MLive’s Ansar Khan breaks down the Red Wings’ preseason lineup this morning, discussing prospective forward lines and defensive pairings with coach Todd McLellan:
For now, [the Red Wings] have a top-six of Andrew Copp centering Alex DeBrincat and Lucas Raymond while Marco Kasper centers Viktor Arvidsson and Emmitt Finnie.
“Copp and Cat played together; Razor is obviously one of our higher-end players that can produce,” McLellan said. “We have a line right now with (Nate Danielson, Carter Mazur and Michael Brandsegg-Nygard) that is a bit of a kid line that hopefully can provide a lot of energy. And then we have what we hope will be a heavier, harder line to play against with (Mason) Appleton, (Keegan) Kolesar, (J.T.) Compher, (Michael) Rasmussen).
“Our lines, without Larks, we’re trying to get some cohesion with pairs of players at least. And if not pairs, then at least there are three. That’s why you haven’t seen a lot of shuffling around with lines throughout camp. But we only skated for four days. We need to play some games. We need to get up and running and then we can make more decisions on that.”
On defense, coach McLellan has swapped out Albert Johansson and Ben Chiarot, who are now playing with Justin Faulk and Jacob Bernard-Docker, respectively, and there’s a method to the coach’s strategy there:
“We want (Johansson) to start fast and make sure that he can handle those minutes,” McLellan said. “We think that they’ll complement each other. And then Benny gets to go and play with whoever’s going to be on that other side.
“And we’re not averse to pulling Simon and Mo (Seider) apart at some point. Right now, when they play together, they’re very good for the most part, but if we could have one of them on the ice for most of the game, that helps. We’ve got to get everybody’s confidence level up. And we thought that Albert and Faulker would be a good pair.”
McLellan said it’s competitive on defense. Veterans Jacob Bernard-Docker and Jacob Bryson have been paired together in camp. Axel Sandin-Pellikka, who is waiver-exempt, has played alongside Chiarot. Rookie William Wallinder, no longer waiver-exempt, is in the mix for a roster spot. The organization also is high on Anton Johansson, who is waiver-exempt.
“There is some depth there,” McLellan said. “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.”
