It’s the Jets first visit to the new rink in Detroit as they will meet up with the Red Wings.

The Jets are coming off what is perhaps their most dominating performance of the season, a 5-0 shutout of the Ottawa Senators. Right now the offense is on some kind of roll having scored five or more goals in three of the last four games. Blake Wheeler – who was named the NHL’s 1st star for the week ending December 3 is fourth in league scoring and leads the league in assists. Kyle Connor will be back in the lineup tonight which means Mathieu Perreault gets bumped back down to the fourth line with Joel Armia and Matt Hendricks. Tonight is the start of a three game eastern road swing that will also take them through Florida later this week.

The Red Wings are coming off what is perhaps their most humiliating performance of the season, a 10-1 loss on the road in Montreal last Saturday night. The Wings are winless in their last seven going 0-4-3 and have had all kinds of issues both with defense, goaltending and special teams. The Wings have allowed a power play goal in each of their last four games. Still despite the issues going on in Motown, the Wings are not a team to be taken lightly. They remain four points out of a playoff spot in the Atlantic division and are only a couple of weeks removed from looking like absolute world beaters in an 8-2 drubbing of the Calgary Flames back on November 15.

The Jets and Wings split last season’s two game set by winning each other’s barn. The Jets beat the Red Wings 5-3 in Detroit, but the Wings sqeaked out a 4-3 shootout win in Winnipeg. One player to watch for sure tonight is Connor Hellebuyck who is a Michigan native and sports a career 2-0-1 record with a .928 save percentage against Detroit.

Kyle Connor – Mark Scheifele – Blake Wheeler

Nikolaj Ehlers – Bryan Little – Patrik Laine

Andrew Copp – Adam Lowry – Brandon Tanev

Matt Hendricks – Mathieu Perreault – Joel Armia

Josh Morrissey – Jacob Trouba

Ben Chiarot – Dustin Byfuglien

Dmitry Kulikov – Tyler Myers

Connor Hellebuyck

Eric Comrie

Gustav Nyquist – Henrik Zetterberg – Justin Abdelkader

Tomas Tatar – Dylan Larkin – Anthony Mantha

Darren Helm – Frans Nielsen – Luke Glendening

David Booth – Andreas Athanasiou – Martin Frk

Dan DeKeyser – Mike Green

Jonathan Ericsson – Trevor Daley

Niklas Kronwall – Nick Jensen

Jimmy Howard

Petr Mrazek

The Wings are a bit of a mess and feeling very venerable and the Jets know it and will get on them early. Detroit should come out more inspired than what they did on Saturday night, but if the Jets can get a quick early goal on them, it could be another long night at home for the Red Wings. Jets win 6-2.