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Hockey Is A Battle (Drill) |
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Several decades ago, former Toronto Maple Leafs coach Punch Imlach penned his biography entitled “Hockey Is A Battle.”
It still is, and Detroit Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill sought to once again emphasize that with his players as they practiced on Wednesday.
Fresh off a 5-1 victory over the Winnipeg Jets on Tuesday in which his team displayed the necessary battle stations to not only end their seven-game losing streak, but in order to succeed long term, Blashill wanted them not to forget what made them famous, so the focus of practice Wednesday was on battle drills.
“I think it’s good for us,” Detroit right-winger Gustav Nyquist told Mlive.com. “Those are the things that we need to get better at, to win those battles, and doing them in practice, it’ll help us, I think.”
Blashill’s ultimate goal is to make his team harder to play against, something the Wings aren’t really known for around the league.
“I’d say harder to play against in this sense - it’s not always necessarily big, finishing checks, but it’s taking away space and not letting them skate up the ice easy,” Blashill said. “It’s something I’ve always been a big believer in since I first started as a head coach. It’s a lot a of angles, it’s stopping on people, it’s stopping on pucks, it’s not stick-checking – what I call poke and hope.
“I thought we did a better job of that throughout the game.”
Working at in on a regular basis should make it second nature for a team that doesn’t always play that style of game.
“I think the past few practices we’ve been working on not swinging away, less stick checks and playing more through guys,” Detroit defenseman Danny DeKeyser said. “Getting your stick in there and then kind of playing through and finishing the hits from time to time when you can, not giving them room out there to operate, easy room.
“So if they get room, they’ve got to earn it. We’re trying to play through guys more and make it harder on opponents to get to our net, harder for them to get the red line and chip it in, stuff like that.”
The Wings have seen enough of it going the other way to recognize the need to be a more sturdier team when they don’t have the puck.
“It’s a little bit mind-boggling sometimes when you look around this room and see how much talent we have,” Detroit center Frans Nielsen said. “We just find ways to beat ourselves. We can’t stop the bleeding when it’s going on, for some reason.
“It was good to see us show up last night and play that way for almost 60 minutes. We got to realize that was only one game, got to learn from it and know that we did right and keep doing that.”
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