Rangers Face Wings in Gaborik's Debut

After sitting out for four straight pre-season games, star winger Marian Gaborik will make his Rangers debut in tonight's exhibition matchup with the Detroit Red Wings at Madison Square Garden. As we know, Gaborik was held out of previous pre-season games due to groin tightness, but thankfully the minor injury healed rather quickly. Marian will be playing with Chris Higgins and Vinny Prospal, as listed below, in tonight's lineup courtesy of Blue Notes.

Higgins-Prospal-Gaborik
Kotalik-Drury-Lisin
Voros-Anisimov-Callahan
Grachev-Boyle-Parenteau

Semenov-Gilroy
Del Zotto-Girardi
Redden-Sanguinetti

Lundqvist
Valiquette

Tonight's scratches include Marc Staal, Michal Rozsival, Donald Brashear, Sean Avery and Brandon Dubinsky. Marc Staal left Sunday's game in the third period, also because of pain in the groin area. Staal claims that the injury is feeling better than it originally did, but he will still take the night off for additional rest.

I reported earlier that Sean Avery is suffering from an injured right leg, which resulted from a collision between him and teammate Ryan Callahan during a passing drill in today's morning skate. Avery will miss tonight's game because of this, and will be inspected by team doctors, hopefully learning more later tonight or tomorrow.

As for Dubinsky, head coach John Tortorella feels that he is not quite ready for game action just yet, as today was his first formal practice since the two week-long holdout. Dubinsky supposedly was skating on his own on Saturday and Sunday, but Torts feels that he needs some more days of practice until he hits the ice, which he plans on being Thursday against the Capitals.

With tonight's game being the first of three remaining exhibition contests, time is running out for Tortorella to make his final cuts, so for players like Artem Anisimov, Matt Gilroy, and Mike Del Zotto, it is crucial that they perform well throughout the week. In my opinion, Torts and the rest of the coaching staff are leaning towards having all three of the above players in this year's roster, but that could change quickly, so these next few games are of great importance to the rookies.

I will also be keeping an eye on defenseman Alexei Semenov, who was invited to camp on a tryout basis. The 6-7 veteran has had a solid performance throughout the pre-season so far, and Tortorella had many positive things to say about Alexei, indicating that he will be the team's seventh, or extra defenseman this season.

Henrik Lundqvist and Steve Valiquette, being the only two goalies remaining in camp will be splitting time tonight, just as we have seen all throughout the pre-season. Lundqvist will begin the game in between the pipes for the Rangers, with Steve Valiquette relieving him mid-way through the second period.

That pretty much wraps up the Rangers roster for tonight, so here is a look at the opposing Red Wings' lineup, which includes many regulars on offense:

Johan Franzen - Pavel Datsyuk - Tomas Holmstrom
Ville Leino - Valtteri Filppula - Mattias Ritola
Johan Ryno - Cory Emmerton - Kirk Maltby
Kris Newbury - Justin Abdelkader - Tomas Tatar

Niklas Kronwall - Brad Stuart
Derek Meech - Jonathan Ericsson
Jakub Kindl - Andy Delmore

Daniel Larsson
Dan Cloutier

The Blueshirts are coming off of a big win in Boston on Saturday, so hopefully the self-esteem level will be quite high heading into tonight's game. The team has had a week and change with Tortorella to learn this system, so I would expect to see improvements as each pre-season game goes by.

Remember to visit back after the game for my usual postgame analysis.....

(Photo courtesy of Getty Images)