Detroit Red Wings: Analyzing Jeff Blashill’s Work This Season
By Nate Brown
Player Development
When the Detroit Red Wings drafted Tyler Bertuzzi in 2013, skepticism as well as claims of reaching surrounded the choice. Eight years later, Bertuzzi is one of the core players on a roster still adding talent to surround him. Add to that Anthony Mantha and Dylan Larkin–giving Blashill a pretty good pedigree of player that he has helped develop into one of the core players.
In addition to this, Filip Hronek, though not having the year fans were banking on, was relied upon last season heavily and was turning into a top four defenseman the Red Wings desperately needed. Filip Zadina is another player who has come along nicely, as the insistence on a more complete game was tasked by Blashill. Going back to the 2018-2019 season, Blashill said this about Zadina in the early stages of his career:
"“Honestly, he’s got a long way to go, the maturity part in the game to make sure when he’s not scoring that he’s still a real complete player,” Blashill said. “I think what happens … he hasn’t scored tons down there and when you don’t score all the sudden you probably start cheating for offense, similar to what happened to us through that stretch in Montreal and Boston. The player has to realize he’s got to play the right way and the points will come from playing good defense.”"
This is the Blashill credo, to be covered later. But if you look at Zadina’s maturity this season alone, he is undeniably a more complete player than he was even a season ago. He was making strides before injury derailed him and the pandemic wiped the rest of the season out.
Of course, there’s the issue of how these players are asked to earn ice time, which again, is another argument. But in the cases of Larkin, Mantha, Bertuzzi, and Zadina, there hasn’t been a massive regression among the five players considered key to the rebuild moving forward. They’ve either held steady or improved, and while there have been struggles at times, each of the five have been able to overcome them. You can even look at guys like Givani Smith, who are put in positions to succeed and does.
That’s a win for Blashill.
But when it comes to those young players, we have to examine what really sticks in the fanbase’s craw: deployment and lineup decisions.