The Detroit Red Wings hope to break out of a long scoring slump when the Calgary Flames invade Joe Louis Arena tonight for the second meeting between these teams of the 2009-10 season.

Detroit enters this evening's tilt having lost four of its last five games and has registered one goal or less in each of those defeats. The Red Wings were stoned by Atlanta's Ondrej Pavelec in their most recent outing, with the young goaltender turning back all 40 shots he faced in leading the Thrashers to a 2-0 road win.

"It's not going in for us now," said Red Wings head coach Mike Babcock after the loss. "It's really frustrating, but we have to keep pressing and shooting and going to the net."

Jimmy Howard finished with 23 saves for Detroit, which lost for the third straight time at Joe Louis Arena and fell to 7-3-2 as the host this season. The Wings have not dropped four consecutive home games since February 7-29, 2008.

Detroit did muster enough offense to produce a 3-1 victory over the Flames in Calgary back on October 31, with Brad Stuart, Tomas Holmstrom and Kirk Maltby all lighting the lamp.

The sputtering Red Wings figure to face a tough challenge tonight from the Flames' Miikka Kiprusoff, however. The former Vezina Trophy winner is 6-1-3 with a 2.14 goals against average on the road this season and was sharp in Calgary's 2-1 home win over Phoenix on Wednesday, stopping 27 of the Coyotes' 28 shots.

With the game tied at 1-1 with under six minutes left, the Flames' David Moss sent a blind backhand pass from behind the net to Nigel Dawes, who slammed the puck past Phoenix's Ilya Bryzgalov for the game-winning score.

"It was a great pass," said Dawes. "[Moss] put it right on my stick."

Daymond Langkow also had a goal to help the Flames prevail for the second time in their last three games. Calgary trails first-place Colorado by only one point in the Northwest Division standings.

The Flames will be searching for only their second victory in their last seven regular-season appearances at Joe Louis Arena tonight. Detroit has taken six of the past nine overall encounters between these teams as well.