Dylan Larkin is the best player on the Detroit Red Wings. There’s no questioning that fact. But this this season, Larkin isn’t merely an elite performer. He is also living the thug life, so to speak.
Larkin leads the Wings with 20 goals and 47 points, and he also tops the club with 43 penalty minutes in 49 games.
“I just try be good for the guys every night and play my hardest,” Larkin told Detroitredwings.com. “I know I play a lot of minutes and I appreciate that and don’t take that for granted, so every time I’m out there I try to do right things for the team and battle my hardest.
“That’s what it comes down to for me, getting in the game and effort. I can control those two things.”
If he maintains his leads in the respective categories, Larkin would become just the third player in Red Wings history to be the club’s leader in points and penalty minutes in the same season.
Hall of Famer Ted Lindsay did it three times during his career, and three seasons in a row from 1947-48 through 1949-50. Lindsay led the NHL in scoring in 1949-50 with 78 points and in 1958-59 with the Chicago Blackhawks, led the NHL with 178 penalty minutes. Lindsay and former Montreal Maroons star Nels Stewart are the only players to have been the NHL single-season leader in points and in penalty minutes during their careers.
The other season a Detroit player led the team in points and penalty minutes was in 1926-27, Detroit’s first NHL season, when Johnny Sheppard led the team, then known as the Cougars, with 13 goals, 21 points and 60 penalty minutes.
Sheppard, and Lindsay in 1947-48 are the only players to lead the Wings in goals, points and penalty minutes in the same season.
Rasmussen Update
Forward Michael Rasmussen has been cleared to play, but he won’t play Sunday afternoon against the Vancouver Canucks.
“He would be medically cleared,” Detroit coach Jeff Blashill said of Rasmussen, who has so far missed six games with a lower-body injury. “He won’t play tomorrow. He hasn’t had enough practice time.”
Hronek In?
Prior to embarking on this three-game road swing through Western Canada, Blashill indicated that rookie defenseman Filip Hronek was likely to see action. Hronek has sat out the last two games as a healthy scratch.
But even though the Wings lost 6-4 Friday at Calgary, Blashill wouldn’t commit to inserting Hronek against the Canucks.
“Potentially,” said Blashill, who is generally tight-lipped about lineup changes. “I’ll make that decision tomorrow.”
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