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Busy Holiday Season

December 11, 2018, 7:04 PM ET [0 Comments]
Bob Duff
Detroit Red Wings Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Right back at it after Monday’s 3-1 victory over the Los Angeles Kings, there was no chance for coach Jeff Blashill to work with his Detroit Red Wings in order to rectify what concerned him about their performance.

Such is the nature of the 82-game NHL schedule.

“We’ve got a lot of games in a short period of time, that’s a fact,” Blashill told DetroitRedWings.com prior to Tuesday’s game at Washington against the Capitals. “So we’ve got to manage our energy with off time, which we’ve done. We certainly haven’t been able to practice much. Sometimes that leads to being a little bit loose, like maybe we were last night.

“We would have liked to practice a little bit more than we have but that’s just the reality of the schedule. We’ve got a whole bunch of games in not very many days. But again, the back-to-back itself, just focus in on tonight, there should be no reason. We had Sunday off, we played Monday, let’s play today. Guys would rather play than practice anyways.”

Blashill felt his team needs to tighten up their defensive game and to not do so against the defending Stanley Cup champion Capitals would be suicide.

“I just thought the game was too loose,” Blashill said. “I think the chances were 20-17 or something like that for them. That’s a lot of chances. Every game has a life of its own. The Islanders game, I think the chances were 7-5 or 8-7, something like that. It’s a huge, drastic difference. We gave up at least four 2-on-1s, we had some ourselves, it was a real loose game, I thought.

“I don’t think playing loose is a recipe for long-term success whatsoever. You’ve got to be able to score without giving up a whole bunch, you’ve got to check for your chances and we didn’t do a good enough job of that last night. It wasn’t a lack of effort, lack of intensity, it was a lack of attention to detail, I thought. So we’re going to have to be better than that here. You certainly can’t do it to this group here with the firepower that they have and the confidence they have scoring-wise.”

Lash on . . . Lashoff
At the start of the day Monday, defenseman Brian Lashoff was a Red Wing. By Monday afternoon, he’d been assigned to AHL Grand Rapids. Tuesday morning, Lashoff was back with the Wings.

He saw action following his previous recall, sitting out Thursday’s game at Toronto and Saturday’s home tilt with the New York Islanders as a healthy scratch. But this time, Blashill indicated that things might be different.

“We’re not sure yet, we’ll know after warm-ups,” Blashill said. “So we’ll go through warmups and see who’s available. We had some bumps and bruises.”

Lashoff’s presence offers options to the Wings.

“Yeah,” Blashill said. “It gives us another D-man. Depending on availability and whatnot, Lash brings a little different skill set than Witter (Luke Witkowski) so we might need one, might need two, might not need any of them. We’ll have them all ready for warm-ups.”

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