The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan focuses on a lighter, smarter David Perron in his Friday night notebook, but it’s Derek Lalonde’s comments regarding the Wings’ goaltending situation that I believe merit a spotlight here:
Lalonde will give the goaltenders in camp an opportunity to play during the eight-game exhibition season. But the first priority is to make sure starter Ville Husso is ready for the season.
“First priority is to get Ville the right amount of looks and touches and feel,” Lalonde said. “We want to get a lot of guys some opportunity, and eight games is a lot of games. We do have a plan but that usually goes out the window, like anything else.”
Husso played a career-high 56 games last season and Lalonde expects Husso to be in that same neighborhood. But Husso will be better prepared to handle the workload.
“Natural growth,” Lalonde said. “It was his first year as a starter. It just felt like we pushed him into some games because of what we weren’t getting out some of our depth in that position. We knew we probably overused him, maybe took him beyond his threshold, but this is the reason why. To get him a little more comfortable playing more games and minutes.
“Hopefully, we can manage it a little better than we did last year, in when and where.”
Continued (paywall)
