It doesn’t appear as if the Detroit Red Wings will make any lineup changes for Game 2 of their Stanley Cup opening-round series with the Tampa Bay Lightning but it does appear that some of the 18 skaters who suited up for Game 1 won’t necessarily be playing with the same teammates.

As the Wings prepped Wednesday morning for the game later that night at Amalie Arena, Detroit coach Jeff Blashill shuffled his defensive pairings. Jonathan Ericsson was with Danny DeKeyser, and Kyle Quincey was teamed with Mike Green. Only the duo of Niklas Kronwall and Alexey Marchenko were the same as in Game 1.

“We’ll make those decisions after warmups,” said Detroit coach Jeff Blashill, who didn’t think who plays with who was all that big of a deal.

While his predecessor Mike Babcock tended to remain rigid with his top four defense pairings, Blashill has proven to be more flexible in mixing and matching his defenders.

“The one thing I’d say about D pairs is we haven’t throughout the course of a lot of the year necessarily had just three pairs,” Blashill said. “We mix and match them throughout the game, especially against a four-line team, so we get the right matchups against each line.”

His defenseman also thought the adjustments weren’t really a matter worthy of lengthy discussion.

“That’s how we’re going to start,” Ericsson said. “I think we’ll do a lot of switches during the games. It’s going to be a lot of switches during games I’m assuming but it’s just a matter of whoever’s out there, we’ve got to do a good job on all of the lines.”

The line that did Detroit in during Game 1 was the unit of Nikita Kucherov, Tyler Johnson and Alex Killorn, who netted all the Lightning goals in their 3-2 win.

“I think they were really successful last game in being in on all three goals,” Ericsson said. “They’re a good line.

“They’re a little unexpected. They’re swinging in, they’re swinging a lot and gaining a lot of speed in the neutral zone, which sometimes can be tough to gap up on that. They’re pretty evasive.

“They’re good at creating room for themselves and that’s something we’ve got to try and be even better at, to stay even closer and not give them as much room to be building up speed in the neutral zone because they’re really good coming into our own end, making good plays and making a good first attempt to attack the net.

“They’re really good at that and we’re going to try and eliminate that and it starts in the neutral zone.

“It’s small things that decide if they score a goal or not and they got their margins on the right side in the last game. Obviously we’ve got to try and do a better job of that.”

As to juggling the defense pairings, Ericsson figures the Detroit defenders are used to each other by now.

“Yeah, it’s been a lot of that this year,” Ericsson said. “We’ve been switching match ups and stuff like that. We should be used to it.

“It’s just a matter of being on your toes and being ready all of the time. Everyone can play with anybody on the team.”

Hedman Or Headpin?
In any playoff series, the set develops into a war of attrition as both sides try to punish the other team’s best players through physical play.

“It definitely wears on players,” Detroit left-winger Justin Abdelkader said. “Obviously it is a long season. Guys have bumps and bruises. When you get a chance, even more than in the regular season you want to finish your checks and make it hard on their players.

“They have some active D so when you get a chance you want to finish your check.”

The most active of those Tampa Bay defensemen is Victor Hedman. He played almost half of Game 1, logging 28:56 of ice time, so the more the Wings can put a body on him and make him pay, the more likely it is that Hedman will slow down as the series lengthens.

“You don’t want to run out of position to make checks and to finish checks,” Abdelkader said of putting bodies on the top Tampa Bay players. “But when they’re there you want to finish them and I thought we had a lot of guys who did a really good job. I think that will continue as we go on.”

It doesn’t need to be a try and put him through the boards type of bodycheck, either.

“It’s a fine line to making a big hit and not running out of position and giving them offense,” Abdelkader said. “When you get the opportunity, finish checks.

“It doesn’t necessarily have to be the hardest hit. Just finishing a check can make a difference.”

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