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Video: Berggren, Johansson and coach McLellan speak to the media after Friday’s Red Wings practice

The Red Wings practiced on Friday at the BELFOR Training Center underneath Little Caesars Arena, and after practice, coach Todd McLellan confirmed that Patrick Kane (upper-body) will miss Saturday’s game against the Tampa Bay Lightning (who are playing the first of back-to-back games tonight in Chicago).

McLellan also told the assembled media that the team’s starting goaltender for tomorrow is undecided, with Cam Talbot a possibility against the Bolts.

Here’s the Red Wings’ post-practice player-and-coach comment video, which includes Jonatan Berggren, Albert Johansson and coach McLellan:

Friday’s post-practice Tweets: Kane still out for Saturday vs. Tampa

The Red Wings practiced today at Little Caesars Arena’s BELFOR Training Center, ahead of tomorrow’s game against the Tampa Bay Lightning (who play tonight in Chicago). The Wings did so without Patrick Kane (upper-body injury) and Jeff Petry, and they did so hoping to build upon last night’s 4-2 victory over the Montreal Canadiens.

After practice, Red Wings coach Todd McLellan spoke with the media:

Tweets from Friday’s practice: Kane, Petry absent, but Thursday’s lineup remains intact

The Detroit Red Wings hit the ice at Little Caesars Arena’s BELFOR Training Center just before 12 PM Friday, the day after Thursday’s 4-2 victory over the Montreal Canadiens. The Wings are preparing for a pivotal game against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday evening.

Detroit sits only 4 points behind the Lightning in the Eastern Conference standings, but Tampa Bay has 2 games in hand on the Red Wings, so it’s crucial that the Wings win both tomorrow and on Saturday, February 8th, when the teams wrap up their season series.

Continue reading Tweets from Friday’s practice: Kane, Petry absent, but Thursday’s lineup remains intact

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Albert Johansson, the ‘biggest surprise’

The Hockey News’s Sam Stockton notes that Red Wings coach Todd McLellan singled out Albert Johansson as a superb surprise after last night’s 4-2 win over the Montreal Canadiens:

After the Red Wings’ 4–2 win over the Montreal Canadiens last night, coach Todd McLellan—who has now been in Detroit for just shy of a month—revealed the biggest surprise of his tenure.

“Probably the biggest surprise for me to date is Albert [Johansson],” the coach said in his post-game media availability.  “I knew nothing about Albert.  We get here, and he’s kinda parked on the shelf, and everybody’s playing, and we’re trying to figure players out.  I think his rise has been remarkable, really.  Unless I underestimated him too, and then that’s on me, but he’s played steady in all three zones.  There’s some fierceness in his game.  When he gets engaged with bodies and battles, he wins a lot of them.  He’s not the biggest guy.  We talk about him in the locker room all the time.  We’re so happy we have him.  Biggest surprise in my mind.”

In last night’s win, Johansson played 18:35 last night against the Canadiens, throwing a hit and blocking two shots. He broke the 18-minute plateau for the first time in his NHL career during last week’s Detroit win in Florida, and in the four games since, he’s broken it three times (including a career high 20:27 in Dallas over the weekend).

Continued; he’s a plucky little bugger for sure.

ESPN’s Power Rankings reveal a pair of crucial games against the Bolts

At this time of year, power rankings are mostly irrelevant to the Red Wings’ cause, and I feel that to be the case right now…But ESPN’s power rankings for this week point out that the Red Wings have a pair of pivotal games to play against the Tampa Bay Ligthing both tomorrow and on February 8th, with both taking place at Little Caesars Arena:

24. Detroit Red Wings

Previous ranking: 20
Points percentage: 51.04%

Jan. 25, Feb. 8 vs. Lightning. Given the ties between the franchises — including current Detroit GM/former Tampa Bay GM Steve Yzerman — games between the two are always must-see affairs. And with the Red Wings currently chasing the Lightning in the standings, these will matter even more.

Next eight days: vs. TB (Jan. 25), vs. LA (Jan. 27), @ EDM (Jan. 30

Continued; the Wings go West to play the Oilers, Flames, Canucks and Kraken on January 30th, February 1st, February 2nd and February 4th, and then the Wings get a break before that February 8th game vs. the Bolts, which closes out the Wings’ pre-Four Nations schedule.

Right now, the Wings are only 4 points behind the Bolts in the Eastern Conference standings, with Tampa having 2 games in hand over Detroit, so it’s crucial that the Wings win the next 2 meetings against the Lightning.

Morning news round-up: Wings-Habs recaps, and praise for Larkin and the penalty-kill

The Detroit Red Wings won 4-2 over the Montreal Canadiens last night at Little Caesars Arena.

The Red Wings now sit only 3 points behind Montreal, 5 points behind the Wild Card-holding Tampa Bay Lightning, and 6 points behind the Boston Bruins, who sit 3rd in the Atlantic.

This morning, four Red Wings pundits discuss last night’s result:

  1. The Free Press’s Helene St. James discusses the Wings’ ability to “not be too cute” over the course of a strong start to last night’s game:

“I think we can skate with anybody,” defenseman Moritz Seider said after the Wings’ 4-2 victory over the Montreal Canadiens on Thursday. “We have to have a shooting mentality. Don’t necessarily be too cute, and at the start, really focus on playing north-south hockey — get pucks to the net, really grind their D out. I think that’s stuff we can do over and over again.”

The Wings (22-21-5) will need to do it over and over again: Even when they had won seven in a row earlier this month, the closest they got to the playoff picture was two points out, with two teams ahead of them. Since that streak, they’ve gone 2-3-1, and now there are a handful of teams ahead of them.

That’s where Thursday’s game can help. The Wings had jump from the get-go, they scored first, and they scored five-on-five, with a man advantage — and with a man disadvantage. It wasn’t hard for McLellan to answer what he liked best.

“I liked our start,” McLellan said. “I thought everybody got into the game. We were aggressive, we looked fast. I challenged the group before the game, because part of the pre-scout was the two games that they had played against Montreal pre-Christmas. In that game, we looked slower and a little indecisive, and wanted them to give us a guideline of whether we’ve made progress.

“We were aggressive, we were quicker, we played faster. For the most part, that was how we looked 10 days, two weeks ago, so that’s a good sign for us.”

2. MLive’s Ansar Khan focused on Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin’s 700th game and 650th and 651st points:

Continue reading Morning news round-up: Wings-Habs recaps, and praise for Larkin and the penalty-kill

Red Wings-Canadiens wrap-up: Led by Larkin, Wings out-Hab the hot Canadiens

The Detroit Red Wings won a critical 4-2 decision over the Montreal Canadiens on Thursday evening, squeezing the Eastern Conference standings into an club sandwich of teams atop each other by single layers of points.

Detroit could have sat 7 points behind the Habs if they lose, and now they’re 3 points behind ’em.

This was far from a perfect game, in no small part thanks to Samuel Montembeault’s 41-save performance, partially because of the Habs’ pluck in the 2nd and 3rd, and partially, honestly, because the Wings aren’t quite able to play a full 60 minutes yet, but when the team did connect, like Lucas Raymond did with Alex DeBrincat on the 2-0 goal, the Wings were making beautiful things happen:

There were definitely some hairy moments after the Red Wings built 3-0 and 4-1 leads, and the score read 4-2 for a reason, especially against a Canadiens team that had won 13 of 20…

But when the Wings were able to kill a delay-of-game penalty with ease after coach Todd McLellan unsuccessfully challenged a Michael Rasmussen goal that was negated due to goaltender interference, halfway through the 3rd period…The feeling was that somehow, things were going to end up going well.

The Montreal Gazette’s Herb Zurkowsky reports that the Canadiens felt that they’d been out-Habbed on Thursday night…

Continue reading Red Wings-Canadiens wrap-up: Led by Larkin, Wings out-Hab the hot Canadiens

Red Wings-Canadiens quick take: Wings hold off the Habs

The Detroit Red Wings faced off against the Montreal Canadiens with the Wings looking to narrow the 5-point gap between the teams in the Eastern Conference standings–and looking to gain some revenge for the Canadiens’ sweep of a home-and-home series between the teams last December.

On Thursday night, the Red Wings tried their fans’ pulses, racing out to a 3-0 lead on goals by Berggren, DeBrincat and Copp (shorthanded) before giving up a 3-1 and 4-2 goals sandwiched by Dylan Larkin’s 21st of the season in game 700…

But Cam Talbot ended up stopping 28 of 30 shots, the Wings peppered Samuel Montembeault with 45 shots, Detroit went 1-for-4 in 4:55 of PP time and killed not only 3 Canadiens power plays in 5:16, but also killed a failed goal challenged at 9:39 of the 3rd…

And the Wings held on to defeat the dangerous Habs 4-2.

Continue reading Red Wings-Canadiens quick take: Wings hold off the Habs