Red Wings Road Trip Begins with Serious Test in Edmonton

Thursday night in Edmonton, the Detroit Red Wings begin a four-game West Coast road trip, taking on the Oilers.  After sweeping through a three-game home stand to improve their record on home ice since Todd McLellan's takeover to 8–2.  Away from the Friendly Confines of Little Caesars Arena, Detroit is just 3–2–1 under McLellan (including 1–2–1 on its last road trip).  Beginning Thursday evening at Rogers Place, the Red Wings will look to carry their home success with them out West.

When asked after Wednesday's practice and before his team flew out to Edmonton what he wants his team to take with them from their recent home success, McLellan said, "How hard we checked.  We still had some breakdowns.  They still got chances.  But we committed to checking well.  We didn't play a wide open game.  And while we were doing that, we created some offense off of it, so we didn't just rely on our power play, which we had likely done earlier.  It was [a] more complete offensive game, from everybody getting involved.  Coming off the last road trip, obviously we weren't scoring much, so we challenged them to do a few things, and they applied some of it, and it worked."

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Though McLellan only got to Detroit a bit over a month ago, after Thursday's game, he will have faced all three of the teams he coached before returning to the Red Wings (having already lost to the Sharks and beaten the Kings).

Any consideration of a match-up with the Oilers has to start with the challenge of wrangling Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid, as McLellan well knows.  He believes a key variable is whether those two superstars are playing on the same line or separate ones, a dynamic that often shifts over the course of a single game.

"I had that luxury of coaching them and the two of them are elite separately, and they are super elite together," McLellan said Wednesday.  "They play a completely different game [from one another]: one fast, one slows it down with passing and vision.  They remind me of the Sedins, but they're not twins.  They share the same thought process, so 31 other teams try to figure out a way to slow them down for the past 10 years, and maybe the only team that solved it was Florida [in the Stanley Cup Final]."

Meanwhile, as outlined by my colleague Caleb Kearney this morning, the Red Wings will be dealing with a handful of injury related absences:

Related: Red Wings Injury Update: Kane, Petry, Compher, Tarasenko

Where to Watch

Thursday night's game (a 9 PM Eastern scheduled start) will air on its usual television home of FanDuel Sports Network Detroit.  It will also air on 97.1 The Ticket on the radio.

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