from Dana Wakiji of the Wings' website,
It appears that the Red Wings will get another veteran defenseman back for Saturday night's game in Florida.
Jonathan Ericsson has not played this season due to an upper-body injury but is likely to draw into the lineup against the Panthers.
"We're hoping that he's ready to play," Wings coach Jeff Blashill said. "We'll see how he is. He's going to do a little extra battling after practice. As long as all goes well than he would go in."
Ericsson has been practicing with the team for some time now so his conditioning is still there but it will be an adjustment.
"Everything is not going to be 100 percent right away, I can't expect that," Ericsson said. "It's hard to practice conditioning for game situations. It's always different. I can skate however much, then you come out in the game and you're still exhausted after the first shift. It's a totally different thing. But I've prepared myself and they prepared (me) as good as they could."...
After sitting out the game in Montreal, Rasmussen returned to the lineup against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
"I thought Ras played better last night than he had previous," Blashill said. "I thought it was a much better game against a real good team. My plan is to keep him in the lineup and play him again tomorrow night and hopefully he takes another step in the right direction. If at some point he doesn't then we'll go back to the drawing board and try to help him keep getting better."
more on each of the above topics plus other notes...
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