coach Todd McLellan said following a 4-2 victory over the San Jose Sharks at Little Caesars Arena. <\/a>\u201cHe looks like a different player right now.\u201d<\/p>\nKasper\u2019s goal was his first since scoring twice in Los Angeles Oct. 30. He had no goals and three assists in his past 36 games and has just four goals and eight points in 48 games.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if he hit rock bottom and built himself back up, but he\u2019s done a real good job,\u201d McLellan said. \u201cWhen your teammates are still rooting for you, that\u2019s important. And the guys are pulling for him on the bench. They have his back. They know he\u2019s an important piece on the team. And tonight, he got rewarded with some points, but his overall game was impressive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Players sometimes take a step back after strong rookie seasons. It happened to Dylan Larkin and Lucas Raymond. But nobody could have anticipated Kasper\u2019s struggles after he tallied 19 goals and 37 points last season, most of it during the second half after McLellan arrived.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust staying with it every day,\u201d Kasper said. \u201cJust coming to the rink, prepare to work, work hard in practice, work hard in games, do little things right and just stay on top of that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve watched video trying to improve things. Every time I go on the ice I try to improve by a little bit and just keep working hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
As McLellan noted, teammates were happy for the 21-year-old drafted ninth overall in 2022.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s been working really hard; maybe hasn\u2019t gotten the results,\u201d Raymond said. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s his second year. It could be a tricky one. I think that the way he\u2019s working, you see it in games, but practices as well, before and after. Just got to be patient and get that confidence back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Raymond is aware of the potential pitfalls of a player\u2019s second season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think first year, you come in, everything\u2019s new, you\u2019re kind of riding that high,\u201d Raymond said. \u201cExcitement going into every building, it\u2019s a new building for you to come in. You\u2019re playing against a lot of your childhood idols. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe second year, expectations become different. It\u2019s tricky. But it\u2019s about doing the right things. Everyone\u2019s not always going to score. We need guys to contribute a lot of different ways. And he plays hard. There\u2019s positive things to take out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
McLellan praised Kasper for not getting too high when things were going well last season and not getting too low this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a very proud individual, and I think some of that\u2019s held inside,\u201d McLellan said. \u201cWe\u2019ve had some good talks. He doesn\u2019t want to let his guard down or let anybody see him. But I know it\u2019s been heavy on him, and I give him all the credit in the world for continuing to try to work through it, and maybe he\u2019s starting to break through.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DETROIT \u2013 Marco Kasper set up a goal with a nifty pass and sealed the victory Friday with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-415087","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\/415087","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=415087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}