Around the Blashill household, when it comes to the NHL standings, Erica Blashill is the one who takes in the big picture.
Jeff Blashill prefers to keep the focus on what he can control.
As the Wings take the ice Wednesday at Joe Louis Arena to face the St. Louis Blues, Detroit is tied for second place in the Atlantic Division with the Tampa Bay Lightning, both with 54 points. That’s three back of the division-leading Florida Panthers, and one ahead of the fourth-placed Boston Bruins but only four points clear from being completely out of the playoff picture.
This is precisely why Blashill prefers to keep his eyes away from the NHL standings.
“I try not to look too much,… Blashill said. “The thing about the standings is there’s lots of things you can’t control.…
Erica Blashill is less prone to buy into her husband’s system, however.
“I’ve tried to talk to my wife about not looking at other team’s scores but she doesn’t listen all the time,… Blashill said. “She just sits and mumbles things out loud. I just say, ‘I’ve got to go to bed.’…
While his predecessors like Scotty Bowman and Mike Babcock liked to cut the season down into 10-game segments, Blashill fragments his team’s focus even further, operating in five-game increments.
“What I look at is we judge ourselves on segments,… Blashill said. “We have a segment board behind us in the hallway there (in the Detroit dressing room) and that point (in Sunday’s shootout loss to Philadelphia) allowed us to be a playoff team for this season.
“We keep it for the five-game segments and the cumulative and that’s what we judge ourselves on, what we can control.…
Minute Munching With Niklas Kronwall on the shelf for at least the next two weeks following knee surgery, others will be required to step up and play more minutes on the Detroit defense. Kronwall leads all Wings players in ice time this season, averaging 22.45 per game.
Neither the players nor Blashill seem too worried about it, though.
“He’s a great player and we’re going to miss him but if you don’t have enough depth in the organization to try to fill in for guys and fill holes, then you’re going to be kind of in trouble,… defenseman Danny DeKeyser said. “I think we’ve got guys that can step in and pick up the slack.
“It’s not just going to be one guy or two guys but as a group I think we can pick up the slack back there.…
Blashill has sought to balance the minutes he doles out on the back end all season long so no pairing gets too worn down. After Kronwall, DeKeyser (21:08) is next, followed by Mike Green (20.47), Jonathan Ericsson (19:16), Kyle Quincey (18:04), Brendan Smith (17:21) and Alexey Marchenko (16:15).
Now is the time when that balance should pay dividends.
“I don’t know if there’s one guy (who will garner added minutes),… Blashill said. “You throw Marchy back in there, and last 4-5 games he played he played big minutes, except for the L.A. game, so he can play a lot of minutes. E, Q, DK, they all can eat up chunks of minutes.
“We’ve got a number of guys that are real good penalty killers. Smitty or DK will take (Kronwall’s) power-play minutes.
“I don’t think it’s one guy, I think it’s going to be dispersed and it’ll be a good opportunity for other guys.…
Tonight’s Lineup Marchenko in for the injured Kronwall is the only change for Detroit. Petr Mrazek will get the start in goal.
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