Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff reports that Red Wings coach Todd McLellan has broken up the Ben Chiarot-Justin Faulk and Albert Johansson-Axel Sandin Pellikka/Jacob Bernard-Docker defensive pairings, flippping Chiarot and Johansson as the coach attempts to determine who plays best with whom:
“The two starting points of Albert’s season, he’s got better as it went along,” McLellan said. “He started a little bit slow. We want him to start fast, and we want to find out, make sure that he can handle those [top-four] minutes. We think that they’ll complement each other. And then Benny gets to go and play with whoever’s going to be on the [right side of the third pairing].”
Who that might be is anyone’s guess at this juncture. There are certainly plenty of candidates.
“It is going to be competitive,” McLellan said. “You know, we talk about Ax [Axel Sandin-Pellikka], we have a pretty good idea what he can do. [Jacob] Bernard Docker gave us a good run of games last year, earned himself a contract. Then you bring in [William] Wallinder and [Anton] Johansson, who are on the cusp of being NHL players, in my opinion, and [Jacob] Bryson, who’s already played a bunch of NHL games. So there is some depth there.
“Right now, they’re all competing. Who ends up on the initial roster, I couldn’t tell you at this point. And then maybe we have to thin the herd a little bit later on. But we’ll see where we are, what kind of start we get to, who’s playing well, who isn’t, and make some decisions after that.”
Continued with discussion about the Wings’ top pairing of Simon Edvinsson and Moritz Seider…
