Fabbri ?

from Ted Kulfan of the Detroit News,

It was Luff who took a puck to the face off a slapshot from Minnesota's Matt Dumba on Oct. 29, only to come back the next game in Buffalo wearing a shield. Luff had 16 stitches and lost teeth, but was at the next scheduled morning skate.

Then, five games after the puck to the face, Luff was hit, or pushed, dangerously into the boards by Montreal's Juraj Slafkovsky, the No. 1 overall pick in last year's NHL Entry Draft. Luff had surgery, he wouldn't reveal what kind other than upper-body, causing him to miss three months of playing time.

"He (Slafkovsky) sent a DM and it's all you can do, you can't change what happened," Luff said. "It's hockey. Things happen fast and people have their opinions, and I have mine."

Luff never did see the replay of the hit by Slafkovsky until recently, when a friend of Luff's showed it. Luff didn't want to see it.

"No, no," Luff said. "I mean, it wasn't the greatest hit."

Luff was recalled from Grand Rapids on Monday, and was at Tuesday's morning skate as insurance in case any of three forwards who are banged up aren't ready to play after the pregame skate, coach Derek Lalonde said.

Luff, who has seven goals and 23 points in 25 games in Grand Rapids (one goal in seven games with the Wings), sees this as an opportunity to show he deserves to be someone who should be brought back to the organization next season.

"We have a young team down there (in Grand Rapids) and I want to be a leader down there, even though being a leader at (age) 25 in a dressing room is kind of funny, but I want to take on that leadership role with my play down there and just try to do things the way the young guys should do them," Luff said....

All Lalonde can do is laugh at certain times when he sees the Eastern Conference playoff standings on different television networks, and occasionally see the Red Wings listed among the hopefuls and sometimes not.

Such as Monday, when the Wings and Buffalo were tied with 69 points (before Buffalo defeated Toronto). But while Buffalo was shown on the chart as a being in the thick of the race, the Wings weren't on the screen at all.

"I laugh because everyone still has Buffalo strongly in there because of the roster it's fielding, and the team we have (having traded pieces at the trade deadline), and we were tied (in the standings)," Lalonde said. "But it's understandable. It's where both rosters are at.

"But it's a credit to our group that they keep finding ways to compete and being right in there."

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