The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan posted a notebook article which mostly focuses on Joe Veleno’s attempt to add more offense to his game, but the most noteworthy part of Kulfan’s article is this:
Defenseman Jeff Petry momentarily slipped up when talking about Wings teammate David Perron.
The two were actually teammates before, way back in 2013 with Edmonton. Yes, a decade ago.
“I’m dating myself,” said Petry, who is 35 (so is Perron).
Petry has been through many training camps and preseasons. The one thing he finds vital to get out of them is playing some games to get comfortable on the ice with his teammates and system the team plays.
“As much as you can get done in practice, those reps against a different opponent that doesn’t necessarily know the system as well as the guys on your team, it’s good to put everything in place,” Petry said. “It’s important to get those game reps. It’s what you need to work on to get better and just work on the system differences from one team to another.
“No matter how much you skate over the summer and do things in practice, getting in those battles again and competing against somebody that is not on your team, you just can’t replicate those game reps.”
Continued; before they called getting repetition of game situations “reps,” shifts “reps,” and playing time “reps,” the idea was that you have to play to shake off rust.
