And So It Begins: A Penguins-Red Wings Game Day Notebook

After a long offseason spent contemplating a playoff push that ended one point short, the Red Wings embark on the 2024-25 season looking to take the next step. But before they can even think of playoff hockey, they have to start from square one.

Game one: a home opener against the Pittsburgh Penguins.

The Penguins won’t be starting from scratch, having played Wednesday night in a 6-0 defeat at the hands of the New York Rangers. There’s a sense of hunger there that Detroit can see, not only from a team that has already started the season but also one looking to prove something upon its visit to the Red Wings.

“(It’s) gonna be a huge challenge in that it’ll be an extremely motivated team,” Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde said after morning skate. “They’re way too well coached. They want too much. They have a lot of pride in that room. We’ll definitely get the best of them.”

Detroit, meanwhile, doesn’t have the same energy quite yet — at least, it hasn’t shown it. Lalonde shared his disproval at his team’s compete level in preseason, repeating that his veteran players were getting what they needed from preseason, but the majority of the time they weren’t giving the extra mile. That’s preseason, a far cry from when the games actually matter. But if Detroit wants to make the playoffs 82 games from now, they know that every point matters.

“Everybody knows that we want to make the playoffs, but there are steps to be made to get there,” Detroit forward Patrick Kane said Sept. 19. “I mean, we’re not just gonna start the season at 91 points. … We have to work for it.”

[Read More: With Playoff Hopes in Mind, Red Wings Enter Season Anew]

Lineups

The Red Wings’ lines for this game are exactly the ones you could have predicted after the first week of free agency. Since preseason, the Red Wings’ lines have been the following:

Forwards
Alex DeBrincat – Dylan Larkin – Lucas Raymond
Vladimir Tarasenko – J.T. Compher – Patrick Kane
Michael Rasmussen – Andrew Copp – Christian Fischer
Tyler Motte – Joe Veleno – Jonatan Berggren

Defense
Ben Chiarot – Moritz Seider
Simon Edvinsson – Jeff Petry
Olli Maatta – Erik Gustafsson

What wasn’t such a predictable lineup decision is the goaltender. In net, Ville Husso will start the season’s first game after a summer spent recovering from two lower body injuries that kept him out of all but one game past last December. He thrilled in preseason play, including a preseason game in Pittsburgh where he stopped 43 of 44 shots taken by the very same Penguins he will face Thursday night. Talbot will serve as the backup, while third goaltender Alex Lyon will get the night off. Rookie defenseman Albert Johansson, the seventh defenseman, will start the season as a healthy scratch.

In Pittsburgh’s first game of the season, the lines looked like this:

In net, Joel Blomqvist is expected to make his NHL debut. Detroit faced him in the preseason, and Lalonde said the team was also aware of him from AHL play.

“He looks pretty darn ready,” Lalonde said. “From what we saw in the preseason, what he did in American Hockey League last year. Again, I think whoever you’re playing, it’s still being hard on goalies — taking their time and space, taking their eyes. (We) would love some shot volume, and we’re not traditionally a very shot-volume team, but sometimes that helps you break them down.”

Sullivan Among NHL’s Longest Tenured Coaches

Derek Lalonde spent four years under the tutelage of the NHL’s longest tenured coach, Jon Cooper, who is heading into his 13th season at the helm of the Tampa Bay Lightning. Behind the Penguins’ bench in Detroit Thursday night will stand the second-longest tenured, starting his 10th leading the Penguins.

The reality of coaching turnover is readily apparent to Lalonde, who is already tied for the sixth longest tenured coach in the NHL after being hired by Detroit three seasons ago. Whereas some might point to the star power that those long-tenured coaches get to work with — Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang, for example — Lalonde sees evolution as the key to success.

Lalonde said Thursday that Sullivan and the group he joked as the “Boston Mafia” — including Minnesota Wild coach John Hynes and Pittsburgh assistant coach David Quinn — are a group he has learned a lot from as a coach.

“They work just as hard and maybe harder in the off season, staying at the top of this profession,” Lalonde said. “And even talking with Mike, he reads a ton, same with Coop. There’s a reason these guys at the top of our profession, they’ve stayed there for a while.”

Where to Watch

Tonight’s game — an 8 p.m. start — can be viewed on television at its usual home of Bally Sports Detroit and streamed on Bally Sports Plus. On radio, WWJ 950 will broadcast the game.

The Red Wings also announced a variety of options for pre-game entertainment, in part because of the Detroit Tigers ALDS game against the Cleveland Guardians. Details can be found in the linked X post below.

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