Detroit Red Wings vs Florida Panthers: Updates, Lineups, Keys to the Game

Robert Haynes

• 2 min read Front Page

Updates

Light on updates with the early start and the Wings going back-to-back

But hey, if you wanna feel old there’s this!

Lineups

DETROIT

Tyler Bertuzzi — Andreas Athanasiou — Anthony Mantha
Thomas Vanek — Frans Nielsen — Filip Zadina
Justin Abdelkader — Luke Glendening — Darren Helm
Christoffer Ehn — Jacob de la Rose — Michael Rasmussen

Niklas Kronwall — Trevor Daley
Danny DeKeyser — Filip Hronek
Madison Bowey — Jonathan Ericsson

Jonathan Bernier
Jimmy Howard

FLORIDA

Jonathan Huberdeau - Aleksander Barkov - Evgenii Dadonov
Frank Vatrano - Vincent Trocheck - Mike Hoffman
Dryden Hunt - Riley Sheahan - Troy Brouwer
Jamie McGinn - Henrik Borgstrom - Jayce Hawryluk

Michael Matheson - Aaron Ekblad
Keith Yandle - Mackenzie Weegar
Mark Pysyk - Josh Brown

Samuel Montembeault
James Reimer

Keys to the Game

Figure Out the Defense

Everyone knows the Red Wings blue line is not great, including the Red Wings themselves. Too often they get pinned in their own zone on the simplest of dump ins. Teams with speed who like to forecheck give them even more trouble. Unfortunately, Florida can be a speedy team that likes to forecheck. The Wings have got to figure out ways to get the puck moving forward from deep in their own zone quickly.

Find A Scoring Identity

Good teams in the NHL know what kind of offensive team they are and work extremely hard to create those types of chances. The Red Wings are working extremely hard on the ice but it never seems like they have an identity they are working towards. Are they a counter attacking end rush team or a possession/low cycle one or a crash the net and scrum for loose change one? They have to figure out how they want to score…even if the identity is just line to line. Florida has not been super great at keeping pucks out of their net so this is a chance for the Wings to take advantage of that little extra space to figure out how they want to win games.

Find Some Playmaking

68 games into the season and the Red Wings have exactly three players with 20 or more assists. Two of them (Larkin and Green) are not playing tonight and the other is Frans Nielsen. Once they traded Gustav Nyquist at the deadline the Red Wings opened a giant playmaking hole in their roster that has yet to be filled. With Larkin out I am looking primarily in Andreas Athanasiou’s direction. As exciting and fun as he is to watch with the puck on his stick, if he wants to play at center beyond this season he is going to have start showing that he can also set up the offense for the rest of the line and not just create his own.