Of Red Wings-related note this morning:
- MLive’s Ansar Khan posted a morning notebook in which he discusses Michael Rasmussen’s play during last night’s exhibition win over Chicago:
Rasmussen looks forward to playing center, his natural position, this season after playing almost exclusively at wing in 62 games as a rookie with the Red Wings. He is competing for a roster spot because he can be assigned to the AHL Grand Rapids Griffins this season.
“Just way more skating (at center),” Rasmussen said. “I need to get my body up and down the ice a little bit different than wing. Just getting up and down and you got to play as the third D-man pretty much in the zone.”
Rasmussen’s net-front ability on the power play could give him an edge in competition for a spot on the third line.
“He knows how to screen the goalie, he knows how to present his stick, he’s got pretty soft hands in those areas,” coach Jeff Blashill said. “We’ll keep working on trying to find different ways to be super-dangerous when he gets the puck there.”
2. The Athletic’s Max Bultman also discussed Rasmussen and Dennis Cholowski’s uphill battles in terms of earning spots on the Red Wings’ crowded roster:
The two prospects are in two different situations — Rasmussen was not AHL eligible when he made the Red Wings last season, so he hasn’t spent any time in Grand Rapids outside of a brief rehab stint — but both are trying to win their old roster spots all over again, after the true demands of the NHL revealed themselves to both players.
Cholowski was reminded how hard it was to defend against NHL forwards. Rasmussen got an education in what happens when you’re no longer more physically dominant than everyone on the ice.
And now, both have to prove what they learned from all that — a claim that might just take more evidence to prove this time around.
“When you do have some success, in my experience in sports … the expectation levels go up, and then everybody judges you at a higher expectation level,” Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill said Tuesday morning. “And I also would say, the more you’re around people, you see the person in totality, no matter what it is in life. And so you see the positives and negatives and all that. Sometimes, when you just get first glimpse, you might see all negative. Sometimes you get first glimpse, you might see all positives. There’s some kind of mix in between there.”
Continued (paywall)
