The Detroit News’s Gregg Krupa reports that Red Wings veteran Thomas Vanek feels that the increased presence of young players on the team requires some clarification in terms of systems and plays:
Vanek, a 14-year veteran, can improve teammates with his playmaking and knowledge. Wings coach Jeff Blashill said that Vanek came into the coaches’ offices recently to fetch a pad of paper with ice diagrams to draw up some face-off situations for his young teammates.
“For us to win, they’ve got to be good,” Vanek said. “There’s going to be a learning curve, for sure. But, at the same time, they are all smart hockey players.”
But, clearly, he had anticipated a problem. The Red Wings were 29 percent on the draw in the first, and only 43 percent by the end. Andreas Athanasiou and Dylan Larkin were a combined 13-for-21.
“If you’re losing face-offs constantly and you are chasing the puck and, slowly, you get frustrated,” Vanek said. “And, I think we saw that in our game last night. But I think those are things you can address pretty simply. It’s nothing too major that we cannot correct. We’ll get better.”
One remedy is communicating on the bench.
“The one big thing is we have to constantly talk after every shift, to say, ‘Where were you at?’ to get that chemistry. But, last night, there wasn’t much talking because we barely had the puck,” Vanek said. “It starts with the face-off, but it’s our forecheck and how we break the puck out.”
