DETROIT – John Gibson will make his Detroit Red Wings preseason debut tonight against the Pittsburgh Penguins at PP&G Paints Arena (7 p.m., FanDuel Sports Network, NHL Network).
He’ll play the first half of the game and Michal Postava will play the second half.
“Obviously, Gibby wants to go play in Pittsburgh (his hometown), so we honored that, it makes sense,” coach Todd McLellan said.
The Red Wings (2-0-0) will dress mostly prospects and Grand Rapids Griffins. The only regular Red Wings in the lineup are forwards J.T. Compher, Jonatan Berggren and Elmer Soderblom and defenseman Erik Gustafsson, Travis Hamonic and Justin Holl, in addition to Gibson.
“I think the thought process that goes into some of these games for certain players is you like to play them at home,” McLellan said. “You don’t need them traveling around as much on game day yet. Almost all of them have to at some point in the regular season. But it’s good to have them at home where they have their treatments and all that type of stuff right here. And we’d like to see the younger players play in the road environment a little bit, too. So, over the next couple days we’ll see that.”
Emmitt Finnie will play in his third preseason game. Axel Sandin Pellikka and Michael Brandsegg-Nygard, who also played the first two games, got the day off Friday.
“You can kind of feel some of the guys that have been really going a lot — I think of Finnie, Brandsegg-Nygard, Axe – they’ve played a lot of games over the last two weeks, so we have to be aware of their gas tanks, yet we have to manage the ones that haven’t (played a lot),” McLellan said.
Here is the Red Wings lineup tonight:
Forwards: Sheldon Dries, Austin Watson, Nate Danielson, J.T. Compher, Carter Bear, John Leonard, Jonatan Berggren, Emmitt Finnie, Alexandre Doucet, Carson Bantle, Dominik Shine, Jakub Rychlovsky, Elmer Soderblom.
Defensemen: Justin Holl, Antti Tuomisto, Travis Hamonic, William Wallinder, Erik Gustafsson, Jacob Truscott, Justice Christensen.
Goaltenders: John Gibson (starting), Michal Postava (playing second half of game).
Former Red Wings forward Robby Fabbri, who’s in Penguins camp on a pro tryout, will play tonight.