The Red Wings changed up their lines ahead of tomorrow night’s game in Buffalo (7 PM EST on FanDuel SportsNet Detroit/MSG-B/97.1 FM), and the Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan spoke with Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde regarding the Wings’ rationale behind their revisions:
Dylan Larkin was between Alex DeBrincat and Lucas Raymond, basically the only three forwards who are scoring goals these days. Marco Kasper was between Michael Rasmussen and Patrick Kane. J.T. Compher centered Vladimir Tarasenko and Andrew Copp. The fourth line consisted of Jonatan Berggren, Joe Veleno, Tyler Motte, with Christian Fischer rotating in.
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“We’re doing pretty good things away from the puck, defending pretty well, but what’s frustrating is we’re not finishing,” Lalonde said. “Even this stretch of late, it’s a lot different than what we had early when we weren’t scoring. We weren’t getting looks. We’ve had some good looks of late here, and hopefully, we can start finishing.”
Lalonde has talked the last several days about wanting the Wings to be more effective around the net, scoring some “greasy” goals, in hockey parlance — and with that in mind, most of those new lines have a touch of that going for them.
“With some of those lines, (they’re) getting some different skill sets to complement some guys,” Lalonde said.
After Raymond (10 goals, 28 points), DeBrincat (11 goals, 22 points) and Larkin (12 goals, 21 points) there’s a huge drop-off to defenseman Moritz Seider (13 points). The Wings have received minimal secondary scoring among the forwards this season.
“We’d like a little more secondary scoring,” Lalonde said. “Again, we’ll keep pounding (for) some harder offense, on the whole. I don’t think scoring is going to be a natural, or a strength of ours by any means. I didn’t look at shooting percentage but it has to be one of the poorest in the league (23rd of 32 teams). Hopefully, we can keep harping on some things and get some pucks in the back of the net. I still think we can get scoring throughout our lineup, guys willing to continue getting to the inside, some of the harder areas.”
Continued (paywall); there’s no doubt that the Red Wings’ lack of secondary scoring is damning them, offensively speaking…
