Abel to Yzerman

Abel to Yzerman

Wings Need To Start Winning Battles

10/14/2018 at 4:18pm EDT

from Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press,

“I showed 19 clips today,” coach Jeff Blashill said. “Not one of them were clips where we didn’t have enough talent to win. That’s not the case. We have good enough players to win, without a shadow of a doubt. We have to make sure that we are doing the work and winning the battles that it takes to win.”

Frans Nielsen called it a “good meeting. We talked about how we have to be harder on the puck and make better decisions with the puck. It starts with us veterans – we have to play the right way and hopefully the younger guys are going to follow that.”

Blashill called out the team’s forwards for “not being good enough” in Boston. He is making at least one lineup change up front against Montreal as Martin Frk will make his season debut; his dimension is that he shoots right and shoots hard. Frk practiced with Justin Abdelkader and Christoffer Ehn.

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added 5:26pm, from Ted Kulfan of the Detroit News,

Winless in five games (0-3-2), the Wings desperately need a victory over Montreal on Monday, but for that to happen, the offense needs to perk up.

For all the talk of an extremely young, inexperienced defense filling in for the Wings' many injured defensemen, there are a lot of young and old forwards who aren’t scoring.

Justin Abdelkader and Thomas Vanek are without a point, with Abdelkader possessing a minus-5 rating and Vanek a minus-6.

Michael Rasmussen and Andreas Athanasiou both have one point (assists), while Frans Nielsen has two points, both assists.

Anthony Mantha has one goal and an assist. Gustav Nyquist has four assists, but is searching for his first goal.

When you take away the contributions of Dylan Larkin (three goals, two assists) and Tyler Bertuzzi (two goals, two assists), the forwards have been largely ineffective offensively.

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