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Athanasiou making most of limited time |
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After a couple of rough outings, Detroit Red Wings rookie forward Andreas Athanasiou seems to have again found his game.
He played well in Sunday’s 1-0 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs and utilized his blazing speed to get the behind the Philadelphia Flyers’ defense and score a pretty breakaway goal in Tuesday’s 4-3 setback.
“I thought he did some good things,” Detroit coach Jeff Blashill said. “His speed is going to be real flashy and create some opportunities.”
In games of late, Athanasiou is getting between 9-11 minutes of ice time per night, and when weighing the pluses and minuses of his game, Blashill believes at this stage of his development, that’s the perfect amount of time to utilize Athanasiou.
“He’s one of those rare guys that doesn’t have to play lots of minutes and gets great opportunities because of his speed that puts team’s on their heels,” Blashill said.
At the same time, like most young players, the puck drives Athanasiou’s passion and Blashill’s objective is to get the speed merchant to deploy his blazing blades as a deterrent.
“His speed is great, but what he needs to do is make sure he uses that speed as a defensive weapon all the time,” Blashill said. “He uses it as an offensive weapon lots, but . . . he needs to use that as a defensive weapon so he doesn’t get beat up the ice."
On a couple of shifts during Detroit's Saturday win over the New York Rangers, Athanasiou got caught cheating on the offensive side of the puck and that ended up leading to odd-man rushes for the Rangers.
“Like everybody else he’s got things he’s got to get better at and one of those things is making sure we use our assets," Blashill said. "I think it’s part of the learning curve and I think one thing he does is he can still give sparks of brilliance, he still gives those moments where he creates something out of nothing.
“To me he’s one of those role players that can play 7-8 minutes and still be effective. How many more (minutes) he gets than that will depend on again, you have to make sure you’re extraordinary defensively this time of year, so the better he is in that are the more minutes he’ll get.”
Athanasiou, who has six goals in 25 games, understands that he still has much to learn to be a complete NHL player.
“When you get a little opportunity and every game I get and every shift I get I kind of build up a little more and get a little more confidence out there,” Athanasiou said. “It’s just growing with every shift and every game.”
Another asset he brings to the Wings is that Athanasiou’s speed often forces flatfooted defenders to commit fouls in order to stop him.
“With my game and style of play, you can catch their forwards kind of on their heels and when you put them on their heels like that sometimes they’re forced to take a penalty.
“Every game I come into I try and do my best, whether it’s drawing penalties or scoring goals, or just playing good defensively.”
March To Oblivion
Tuesday’s loss was Detroit’s fifth regulation time defeat of the month and it meant that the Wings had already matched the season-high total for regulation losses in a month and it was only March 15.
The Wings also lost in regulation this month to Chicago (twice), Toronto and Columbus.
Detroit lost five times in regulation in October and December.
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