On Tuesday night in St. Paul, the Detroit Red Wings will take on the Minnesota Wild, and they will be doing so absent a pair of centers: Andrew Copp and Michael Rasmussen, who had been in the middle of Detroit’s second and third lines.
Both pivots went down to injury over the weekend (Copp Saturday, Rasmussen Sunday), and now coach Todd McLellan will be forced to re-shuffle his forward lines. The coach said Rasmussen is day-to-day, while Copp’s injury is something “longer term” (as his placement on injured reserve would suggest).
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Despite the absences, McLellan wasn’t interested in shifting expectations for Tuesday’s game in his remarks Monday before the team flew out to Minnesota. “We have what we have, and we have enough,” he said. “I thought J.T. [Compher] played one of his better games in a long time, at least since his injury. Joey [Veleno] moved up and seemed to get better with more minutes, which is a good sign, and then we’ll piece-meal other things together to get by.” McLellan praised Compher for playing “an authoritative-type game instead of a safe game,” with his skating keeping him engaged all over the ice.
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With Copp and Rasmussen out down the middle, one option for McLellan is to move rookie forward Marco Kasper back to center, after an extended run in a top-line wing role beside Dylan Larkin and Lucas Raymond. Based on McLellan’s comments Monday, however, it doesn’t sound as though that’s the path he will take. McLellan acknowledged that “there is that curiosity if [Kasper] can drive his own line through the middle” but also said “I really like where he is and what he’s doing right now.”
Monday’s practice did not offer the clearest insight into McLellan’s plans for the lines up front, because both Larkin and Raymond took maintenance days following their international duty at the 4 Nations Face-Off. At that practice, Detroit lined up as follows:
Alex DeBrincat-J.T. Compher-Patrick Kane
Elmer Soderblom-Joe Veleno-Vladimir Tarasenko
Marco Kasper-William Lagesson-Christian Fischer (The latter two presumably fill-ins for Larkin and Raymond)
Tyler Motte-Sheldon Dries-Jonatan Berggren
There are two significant takeaways there. First, the affirmation that it doesn’t appear Kasper is moving back down the middle (at least for now) but rather will stick to his top line role. Second, based on those line rushes, it looks as though Sheldon Dries (called up from the AHL Monday) will fold into the lineup rather than Christian Fischer.
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That’s something of a surprise considering Fischer looked to be naturally in line to fill in after Rasmussen’s injury. When Copp went down, Motte re-entered the line up for the first time since Jan. 27. Fischer has not played since Feb. 2, but given that he has been on the NHL roster all season he would have seemed next in line up front.
Instead, it’s becoming increasingly clear that McLellan is not counting on Fischer for much. Yes, neither Fischer, nor Motte is a natural center, but both have played the position at the NHL level with reasonable regularity. Despite that, McLellan appears to count on Dries rather than either of that duo to occupy the fourth line center role.
McLellan has emphasized Detroit’s collective skating as a strength, and that’s not exactly Fischer’s foremost tool, so perhaps that helps explain his decreased role since the coaching change. Soderblom has already been called up because injury demanded it and supplanted Fischer in the Red Wings’ forward pecking order. Now, it appears Dries (at least while Detroit needs a center in particular) has leapt ahead of Fischer as well. It’s not as though that hierarchy is etched in stone, but we now have an increasingly large body of evidence that McLellan isn’t entirely enamored with what Fischer offers.
It doesn’t sound as though McLellan expects Rasmussen to be out for too long, but his re-jiggered lineup will be put to the test Tuesday night against the Wild.
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