Preseason Game 5 Preview: Detroit Red Wings @ Pittsburgh Penguins, 9/25/2019, lines, how to watch

Who: Detroit Red Wings @ Pittsburgh Penguins

When: Today at 7:00pm

How to watch: streaming on pittsburghpenguins.com

(Note as the team has said, “because of NHL broadcast rules, the streams will only be available in the Pittsburgh region” so you are out of luck unless you can figure a way to get them to think you live in the western PA area...)

Roster

The Pens haven’t announced a roster yet officially, but the morning skate lines are probably offering a pretty good idea of what’s going on:

Interesting to see Brandon Tanev getting a look with Sidney Crosby. Tanev spent the first half of camp with Evgeni Malkin, with varying levels of success — kind of seemed like his play dropped off and a ton of chemistry wasn’t developed so they’ve moved on from that idea. Can Tanev become a modern day Pascal Dupuis? Might as well test it out now in the preseason and see how it goes, but more than likely Tanev will shuffle down to a lower line sooner than later, unless he makes a lot of good stuff happens. So I guess we’ll have to tune in and see how much he can do with the opportunity.

And that lower line may be the fourth line, being as Jared McCann - Nick Bjugstad - Patric Hornqvist have been locked in as the third line since early practices.

Another battle to watch will be which (pretty good) forward ends up as the 13th player and scratched for opening night. Right now that battle looks to be between Zach Aston-Reese and Dominik Simon given deployment in practices.

And there will be much rejoicing if the fall of Jack Johnson through the depth chart continues, as it looks like the coaching staff hasn’t had much use for him after a poor training camp, even by his standards.

The Pens’ regular season home opener is in eight days. The preseason is almost over. They have this game tonight left against DRW, then the Pens play Buffalo (also at home) on Saturday afternoon to conclude the preseason.

Then it’s Buffalo, for real this time, next Thursday night and we’re off to the races.

The opponent

SBN Blog: Winging it in Motown

The Red Wings’ expected roster for tonight is:

?

(I haven’t seen it out there yet. Will update accordingly.

Detroit is facing another year of a rebuild and our friends at WiiM took a look at how the Red Wings’ roster may shape out and the types of decisions they’re looking at. Lots of new faces and names in the mix out there.