Zetterberg Joins Wings’ Walking Wounded

So Henrik Zetterberg is set to have an MRI on his injured shoulder. I’m not a doctor or anything but I can’t recall any time when someone was sent bad enough to have tests done only for them to turn around and say “All clear, he’ll be back tomorrow.”

In short, Zata’s gonna miss some time even if he’s just sore.

Let’s do this math. NHL teams dress twenty players for every game. Two of those are goalies, leaving eighteen skaters.

Andreas Lilja. Johan Franzen. Valtteri Filppula. Jason Williams. Niklas Kronwall. Dan Cleary. Darren Helm. Jonathan Ericsson. Henrik Zetterberg.

That’s nine skaters right there. Nine. Going into Saturday’s game in Dallas you can expect the Red Wings to be playing with a roster half made up of players who weren’t even supposed to be on this team.

Justin Abdelkader was supposed to spend the season in Grand Rapids. Kris Newbury and Doug Janik have spent most of the season there. Brad May wasn’t even signed to an NHL contract when the Red Wings opened the season in Stockholm. Drew Miller – who scored a beautiful goal Thursday night against Tampa Bay – was playing for the Lightning when the season kicked off.

And yet the Red Wings sit six points ouf of first place in the Western Conference with three games in hand.

How insane is that?