TRAVERSE CITY — Todd McLellan, busy setting a tone for the Detroit Red Wings, shifted to setting one with reporters – and family members.
“I get to ask the first question,” the Wings coach said Friday, Sept. 19, after wrapping up a second straight day of scrimmages during training camp at Centre Ice Arena. “Anybody catch any fish? Anybody get a hole-in-one? Anybody triple-bogey?”
McLellan raised his right hand to that last one.
A few minutes later, while parrying questions about possible line combinations, McLellan said to expect them to be “all over the map. We’re just going to keep experimenting with different people in different places until we find something we like.”
Part of the experimentation is driven by the absences of forward James van Riemsdyk (family) and defenseman Simon Edvinsson (lower-body injury), but McLellan revealed a desire to know who plays where isn’t limited to members of the media.
“I would caution everybody: Don’t read into the lines,” McLellan said. “My son called me yesterday and said, you’re starting so-and-so and I said, ‘What do you mean I’m starting so-and-so with so-and-so.’ He goes, well, it’s all over the news, the lines are going to be like this. And I’m going Cale, no.
“We’re moving people around. I think we have to give the younger players every opportunity to experience being on a line with some veterans, and see how that goes. But please don’t read into the lines and good luck guessing, because I don’t even know what we’re doing tomorrow, yet.”
McLellan did sound hopeful Edvinsson will be available before the end of the month, saying, “It’s not overly serious. I hope he’s playing maybe the last exhibition game and game one of the regular season.”
McLellan also conceded he might want to get a look at Edvinsson paired with free-agent signee Travis Hamonic. “You’d have a lefty-righty, so there’s a really good chance that could happen. But it’s too early to get into that.”
What the practices and scrimmages have been designed to get into is getting the basics down and setting a tempo.
“We had some goals set in regards to structure and I believe we got that accomplished,” McLellan said. “Day 2 tends to be a little more ragged than Day 1. After Day 1, you feel it. You get up early and you have to go do it all over again.”
Contact Helene St. James at hstjames@freepress.com.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Red Wings mixing things up during training camp
