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They Cannot Get Power (Plays) |
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Lately, the Detroit Red Wings have been suffering from a shortage of power-play goals. And a shortage of power plays.
Detroit is two-for-31 with the man advantage over the last 14 games, a 6.5 percent success rate. The Wings were 13-of-54 and scoring at a 24.1 percent ratio over the first 18 games of the NHL season.
“We’ve been working on it,” Detroit forward Gustav Nyquist told Mlive.com. “We talked about it for sure. It’s something we’re aware of.
“We changed some units up here the last couple of games.”
Wings coach Jeff Blashill recognizes that there is a problem and moved to rectify it by adjusting some personnel during Thursday’s practice.
“Obviously, we haven’t been very good on the power play,” Blashill said. “So we’re hoping that moving Larks (Dylan Larkin) into that bumper spot, moving AA (Andreas Athanasiou) to the half-wall spot, where it’s more run through him as opposed to running the other side and being a one-timer and we’re hoping to get some chemistry going.”
Two recurring themes continue to be an issue for the Wings on the power play - they don’t get enough pucks to the net and on those occasions that they do, they aren’t retrieving the puck for second-chance scoring opportunities.
“We did shoot but it’s been a lot of one-and-done,” forward Frans Nielsen said. “We don’t win those second pucks back and then we’ve got to go back and break it in again.
“Every time that happens it’s at least 30 seconds off the clock.”
On top of those ailments, it hasn’t helped that the Wings aren’t getting many power-play chances. They had one in each of their last two games, against the Washington Capitals and Los Angeles Kings.
The Toronto Maple Leafs (2.61) are the only NHL team averaging fewer power plays per game than Detroit (2.66). The Wings have 85 power plays for the season, down from 106 at this stage of the season in 2017-18.
“For sure we’ve got to probably draw a couple more penalties,” Nyquist said.
Ailing Defenders
Both Mike Green and Jonathan Ericsson were given the day off Thursday, and the availability of both defensemen for Friday’s home date with the Ottawa Senators is uncertain.
“Greener and Johnny are both banged up a little bit and they both played banged up against Washington on Tuesday, and so we held them out today and we’ll see where they’re at tomorrow,” Blashill said. “But there’s a chance that one or two may not go, and we don’t know.”
Brian Lashoff and Luke Witkowski are available as extras on the back end if needed.
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