Kulfan discusses the Red Wings’ revamped blueline

The Red Wings were able to significantly overhaul their defense this offseason, adding Marc Staal, Troy Stecher and Jon Merrill to a core consisting of Filip Hronek, Danny DeKeyser and Patrik Nemeth,

They bade farewell to Jonathan Ericsson, Trevor Daley, Mike Green and Madison Bowey along the way, and as Gustav Lindstrom and Dennis Cholowski wait in the wings, Alex Biega provides depth at the 6/7 position, and Moritz Seider stars in Sweden, the team has added Christian Djoos on Saturday to make the Wings’ blueline that much deeper.

This morning, the Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan discusses the changes made on the Wings’ blueline, and his subscriber-only article duly notes that the Red Wings believe that they’ve firmly upgraded their ability to move the puck out of their zone and defend better when the puck’s not on Red Wings players’ sticks:

“We get a chance to prove whether we’re stronger, and until you prove it on a night-to- night basis, we’ll see,” said [Red Wings coach Jeff] Blashill, of whether the defensive unit is stronger. “Ultimately we added a number of guys. We have a lot of players who I would say are good players.”

Blashill isn’t looking for anyone to make blockbuster plays on defense — just simply the correct, simple plays, on a consistent basis.

“I’m a big believer in guys going out and, especially at the defensive position, playing solid hockey,” Blashill said. “The best defenseman are the ones who are most efficient, make good, solid plays without making a whole lot of mistakes.”

Too often last season the Wings would get bottled up in their end, unable to move the puck out or make the necessary pass to alleviate the trouble and find forwards on the move. The defensemen on the current roster are better suited, it appears, to safely get the Wings out of trouble.

“We’re going to have to get out of our end,” Blashill said. “That’s a big key in today’s NHL against hard forechecks. The defense corps all has the ability to do that. Now, I don’t know if that’s their greatest strength. For me, probably their biggest strength as a group is that they all can go out and make good, solid decisions.”

Kulfan continues (paywall), and it may sound a little silly to be excited about plain bottom-line competency on defense, but the Red Wings weren’t competent at the position last season, and it showed–badly.