Detroit Red Wings vs. Ottawa Senators: What time, TV channel is today's game on?
Detroit Red Wings (26-18-5) vs. Ottawa Senators (19-25-2)
When: 7 p.m. Wednesday.
Where: Little Caesars Arena in Detroit.
TV: Bally Sports Detroit.
Radio: WXYT-FM (97.1).
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Game notes: Remember how, on the last day of school every year, teachers would just put on a movie on the classroom TV, rather than try to actually, y’know, pass along any final knowledge? The NHL giving the Wings a visit from the Senators tonight feels a little like that, especially after a January that saw the Wings face playoff-hunting teams in 10 of their first 12 games in the month. Of course, the Wings went 7-2-1 in those 10 tough games, so maybe they’ve earned a bit of zone-out time with the NHL’s equivalent of “Strange Brew” (a perennial favorite in this writer’s high-school English classes with its mix of Shakespeare, hockey and beer).
That’s not to say the Sens aren’t dangerous: Since the Wings exorcised their 2022-23 demons against the Sens in Ottawa with a 5-2 win on Oct. 21 — with Joe Veleno scoring a pair of goals — Ottawa has beaten the Wings twice (for four of their Eastern Conference-worst 40 points): 5-4 in overtime overseas in Stockholm on Nov. 16 and then 5-1 at LCA on Dec. 9.
Victories over the Wings aside, the Senators are, indeed, a bit of a strange brew themselves; they’re 8-10-2 under 71-year-old interim coach Jacques Martin, who led the franchise to the playoffs in each of his eight seasons in his first stint with the club (1996-2006). He’s joined behind the bench by former Wing (for one season) and longtime Senator Daniel Alfredsson; the new Hockey Hall of Famer joined the club to focus on player development and was elevated to an assistant role when Martin replaced the fired D.J. Smith in mid-December. Captain Brady Tkachuk is headed to his fourth All-Star game this weekend while leading the Sens with 21 goals. The offense has been a bit lacking otherwise, with 22-year-old Tim Stützle topping the roster with 47 points (11 goals, 36 assists) and 36-year-old Claude Giroux is No. 2 with 42 (15 goals, 27 assists, and no, we didn’t plan for that last bit to rhyme).
One player Ottawa ISN’T getting the hoped-for scoring from: ex-Wing Dominik Kubalik, who has nine goals and three assists after coming from Detroit in the offseason Alex DeBrincat trade. Kubalik is riding a six-game streak without points; his last score came Jan. 9 in Calgary (though he did score against the Wings in December).
DeBrincat, meanwhile, has cooled off considerably since scoring nine goals in his first seven games as a Wing; the Farmington Hills native (who’ll join Tkachuk in Toronto this weekend, possibly on the same 3-on-3 team, with the draft set for Thursday night) has nine goals and 21 assists in the 42 games since. That includes just one goal and four assists in January; DeBrincat is still on page to score 30 goals for the fourth time in his seven-season career, but becoming the Wings’ first 40-goal scorer since the 2008-09 season might be out of reach without another hot streak.
After tonight, everybody — other than DeBrincat and Tkachuk — gets the weekend off, thanks to the All-Star break. The Wings return to action on Feb. 10 when the Western Conference-leading Vancouver Canucks visit LCA for a 1 p.m. matinee. The Sens, meanwhile, are also off until Feb. 10, when they’ll host Toronto at 7 p.m.
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Contact Ryan Ford at rford@freepress.com. Follow him on X (which used to be Twitter, y’know?) @theford. Read more on the Detroit Red Wings and sign up for our Red Wings newsletter.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Red Wings game score vs. Ottawa Senators: Time, TV
