On Anthony Mantha, knees bent, and Tweets of note

Of Red Wings-related note this afternoon:

1. The Free Press’s Helene St. James penned an off-day notebook discussing Anthony Mantha’s scoring potential:

Anthony Mantha’s bid for 20 goals as a rookie was cut short by a fight.

He’s closing in on the benchmark now in his second season with the Detroit Red Wings, with two months of games still remaining. Mantha picked up three goals during the trip to New York and Washington, giving him 19 goals in 52 games. He’s the Wings’ leading goal scorer, ranks third on the team with 33 points, and has their third-best points-per-game average at 0.63.

He’s showing the growth the Wings hoped to see when the season began.

“What I’m seeing is work ethic,” coach Jeff Blashill said after Sunday’s 5-4 overtime victory at Washington. “He’s been excellent. His second effort has been good. His skating has been really good. To me, it’s just the simplicity of bending his knees – when he bends his knees and skates, he’s excellent. That’s the fire-starter for him. What’s the one thing that makes the big difference? It’s when he bends his knees and skates as opposed to being straight-legged. He’s been working on that for a long time and I think his work ethic has been great here the last 10 games.”

St. James continues…

2. And of Twitter-based note:

 

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George Malik

My name is George Malik, and I'm the Malik Report's editor/blogger/poster. I have been blogging about the Red Wings since 2006, when MLive hired me to work their SlapShots blog, and I joined Kukla's Korner in 2011 as The Malik Report. I'm starting The Malik Report as a stand-alone site, hoping that having my readers fund the website is indeed the way to go to build a better community and create better content.