Of Red Wings-related note from Maintenance Day Wednesday:
- Pius Suter gave an 18-minute interview to DetroitRedWings.com’s Daniella Bruce and Art Regner in a The Word on Woodward special:
2. Detroit Hockey Now’s Kevin Allen posted a list of ways in which the Red Wings can improve their team…
1. Change up defensive personnel: This isn’t working. Why not give Jordan Oesterle a shot? He has 255 games of NHL experience. If Troy Stecher goes on the injured list, it might also be time to consider taking a look at some of the defensemen in Grand Rapids or explore the trade market.
2. Beef up the third line: The Red Wings are a smaller team. They need some size and/or aggressiveness. If Givani Smith can’t fill the role, they need to find a Darren McCarty-type or a Barclay Goodrow-type to play with Michael Rasmussen. Although Rasmussen isn’t scoring goals, he’s starting to will himself into becoming an effective third-line center. He is beginning to use his 6-foot-6 frame effectively. If you add someone else to that line who is hard to play against, it would give the Red Wings a line to use when they want to protect a lead or create some chaos.
3. And Allen also posted an article discussing the unlucky breaks that have plagued Larkin over the years:
Pain in the Neck: He endured a painful rehab of a serious neck injury over the summer. He was expected to be back by the start of the season, but it wasn’t a given.
One-game suspension: The NHL Department of Player Safety suspended Larkin one game for throwing a punch at Mathieu Joseph. Larkin was reacting to Joseph running him from behind into the boards. The Red Wings center flew head-first into the Plexi-glass. Larkin reacted because no penalty was called on the play. He said if a penalty had been called he would not have thrown the punch. But he felt he had to defend himself if the officials were not.
4. MLive’s Ansar Khan wrote an article discussing the Red Wings’ defensive issues…
“I think it’s pretty simple — you just got to bear down and make the play,” Danny DeKeyser said. “We need to get pucks out when there’s chances to get pucks out. That’s how a lot of offense is created in this league, from turnovers or just a defensive play that doesn’t work how you want it to. We got to win more battles, get pucks in at their blueline, get pucks out at our blueline and through the neutral zone, clean that up a bit.”
The Red Wings are getting good goaltending for the most part from Thomas Greiss and Alex Nedeljkovic. But they are allowing 3.33 goals per game (ranked 26th in the NHL), up from 3.00 last season.
Blashill said several aspects of their defensive play need to be better.
“Certainly, our D-zone coverage isn’t close to good enough,” Blashill said. “Our slot coverage has been terrible, so that has to get way better. I think we’ve given up some easy chances out of our O-zone play back into our own end off of rushes. I think some it is just a learning process with a whole bunch of young guys in important roles that they have to understand and go through this learning thing. It’s not easy. You’re learning on the fly a little bit. It’s everything from puck management to risk-reward management to D-zone coverage.”
4. And, among the Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan’s notes:
The Wings have lost five of their last six games on the road.
Blashill touched upon the need to be better defensively, again, to help their chances on the road.
“When you give up four goals, plus the empty-netter, it’s hard to win that way,” Blashill said. “If we want to win on the road, to win consistently, if we want to win when maybe we don’t score enough goals, we have to get better defensively.”
