Khan’s practice notebook: Red Wings’ Fabbri-Suter-Zadina line needs to step up

MLive’s Ansar Khan has filed his practice notebook from Tuesday’s events that took place at Little Caesars Arena, and Khan notes that the Red Wings’ second line of Robby Fabbri, Pius Suter and Filip Zadina hopes to step up in a big way:

Robby Fabbri are Filip Zadina are getting pucks on net, but not many behind the goaltender. The Detroit Red Wings’ second line hasn’t produced much offense over the past several weeks despite ample opportunities.

“It starts with burying your chances,” Fabbri said. “The top line has done a great job for us, keeping us in games, winning us games. It’s up to the other 9-10 forwards that get in to help out. I put a lot of pressure on myself to be part of that secondary scoring. It hasn’t been going in right now. but the line has been confident with the chances we’ve been getting, with what we’ve been creating. We just got to stick with it and eventually it will go in.”

The Red Wings (8-9-3) look to snap a four-game skid (0-3-1) Wednesday against the St. Louis Blues at Little Caesars Arena (7:30 p.m., Bally Sports Detroit Plus).

Fabbri has just one goal and two assists in the past 12 games, but he has registered 36 shots during that time. His overall 5.8 percent shooting percentage is well below his rate from his first two seasons in Detroit (13.5 percent and 17.2 percent).

Zadina has one goal and one assist in his past 11 games, with 21 shots during that stretch. Pius Suter, the center on the line, has no points in four games after a stretch with five points (three goals, two assists) in five games.

“As a line we’re getting about 10 shots a game, you’re pretty happy with that to start,” Fabbri said. “What we’re creating from our D-zone to the offensive zone, it’s been great. Just working on getting the puck over the (goal) line and we’ll be all right.”

Continued

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George Malik

My name is George Malik, and I'm the Malik Report's editor/blogger/poster. I have been blogging about the Red Wings since 2006, when MLive hired me to work their SlapShots blog, and I joined Kukla's Korner in 2011 as The Malik Report. I'm starting The Malik Report as a stand-alone site, hoping that having my readers fund the website is indeed the way to go to build a better community and create better content.