After their winless streak 5 games Tuesday night against the Minnesota Wild, Red Wings head coach Mike Babcock continued to shuffle lines hoping to fine the right combinations.
One of those changes included splitting up Detroit’s two best forwards in Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk during Wednesday’s practice.
“I just played Pav and Z together nine straight games and through that time we haven’t done anything, so I’m not playing them together,” Babcock said. “We need more people going. Maybe (Datsyuk and Zetterberg) can help them get going. They got to help themselves as well.
“You know what the definition of insanity is, so we got to change some things up and see if we can’t do a better job.”
According to Ansar Khan of Mlive.com, these were the lines Detroit skated with Wednesday…
Hudler-Datsyuk-Cleary
Franzen-Zetterberg-Bertuzzi
Filppula-Helm-Abdelkader
Miller-Emmerton-Holmstrom
Patrick Eaves did not practice. Babcock said he had a “maintenance day” and his status in uncertain for Thursday’s game against Calgary (7:30 p.m., Fox Sports Net Detroit).
On defense, nothing changed:
Lidstrom-White
Kronwall-Stuart
Ericsson-Kindl
Commodore
Howard
Conklin
Nyquist sent back down
The Gustav Nyquist trial didn’t last long for the Wings as he was sent back down to Grand Rapids Wednesday morning after playing one game with the team Tuesday night.
Babcock didn’t believe it was the best time for Nyquist to be up given the team was in the midst of a five-gave winless streak.
It makes you wonder though why they brought him up in the first place.
Ref: Mlive.com, Twitter, Getty (image)
