The Carolina Hurricanes and the Detroit Red Wings meet in NHL action from Little Caesars Arena on Thursday night.

The Carolina Hurricanes come into the 2021 season looking to take another step in the right direction after a successful 2019-20 campaign that saw Carolina finish 6th in the Eastern Conference and 4th in the Metropolitan division, defeating the New York Rangers in the qualifying round of the playoffs before falling to Boston in the first round in five games. Carolina’s young core made large strides in development with Sebastian Aho leading the ‘Canes in scoring with 38 goals and 66 points while Teuvo Teravainen had 63 points with a team-high 48 assists and Andrei Svechnikov added 61 poitns with 24 goals and 37 assists. Jaccob Slavin is back to headman the point for Carolina while the Hurricanes will have to move forward without the likes of Justin Williams, Trevor Van Riemsdyk, Joel Edmundson and Sami Vatanen. The good news is that the options at goaltender are aplenty with James Reimer and Petr Mrazek both back and both vying for the #1 job in the crease for Carolina this season.

The Detroit Red Wings will try to forget about 2019-20 altogether, finishing dead last in the NHL with a record of 17-49-5, becoming the first team since 1985 with fewer than 20 wins in a season and the worst points percentage since Atlanta in 1999-2000. The Red Wings went out and made moves to try to improve the squad’s cohesion coming into the year, adding Bobby Ryan from Ottawa as well as Vladislav Namestnikov, Marc Staal, Troy Stecher, Jon Merrill and even Thomas Greiss in goal to help cure the woes in net for Detroit. This is a hard tea to try to figure out, as the pieces are there, but we’ve said that in each of the last couple of years and manage to be a mile off. Only time will tell if Detroit can actually take a step in the right direction and of course it has to be in a modified season where the division is even tougher.

Carolina is 1-4 in their last 5 games overall and 9-4 in their last 13 games as a road favorite while the under is 6-2 in their last 8 games against the Eastern Conference. Detroit is 10-41 in their last 51 games overall and 4-10 in their last 14 home games while the over is 4-1 in their last 5 Thursday games. The under is 4-1 in the last 5 meetings between these two teams in Detroit.

This should be an interesting watch as you have a Detroit tea that’s out to show they’re better than what we’ve seen and the new look Red Wings could shock some people with the season so fresh. With that said, I think we see an inspired defensive effort on both sides as Detroit’s out for redemption while Carolina’s a tough nut to crack to begin with. I’ll take the under as my free pick for this game but my stronger play is on the side and I have that available as a premium pick that you can find here.