Breaking Down Blashill’s Line Changes

For the better part of the season, Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill went with relatively similar line pairings. But an early-season shakeup in the roster caused Blashill to change things up.

The Red Wings were forced to trade Riley Sheahan for Scott Wilson to make room and clear cap space for pending RFA Andreas Athanasiou. With that completed, new lines were created.

Red Wings fan were excited when news broke that Blashill had decided to put Dylan Larkin, Anthony Mantha, and Andreas Athanasiou on the top line together. The three of them are without a doubt the Wings most promising players for not only the present but also the future. Giving the opportunity to skate together with top line minutes sounded more than intriguing.

The line as expected held its own. In the six games since Athanasiou has been back, the pairing has played 29:49 of 5 on 5 ice time together. They’ve posted a 60.94 CF%, 66.7 GF%, and a 60.1 SCF% (scoring chances for %) in those minutes together. By comparison, here are Larkin, Mantha, and Athanasiou’s numbers respectively when they’re playing with none of the others. There CF%’s are 48.46%, 46.32%, and 33.32%. There GF%’s are 62.50%, 55.56%, and 0.00%. And lastly there SCF% are 46.94%, 53.49%, and 36.11% (all stats from Neutral Stat Trick.)

Not one of their rates by themselves is better than when they’re with each other. They looked really impressive together at times. The skill came out in flashes, and when it did it was fun to watch.

However, these were the only two goals for them when playing 5 on 5 together. Which was probably one of the reasons why Blashill decided to mix up his lines on Sunday before the Oilers game. Larkin centered Glendening and Tatar. An interesting line that was most likely constructed to try and get Tatar going.

Larkin and Glendening occupy the roles of the F1 and F2 in the Wings aggressive forecheck, leaving Tatar to sit deeper, a role he fills better. He wasn’t quite able to do this when playing with Nyquist and Zetterberg. Glendening and Larkin are both excellent at retrieving pucks and winning 1 on 1 battles, which allows Tatar to get into high chance scoring areas and use his lethal wrist shot.

Athanasiou, on the other hand, was dropped down in the lines. He’s managed to get only 23 minutes of 5 on 5 ice time over the last two games and has been thrown around with a variety of different line combinations. His brief bit of ice time centering Wilson and Frk was horrendous. Him and Frk together in any fashion just hasn’t worked. In the last two games when those two are on the ice together, they’ve had a CF:CA ratio of 9:27 for an abysmal CF% of 25%.

This is the same thing that got Athanasiou into trouble last season. His minutes fluctuated significantly from game to game, leaving him unable to find a groove or any consistency. Blashill needs to give him a longer stay than 4 games in the top 6.

All that being said, the Wings were able to win their last two games with the new line changes. I wouldn’t be surprised if the lines stayed the same for the start of the game tonight. But as you know with Blashill, things can change at any moment.