The Red Wings are heading into Tuesday with a couple of big lineup questions still hanging over them, and the answers won’t come until the game-day skate against the Ottawa Senators.
The biggest one is Dylan Larkin. The former captain has sat out the first two games with an upper-body injury, and Detroit did not have an update Monday because the team was off.
Marco Kasper is also in the mix after missing Sunday’s 3-2 loss to the Winnipeg Jets with an upper-body injury he picked up in the season-opening 2-0 loss to the New York Rangers. With both centers out, the Red Wings have been stretched thin right down the middle.
That shortage played into the way Todd McLellan handled the lineup Sunday. With Kasper unavailable, the obvious move might have been to get Carter Mazur into the lineup, especially after Emmitt slid from the wing to center.
Instead, McLellan went with 11 forwards and seven defensemen, and Andreas Englund made his Detroit debut on the blue line. Along with the injured Larkin, Mazur and William Wallinder are the only Red Wings who have not appeared in a regular-season game yet this season.
McLellan also gave a look to a different set of forward combinations late in Sunday’s game, swapping Alex DeBrincat and Viktor Arvidsson. DeBrincat moved to the wing with Finnie and Michael Brandsegg-Nygard, while Arvidsson skated with Andrew Copp and Lucas Raymond.
“We put some different lines together, try anything to spark some things,” McLellan said. “And as a result, I thought Razor played better with the other group with Arvi.
And I thought Finn’s speed was something that Cat and his linemates could use, and it worked. So we’ll probably look at keeping something like that.”
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