Abel to Yzerman

Abel to Yzerman

Off Day Notes

02/05/2018 at 2:42pm EST

from Dana Wakiji of the Wings' website,

Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill has spoken to the league but captain Henrik Zetterberg has not.

The Wings are ready to move on from Saturday night's disappointing 3-2 loss in Florida in which Panthers forward Jonathan Huberdeau scored with 7.7 seconds left in regulation.

The entire team believed that Huberdeau had interfered with goaltender Petr Mrazek but the league ruled that it was not enough to wave off the goal.

"I talked to them today and we got to make sure, our goalies have to make sure they're as strong in the crease as possible and we got to make sure from an offensive standpoint that we get to the net hard," Blashill said. "We still got to be real careful about the blue. That's all I can go on is what I've been told. Tomas Holmstrom called, he'd like to come back and play, so that was interesting."

Blashill was kidding about Holmstrom of course, but Holmstrom lost more than a few goals during his career because of a goaltender interference call.

After the game, Justin Abdelkader was beside himself as he had had goals waved off for what he believed to be far less contact with the goalie.

continued with more topics like the power play and tomorrow's opponent, the Boston Bruins.

added 4:38pm, Below, Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press on Larkin as he develops being a Patrice Bergeron typle player...

As he develops his two-way game, the Wings want Dylan Larkin, 21, to learn from Bruins center Patrice Bergeron (22 goals, 22 assists, plus-24 in 45 games). Bergeron, 32, is a leading Selke trophy candidate (best defensive forward) and should be in the running for the Hart trophy (regular-season MVP).

“He has to be one of the best players in the league the way he plays a two-way game,” Blashill said. “Never gets scored on, and produces lots of offense. That’s what Zetterberg and (Pavel) Datsyuk did here for years. When you have center men that are as complete as those are, that’s big-time winning hockey.

“Larks and I talked about Bergeron as a great example of a guy to really emulate how he doesn’t give up anything, but creates tons.”

more talk...

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Welcome to Abel to Yzerman, a Red Wing blog since 1977. No other site on the internet has better-researched, fact-laden and better prepared discussions than A2Y. Re-phrase: we do little research, find facts and stats highly overrated and claim little to no preparation. There are 19 readers of A2Y. No more, no less. All of them, except maybe one, are juvenile in nature. Reminding them of that in the comment section will only encourage them to prove that.