MLive’s Ansar Khan took note of this remark from Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill regarding the difficulties involved in balancing his team’s lineup as the Wings prepare to play 8 exhibition games over the course of 11 days–including a 3-games-in-3-days stretch this weekend:
Coach Jeff Blashill explained on Tuesday how the staff determines how many games each player will play.
“It’s a little bit like that movie, ‘A Beautiful Mind,’ ” Blashill said. “You have all these numbers, and we have an excel spreadsheet we work off of and we plan it ahead of time and then three guys get hurt and you kind of re-plan it.
“The first two games we’re going to try to not have anybody play back-to-back unless something unforeseen happens. Larks, Bert, Staal and DK won’t play those first two games. We’ve got a set number of games for each player we try to get depending on where they’re at, what positions they’re fighting for, how many years they’ve been in the league. They need to be ready and hit the ground running. We try to stay within those set number of games, but it depends on injuries, how the guys play and all that stuff.”
