DETROIT \u2013 Several players who\u2019ve had a tough go needed to step up Thursday for the Detroit Red Wings, none more so than Michael Rasmussen.<\/p>\n
After being scratched in two of the previous eight games, Rasmussen had his best game of the season according to coach Todd McLellan.<\/p>\n
He scored a nice goal and assisted on another in a 6-3 victory over Anaheim <\/a>and effectively used his 6-6 frame to protect pucks and play physical.<\/p>\n \u201cHe put the complete game together,\u201d McLellan said. \u201cBesides the goal, which was obviously a beautiful goal — he loaded the puck, he opened up a lane, used a defenseman as a screen \u2013 that\u2019s a pretty skilled, talented goal and he had to do it almost while he was stopping. <\/p>\n \u201cBut I thought on the penalty kill, I thought along the boards, he was stronger. I thought there was a little more physicality in his game. He just looked more confident on the ice. We were happy for him. That\u2019s what we need from Ras.\u201d<\/p>\n The Red Wings (10-7-0) host the Buffalo Sabres (5-8-4) on Saturday (7 p.m., FanDuel Sports Network).<\/p>\n Rasmussen is among several players who must provide secondary scoring in addition to forechecking and solid penalty killing. His lone goal through 14 games was an empty-net tally on Oct. 15.<\/p>\n His struggles have resulted in a career-low 11:31 average ice time thus far.<\/p>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DETROIT \u2013 Several players who\u2019ve had a tough go needed to step up Thursday for the Detroit Red…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-292892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292892","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=292892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}