The Bulldogs will look to push their win streak to a season high 3 games tonight in Chicago. They will have to do this without the help of their leading goalscorer Aaron Palushaj who suffered an injury during a Bulldogs practice; although I would speculate he aggravated an injury as he was nursing his wrist against Lake Erie during Tuesday’s game.
The Wolves are in the midst of a mediocre season with a 10-9-2-1 record, they are coming off a 4 day rest after defeating Rockford 2-1 on December 8th. Their offence is led by AHL veteran Brett Sterling, along with Jordan Schroeder and of course the highly touted Zack Kassian. On the back end they have two good goalies in Eddie Lack and Matt Climie.
When the Bulldogs score the first goal they are 4-0 so far this season. This means two things;
1. Good things happen for the Dogs’ when they score first.
2. They don’t score first nearly often enough.
The Wolves have only allowed 5 goals in their past 3 games, with the Bulldogs offensive woes being intensified by losing Palushaj, (and perhaps further intensified by having Stortini re-injected into the lineup) they will have to dig deep to get past the Wolves.
Projected Bulldogs Lineup
Forwards
Michael Blunden – Patrick Holland – Brendan Gallagher
Stephane Chaput – Michael Bournival – Louis Leblanc
Gabriel Dumont – Steven Quailer – Darryl Boyce
Kyle Hagel – Joonas Nattinen – Zack StortiniDefenseman
Frederic St-Denis – Brendon Nash
Jarred Tinordi – Mike Commodore
Nathan Beaulieu – Morgan EllisGoaltenders
Notes:
- Aaron Palushaj will be out for an estimated 4 to 6 weeks. He sent the team a tweet of encouragement on his twitter account.
- Oliver Fortier, who was called up to fill Palushaj’s roster spot, will not play tonight.
- Cedrick Desjardins is having a red hot December with 2 shutouts and 3 wins in 4 games so far. Despite a couple of bad games he has a 5-2-0-0 record and a .920 save percentage./
Tonight’s game starts at 8:00PM EST and you can watch it live on AHLLive ($), or listen to it here. The game is also on TVA Sports if you have the channel.
