{"id":365602,"date":"2025-12-23T13:59:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T13:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/365602\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T13:59:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T13:59:15","slug":"why-red-wings-marco-kasper-was-scratched-for-the-first-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/365602\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Red Wings\u2019 Marco Kasper was scratched for the first time"},"content":{"rendered":"

DETROIT \u2013 Marco Kasper\u2019s second season has been a colossal struggle. But that wasn\u2019t the main reason he was a healthy scratch Sunday for the first time in his young career.<\/p>\n

The Detroit Red Wings had their moms in town for the weekend series against Washington and coach Todd McLellan wanted to make sure everyone who was healthy played in at least one game. Mason Appleton returned after missing 10 games with a lower-body injury, so a forward had to come out.<\/p>\n

Kasper played well during Saturday\u2019s 5-2 victory at Washington<\/a>, but so did most of the team, so McLellan had to decide.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the Mums here, we preach team all the time. We think that\u2019s part of our culture,\u201d McLellan said following Sunday\u2019s 3-2 overtime win.<\/a> \u201cEverybody\u2019s important in the organization, not just the players, but the training staff and everybody. And the right thing to do was to give everybody an opportunity to play in front of their moms.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, did we ice our best lineup tonight? We did. We won the game. Some could argue it one way or the other, but that\u2019s what we believe in and that\u2019s part of culture. So, we had to tell Kasp (he\u2019s out). How do you pick who comes out? Everybody played well in Washington (Saturday).\u201d<\/p>\n

McLellan opted to replace Jacob Bernard-Docker with Travis Hamonic and start Cam Talbot. So, everyone expect Patrick Kane (upper-body injury) played over the weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cBernard-Docker didn\u2019t deserve to come out. (John Gibson) probably deserved to go back in net,\u201d McLellan said. \u201cBut we do things as a team and talked to all of those guys. They were very understanding, and they were rooting for the ones that went in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kasper could return to the lineup Tuesday against Dallas at Little Caesars Arena (6:30 p.m., TNT) in their final game before the three-day Christmas break.<\/p>\n

Kasper has just five points (three goals, two assists) in 36 games after a particularly strong second half as a rookie in 2024-25 resulted in a 19-goal, 37-point season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DETROIT \u2013 Marco Kasper\u2019s second season has been a colossal struggle. But that wasn\u2019t the main reason he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":365603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-365602","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365602","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=365602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}