According to DetroitRedWings.com’s Jonathan Mills, the Red Wings’ players and coach are “champing at the bit” to get the regular season started tomorrow when Detroit hosts the New York Rangers (6:30 PM EDT start on TNT/97.1 FM)…
“We’re super excited,” Alex DeBrincat said after Thursday morning’s practice. “Being one of the later games too —you’re watching the games on TV the past couple of nights, and you see the intensity, and it looks so fun out there. I think we’re definitely excited to get going and start off strong.”
Several Red Wings players and head coach Todd McLellan have shared they would rather have started their regular season a little earlier than Friday, but they know they can’t control how the 84-game slate is pieced together.
“We got to show up and be ready for the game,” DeBrincat said. “I think having a couple games on the nights before, we know the intensity is going to be there. It’ll be the Rangers’ third game and our first, so we got to be ready to play. They will have gotten some stuff out of their legs and made mistakes already, and we haven’t. We got to show up on time.”
But coach Todd McLellan is very aware of the fact that home openers can be a little rocky in terms of implementing a game plan, so he’s cautioning the Wings’ players to be ready for the unexpected…
“We’ll play the game,” McLellan said. “The games have been sloppy, in my opinion, watching again last night. So, if we can eliminate that, we’ll give ourselves a better chance of winning, and come Saturday morning, we’ll have a blueprint more to work off of.”
With coach McLellan emphasizing that getting off to a good start is essential for his charges:
Of Detroit’s 14 contests in October, only five are on the road — and seven of their first eight are at home.
“Early urgency,” McLellan said. “Another reason why we adopted that moniker, if you will. A chance to put our game together here at home. I don’t think fatigue should be a factor in these first eight or nine games. We’re not traveling all over the place, one back-to-back, so we should have good practice time. We should feel good about being in our building and being in front of our fans.”
Continued; McLellan’s right. Home openers are weird, and teams have to adapt in a hurry to the emotional ups and downs thereof.
Moreover, the New York Rangers come into tomorrow night’s game having played their home opener tonight, hosting the Tampa Bay Lightning this evening, so the Rangers are going to have their game legs under them going into their 3rd game of the season, and Detroit’s got to prepare for the probability of needing to work the kinks out without committing too many mistakes.