In Red Wings Land

Red Wings lacked energy, emotion following fast start to season – MLive

“The first three games were emotional, and we practiced hard (Wednesday), and we didn’t have our legs today,” Dylan Larkin said. “We didn’t have that emotion that we played with. You’re not going to have it every night in the National Hockey League. It’s 82 games. It’s hard. But when we don’t have our legs, our emotion, we got to find a way to simplify and play a better hockey game.”

Does this change your opinion on Givani Smith’s early-game fight at all?  Like perhaps he read the team didn’t have the proper level of emotion and tried to create it?

I personally believe that staged fights like that are crap, so I’m unmoved but hey maybe if he’d have won the scrap things would have gone differently.

Around the League

News: The #NHL is internally debating the merits of testing requirements for asymptomatic individuals ahead of the next COVID-19 protocol review with #NHLPA slated for Nov. 1.https://t.co/DFe04Wtm6G

— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) October 22, 2021

What do Nathan MacKinnon, Mark Scheifele and Jeff Carter have in common?

Aside from being all-world centers, all three are among a handful of vaccinated NHL players who have missed games in the first two weeks of the season for a positive COVID-19 test despite being asymptomatic.

Their absences have wreaked havoc on their teams – from a competitive perspective, with their rosters and salary caps, in addition to a health and lifestyle perspective, triggering additional protocols and restrictions.

Seravalli goes into a pretty good rundown of the factors at play for this decision and how the NHL compares to other leagues.