Abel to Yzerman

Abel to Yzerman

Playing To Lose Gets Serious This Week

03/25/2018 at 3:38pm EDT

from Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press,

In a predicament reflecting their positioning, the Detroit Red Wings find themselves headed into a ‘best-lose’ week.

It begins Monday in Montreal, and continues Thursday at Buffalo and Saturday hosting Ottawa. The Canadiens, Sabres and Senators are all right around Detroit in the standings, and it would serve the Wings best to lose to all three to finish as low as possible in the standings and improve draft lottery odds. ...

The Wings infused some fun into Sunday’s practice, forgoing mundane drills and instead playing a small game (nets pushed closer together) that created a competitive yet lighthearted atmosphere. The Wings are eliminated from the playoffs for a second straight year, but the compete level hasn’t faded.

“As tough as it is right now, I think it’s a good learning time for us, too," Neilsen said. "Every shift matters, doesn’t matter if it’s first or last, because it could come down to one shift. It’s just incredible how tight the league is nowadays. There are no easy nights.”

more

added 4:08pm, Dana Wakiji of the Wings' website with practice notes...

added 4:15pm, Below, watch coach Blashill after practice.

The Red Wings skipped most of the regular drills during Sunday's practice at Montreal's Bell Centre, instead opting for something more competitive.

It was a fairly short practice sandwiched between two games but the players seemed to enjoy it.

"I'm a big believer in small games," Wings coach Jeff Blashill said. "I think you can teach habits, they're meant for a purpose, but it also energizes the team, they enjoy it, they get competitive. Lot of times drills get real mundane, especially this time of year, especially in the stretch we've been in, so we wanted to bring a couple small games to bring the competitiveness up."

continued with more topics...

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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.