Updated at 2:28 PM: As previously noted, Red Wings coach Todd McLellan was unhappy with his charges’ showings during Sunday’s final training camp practice at Little Caesars Arena’s BELFOR Training Center.
As Khan Tweeted, the Red Wings ran a power play vs. penalty-kill scrimmage on Sunday, and the Grand Rapids Griffins’ players defeated Detroit 6-0.
With road exhibition games against Columbus and Pittsburgh looming on Monday and Tuesday night, respectively, Coach McLellan expanded upon his remarks while speaking with MLive’s Ansar Khan:
“Today, the kids were really good,” Red Wings coach Todd McLellan said. “They worked their butts off. They made plays, they executed better than the veteran players. It wasn’t even close. That’s a really good sign for our organization. Or maybe it isn’t. It depends how you look at it.”
The Red Wings open their four-game preseason Monday at Columbus (7 p.m., livestreamed on detroitredwings.com).
The Red Wings squad consisted of mostly the regular roster except for Dylan Larkin (upper-body injury), Simon Edvinsson (still unsigned, practicing but not scrimmaging) and some young players pushing for jobs (Michael Brandsegg-Nygard, Nate Danielson, Axel Sandin-Pellikka, William Wallinder).
The Griffins squad featured only three players who’ve appeared in games for the Red Wings (Dominik Shine, John Leonard and Sheldon Dries).
Coach McLellan was happier with the ways in which the coaching staff got its points across over the course of the Wings’ 4-day training camp as a whole, though the bitter taste of today’s “big club” struggles persisted:
“There’s a lot of tactics that got jammed in quicker than it would have had the camp been dragged out like it had been in other years,” he said. “And at that time, it slows camp down a little bit because there’s some teaching, there’s some correcting.
“And it often happens when you go to a power play-penalty kill day, you get what we got today. I wasn’t happy with our day today at all. Happy with the kids, but I wasn’t happy with our day. So, we’ve got to take it back up here after their off days and get going, not waste a day.”
Update: The Free Press’s Helene St. James also took note of McLellan’s comments about Sunday, and added a bit from Andrew Copp:
“The kids were really good,” McLellan said. “They worked their butts off, they made plays, they executed better than the veteran players, it wasn’t even close. So that’s a really good sign for our organization. Or maybe it isn’t, it depends how you look at it. But the problem that we have is the amount of time we have to truly evaluate.”
Intrasquad scrimmages are one thing; there really isn’t much physical play. The better tests come in the week ahead, when the Wings embark on a preseason slate that has them at the Columbus Blue Jackets on Monday, Tuesday at the Pittsburgh Penguins and at Little Caesars Arena on Thursday against the Buffalo Sabres and Saturday against the Blue Jackets.
It’s half the amount of games the Wings usually have in the preseason, an NHL-wide mandate that reduced exhibition to four games simultaneously with the regular season expanding to 84 games.
“Eight was egregious, to be honest,” Andrew Copp said. “I think the four is kinda a sweet spot. You come in, you get to work right away. There’s no dilly-dallying around. There’s no extra stuff going on. We’ve got to get right to the point.”
