Red Wings Re-Shuffle Lines Seeking to Snap Doldrums

On Sunday afternoon, the Detroit Red Wings held practice at the BELFOR Training Center in Little Caesars Arena’s bowels, debuting a new set of forward lines:

Coach Derek Lalonde reunited an Alex DeBrincat-Dylan Larkin-Lucas Raymond trio that found some success early in the season.  He also reconnected J.T. Compher and Andrew Copp, placing them on a line with Vladimir Tarasenko.  Patrick Kane—who has been quiet since returning from injury—moves down to a third line role, beside Marco Kasper and Michael Rasmussen.

The purpose behind the changes is obvious: The Red Wings need to find more goals.  As Lalonde explained, “We would like a little more secondary scoring, and again, we keep trying to pound some harder offense. And yes, obviously on the whole for the year, we rank towards the bottom of the league and rightfully so…The early stretches, we were not producing chances, kinda living off our power play there a little bit. But of late, we’re getting some quality looks.”

On the injury front, neither of Detroit’s ailing goaltenders (Cam Talbot and Alex Lyon) took part in practice, but Lalonde did reveal that both skated before the session, which should provide a clearer timeline on their returns in the not-too-distant future.  For the time being, Lalonde declined to name a starting goaltender for tomorrow’s game in Buffalo.  He said that he wanted to get a clearer picture of the Talbot-Lyon timelines before making a decision but also that he wouldn’t expect either to be available tomorrow.  That leaves Ville Husso (who has started three straight after Lyon’s, then Talbot’s injuries) and Sebastian Cossa as the Red Wings’ likely options.

“Both goalies have skated that have been out, so I wanna get a report on that and go from there,” Lalonde explained, by way of a goaltending update.  “Obviously, I’m very happy with Ville and his play this past week, but now we’re getting into five game in a nine, 10-stretch for him.  It’d be asking a lot of him, so we’ll have a better feel in the morning.”

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