 PM

1. Obviously the big story of the night is Chris Osgood making his long-awaited return from a mysterious virus. How long will it take him to shake off the rust?
2. How will the team look after having a couple of days to stew about the blown call from Wednesday night? I’d like to see them come out with a little bit of fire and attitude, but then again, that’s what I would have liked to have seen immediately after the whole fiasco. The Wings have a tendency to play their best when they feel like they have an axe to grind, so hopefully we'll see a disgruntled bunch of guys out on the ice tonight.
3. How many goals is Jonathan Ericsson going to score for the Panthers tonight?
4. What spectacular display of incompetence will we see from the NHL’s officials tonight? This doesn’t even have to occur in the Wings’ game. Really, anything’s up for grabs.
5. Mike Babcock has called out the top line of Datsyuk, Bertuzzi, and Holmstrom. Datsyuk and Holmstrom were fairly invisible against Dallas, and the only reason anyone noticed Bertuzzi was because he kept making mind-boggling blind passes right to Stars. Babcock’s messages seem to have worked so far this season, so how will these guys respond?

It’s recently occurred to me that I keep asking all of these pre-game questions, but I very rarely bother addressing them in my post-game wrap-ups. I’m going to give that a shot starting tonight, even though I’m probably going to miss a good chunk of the game. And probably the one tomorrow.