The Red Wings play 9 exhibition games over the course of the next 12 days. MLive’s Ansar Khan notes that coach Jeff Blashill believes that the schedule is “just right” given his team’s battles for positional spots:
Several former first-round picks will be vying for roster spots — forwards Evgeny Svechnikov, who missed all of 2018-19 due to a knee injury, Michael Rasmussen, Filip Zadina and Joe Veleno and defensemen Dennis Cholowski and Moritz Seider.
Undrafted free agents in the mix include wingers Taro Hirose and Ryan Kuffner and defenseman Oliwer Kaski.
“It just gives us a real good chance to watch a whole bunch of guys in action,” Blashill said. “The challenge in the exhibition season is the varying rosters. Sometimes you are seeing guys that are real NHL players and sometimes you’re seeing guys that’ll probably play in the American League. You try to balance that.
“You’d think that when we go to (Pittsburgh) we’ll probably see a really good roster (on Sept. 25), so you try to put a similar roster together. When you go to the New York Islanders (Sept. 23) I’d like to get a hold of (coach) Barry Trotz and have a conversation, just so we know if we can try to match up rosters the best we can. We got a whole bunch of competition for jobs. I think that’s shown in how competitive each practice was. This gives us a chance to see those guys play.”
I never realised that some coaches might talk before a preseason game and try to match lineups. Great idea IMO.
I think most will get sent down/released this year as some current contracts expire at the end of this season and there might be more openings.
Trades this year could happen to a team trying to reach the Cap floor. Or a dump at the Deadline? With Stevie Y running the team, it will probably take a few years to get a feel for his way of doing things.
Getting very close to Games that count!!