from Ansar Khan of Mlive,
The Detroit Red Wings, off to a 2-0 start due mainly to the dominance of their top line, will have some more speed and secondary scoring in the lineup tonight.
Andreas Athanasiou will make his season debut after dealing with a nagging injury through much of the preseason.
He’ll center the second line, with Taro Hirose and Luke Glendening.
“I think at the end of the year they were really good,” coach Jeff Blashill said after the morning skate. “I started preseason a different way (Valtteri Filppula in place of Glendening) because I wanted to see what some other things would look like
“I think Taro Hirose is exponentially better when he plays with skilled-type players because of his ability to make plays. He’s not probably best suited to play with just two grinders. Double-A can play with lots of types of players because he’s such a self-creator. But with Taro, he gets a little bit of a give-and-go guy and then with Glenny, he gets a guy who wins puck battles, who creates havoc on the forecheck, who goes to the net-front. If you don’t have somebody on the line that does that, it’s really hard to create and Glenny does an excellent job of that.
“The other thing, Glenny’s real good defensively, so he can help that line that way. I think Glenny’s going to become an outstanding complementary player with really good skilled players. I used him in the World Championship when our tournament was on the line with (Patrick) Kane and (Johnny) Gaudreau and I think it really complements that line. So, I’m hoping that can give us another real line that’s really dangerous....
added 1:43pm, Watch Madison Bowey after today's skate below and Anthony Mantha too.
added 1:47pm, Andreas Athanasiou now below too.
added 2:01pm, Alex Biega now below.
added 2:05pm, Jeff Blashill below too.
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