NHL.com’s Nicholas J. Cotsonika spoke with Red Wings forwards Patrick Kane and Dylan Larkin, as well as coach Todd McLellan, about the Wings’ tough road trip this upcoming week/weekend, as well as the Wings’ difficult remaining schedule. Kane suggested that the Wings are only eying the Florida Panthers, Thursday night’s ESPN game opponent…
“You take it as a challenge,” forward Patrick Kane said. “Under Todd, we’ve kind of built a little bit of a foundation where we’re kind of knowing what to expect going forward and feeling confident about it as well, so just play every game, take it a game at a time and see what happens.”
The Red Wings hired McLellan to replace Derek Lalonde on Dec. 26. With only one morning skate to prepare, they lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs 5-2 at home the next night. Then they went on their longest winning streak since Jan. 12-23, 2012.
The streak started with a 4-2 win against the Washington Capitals at home Dec. 29 and included a 4-2 win at the Winnipeg Jets on Jan. 4. The Jets and Capitals are tied atop the NHL standings. Those performances can serve as inspiration against the Panthers.
“They’re physical,” Kane said. “They can play pretty much any game, right? They have a lot of skill. They can keep coming at you in waves. We obviously saw that last year with them doing what they did to win, so we need to be on top of our game. We proved we can do that when we went into Winnipeg and beat the best team in the League, right? Let’s do it again.”
The captain is looking forward to playing in Florida, too, where the Wings haven’t found much success…
“In this league, anyone can beat anyone on any given night,” he said. “We’ve been feeling good about our game, and we came in [last night], and we got stumped. It just goes that way. We’re going in to play the defending champs, division rivals, in Florida, which is a tough place to play. And how they play there, it’s a tough, tough challenge. But I think we’re up for it.”
And coach McLellan doesn’t want the Wings to worry about anything but tomorrow night’s game:
“What I don’t want them to do is get caught up in a seven-game win streak or a four-game losing streak,” he said. “I want them to live in the moment and just worry about that. It can be hard if you get caught up in all of that stuff, and it can take you down or it can put you too far up. Put the equipment on, and let’s deal with things between Minute 1 and Minute 60, and we’re fine.”
