The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan filed a final-day-of-training-camp notebook, and
New coach Derek Lalonde was pleased with what was accomplished over the four days of scrimmaging and drills in practice in Traverse City. Now, it’s onto some games, more evaluating, and maintaining and improving what was established in this camp.
“Structure, and keep building on our process,” Lalonde said of what his hopes are for the preseason. “Obviously take a step every day hopefully with our structure. Some of it is new for the guys, but certainly establishing some compete, attitude, work on all those things and again, we feel fortunate to have eight (preseason) games this year to start fine-tuning some things.”
Lalonde was planning to give players a certain amount of games, but that plan is already changing by the day. Injuries to forwards Tyler Bertuzzi, Andrew Copp (recovering from summer core surgery), Joe Veleno and Oskar Sundqvist, and defenseman Robert Hagg ā all are essentially day to day ā have thrown the lineups into flux, but also give other players opportunities for ice time.
“It’s a little frustrating to see (several forwards) out of our top nine out of camp to start, but it gives opportunity for other guys for some different looks, so that’s a positive in some ways,” Lalonde said.
There are roster spots to be won during this exhibition season, but Lalonde isn’t getting into how many positions might be available.
“(General manager) Steve (Yzerman) and I have talked a few times, we’ve talked about being patient with this, not go too deep about it,” Lalonde said. “I can’t give you any looks or numbers going forward. We’ll take the full eight games and let it play out and go from there.”
