Coach Todd McLellan is direct and honest in his assessment of the Detroit Red Wings to the point that it\u2019s hard to think his actions could ever be louder than his words.<\/p>\n
But sometimes they are, such as today when McLellan moved Marco Kasper from the second line to the third line and changed his position from center to left wing. Kasper now is on a line with center Andrew Copp and Mason Appleton,<\/a> while J.T. Compher will now center Alex DeBrincat and Patrick Kane, presumably starting in Sunday\u2019s 1 p.m. home game against the Chicago Blackhawks.<\/p>\n \u201c(Kasper\u2019s) play hasn\u2019t matched what we expected from him and probably from himself,\u201d McLellan said. \u201cI\u2019d think he would tell you that.\u201d<\/p>\n The overriding thought is the Red Wings should not employ a player with no assists in 15 games centering sharpshooters such as DeBrincat and Kane.<\/p>\n \u201cSo we\u2019ll put him on the wing and let him play there a little bit and see how that works,\u201d McLellan said. \u201cOr in the middle. We\u2019ll figure it all out. But we\u2019ll mix things up as we go and try to get him back to where he needs to be.\u201d<\/p>\n Kasper was drafted as a center but took a development leap last season when he was inserted as a wing on a line with Dylan Larkin<\/a> and Lucas Raymond.<\/a><\/p>\n McLellan said the coaching staff believes Kasper is thinking the game too much instead of reacting to it.<\/p>\n Not Same Player<\/p>\n \u201cIf you remember last year when he was really playing well, he was taking people to the net,\u201d McLellan said. \u201cHe was drawing penalties, drew more penalties than most players on our team during down the stretch, scored on rebounds, deflections, shot it off the goaltender and went and got it himself. I remember a two on one that he did that. We haven\u2019t seen that pop out of him.\u201d<\/p>\n Kasper\u2019s offensive output totals three goals this season, and two came in one game. His struggles seem even more important because the Red Wings\u2019 team has only scored six goals in the last four games. The Red Wings are 1-3 in those games.<\/p>\n Kasper said recently that he felt he was getting closer to rediscovering his game.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve played the best how I want to play,\u201d Kasper said. \u201cWorked hard over this summer. I think I work hard every day. But it\u2019s sometimes you go through phases where you just don\u2019t maybe play the way you want to play. Sometimes it\u2019s frustrating. Now, we\u2019ve lost two games. It\u2019s no fun to lose games, and then maybe not be in your A game\u2026 Just trying to go out there tomorrow and play a good game and get back on the winning side, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coach Todd McLellan is direct and honest in his assessment of the Detroit Red Wings to the point…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[831,37961,385,10207,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-281316","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-featured","9":"tag-marco-kasper","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-red-wings","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}