Pregame: Sabres @ Red Wings – 10/2

The Red Wings kick off their first season in the Eastern Conference tonight, hosting new divisonal-rival Buffalo in the 2013-14 opener.

After spending most of the preseason banged up, Detroit is mostly healthy as the regular season begins. Darren Helm and Patrick Eaves are on long-term injured reserve and Jordin Tootoo and Jonas Gustavsson are on short-term IR but the top six forwards and all the defensemen are fine.

The Wings will skate with the following lines to start:

Henrik Zetterberg – Pavel Datsyuk – Justin Abdelkader
Johan Franzen – Stephen Weiss – Daniel Alfredsson
Daniel Cleary – Joakim Andersson – Todd Bertuzzi
Drew Miller – Cory Emmerton – Mikael Samuelsson

Niklas Kronwall – Jonathan Ericsson
Danny DeKeyser – Jakub Kindl
Kyle Quincey – Brendan Smith

Jimmy Howard will start in goal with Petr Mrazek serving as his backup.

The game will be the regular season Red Wings debuts for summer free-agent signings Alfredsson and Weiss. Everyone else in the lineup played at least one game for the Wings last season.

Game time is 8:00 PM on NBCSN.