Ben Chiarot may be sliding into a third-pairing role with the Detroit Red Wings, and that looks like the current direction of Todd McLellan’s blue line experiment.
It’s still preseason, so nothing is locked in. But right now, McLellan is trying Albert Johansson beside Justin Faulk on what would be Detroit’s second defensive pair.
If that sticks, Chiarot would move down from the spot he held last season after Faulk arrived in a deadline-day trade with St. Louis.
For now, that appears to be the working plan.
“The two starting points of Albert’s season, he’s got better as it went along,” McLellan said. “He started a little bit slow. We want him to start fast, and we want to find out, make sure that he can handle those [top-four] minutes.
“We think that they’ll complement each other. And then Benny gets to go and play with whoever’s going to be on the [right side of the third pairing].”
Who that right-side partner will be is still up in the air, and McLellan said there are plenty of names in the mix.
“It is going to be competitive,” McLellan said. “You know, we talk about Ax [Axel Sandin-Pellikka], we have a pretty good idea what he can do. [Jacob] Bernard Docker gave us a good run of games last year, earned himself a contract.
“Then you bring in [William] Wallinder and [Anton] Johansson, who are on the cusp of being NHL players, in my opinion, and [Jacob] Bryson, who’s already played a bunch of NHL games. So there is some depth there.
“Right now, they’re all competing. Who ends up on the initial roster, I couldn’t tell you at this point.
And then maybe we have to thin the herd a little bit later on. But we’ll see where we are, what kind of start we get to, who’s playing well, who isn’t, and make some decisions after that.”
There’s also the matter of Simon Edvinsson, who remains a restricted free agent without a contract. He is probably on track to be available for the start of the season, but McLellan stopped short of calling that certain.
And even if Edvinsson is in the lineup, Detroit may not keep its biggest pairing together all season. McLellan said the staff is considering splitting Edvinsson and Moritz Seider at some point.
“We’re not averse to pulling Simon and Mo apart at some point,” McLellan said. “Like, right now when they play together, they’re very good for the most part, but if we could have one of them on the ice for most of the game, that helps.”
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