Penguins vs Redwings gameday 73. Pittsburgh comes to Joke Town.

Welcome to Joke Town.

After swallowing a pretty tough pill yesterday in Pittsburgh, the Pens got on a flight headed over to Detroit for the second half of another back to back set of games. This is the second time this year the Pens and the Flying Tires will face off against each other. What you might of missed in the last game was Chris Conner breaking an almost 5 year drought on penalty shots with this beauty:



This of course was against MacDonald in net, not Jimmy Howard or Chris Osgood. Howard will be in net tonight for the Wings, Pavel Datsyuk will not be in the line up tonight for them however and that will add a bit of breathing room for the pens. They'll still have Zetterberg out there though, and of course Bertuzzi.

The upcoming stretch of games has officially become the toughest set of games the Penguins are going to have to go through all year, probably even tougher than when 40 of the skaters were injured. Of the upcoming games to finish March only the two against the Devils and Panthers are games against non playoff teams. Including Philly twice, this game against Detroit, and Tampa on the 31st. You also can't discredit the Devils due to the fact that they were playing lights out hockey since the middle of January, even if they will ultimately fall short of their goal. Pens must win and get 2 points to pull out ahead of Tampa in the playoff race and keep 4th place in the standings. Tampa Bay has been off the previous two days and plays the Islanders tomorrow in Tampa.

Cooke will most likely be suspended for his shenanigans in the game yesterday for the rest of the regular season, however Arron Asham is now ready for hockey and will be in the line up in Cookes spot today. The Penguins lines today from practice looked something like this:

James Neal - Dustin Jeffrey - Alex Kovalev
Chris Kunitz - Jordan Staal - Tyler Kennedy
Arron Asham - Maxime Talbot - Pascal Dupuis
Mike Rupp - Craig Adams - Chris Conner

Zbynek Michalek - Paul Martin
Kris Letang - Ben Lovejoy
Deryk Engelland - Matt Niskanen

Between the pipes for the Penguins? BIG Brent Johnson!

Lets go Pens! Do it.