The Free Press’s Helene St. James weighs in regarding Red Wings coach Todd McLellan and GM Steve Yzerman’s press conferences:
“What we’ve asked the players to do is play harder, to play faster and a little bit smarter,” he said. “Those are three simple things that I think we can control without any type of tactics or systematic structure play.
“And then the last thing is, the spirit of the team has to improve. When something like this happens, the spirit of the team is at a low. We’re going to work hard to build that back up.”
General manager Steve Yzerman made the coaching change during the three-day Christmas break, relieving coach Derek Lalonde and assistant coach Bob Boughner of their duties. Trent Yawney will be McLellan’s new right-hand man alongside Alex Tanguay, who retained his job.
Yzerman pointed to the Wings’ 13-17-4 record and especially how listless the team looked in Monday’s 4-0 loss to the St. Louis Blues.
“I can’t give you the exact date or time, but as our season started and has progressed to today, you start to think about, how do you improve your team, how do we get going in the direction we want to or playing the way we want to,” Yzerman said. “You look at all different types of things. The first option is player personnel, to move things around and what not. And then as we’re getting closer to yesterday, start to think, we might have to make a change here.
“My thought process is, our team isn’t performing to what my expectations are. Whether anybody agrees with that or not – I have my own expectations of the team and why they aren’t, is because our players aren’t playing to each of their individual expectations. I have my own own expectation of each individual player. So collectively, we are where we are and we’re playing the way we are, and a decision comes at some point.”