The Hockey News’s Sam Stockton punctuates this somewhat sleepy Saturday afternoon with an analysis of what the Red Wings’ 2023-2024 opening night lineup might look like:
Line One: Alex DeBrincat-Dylan Larkin-Michael Rasmussen
One line in and we’ve arrived at two more significant questions: which side will Alex DeBrincat play on, and just how loaded do Steve Yzerman, Derek Lalonde, and the rest of the Red Wings’ brain trust want the top line to be?
To open the season, there can be little doubt that both Larkin and DeBrincat will comprise two-thirds of Detroit’s top line. Larkin is the franchise centerman upon whom the entire project rests, and DeBrincat is the shiny new toy meant to provide a spark to the Red Wing attack. Maybe a time will come over the course of the season when Lalonde decides to break the two up to better disperse his top scoring options, but for night one, a DeBrincat-Larkin partnership on the top line looks like a certainty.
On his official roster page, DeBrincat is listed at right wing, but he spent most of last season playing on the left wing with Shane Pinto and Drake Batherson in Ottawa. During his Chicago days, DeBrincat typically featured on the left wing on the same line as Patrick Kane, who would man the right flank. With that in mind, I suspect DeBrincat begins his tenure in Detroit on the left.
That brings us to the second question: Just how offensive do the Red Wings want this line to be?
