DETROIT (AP) — Detroit Red Wings general manager Steve Yzerman knew his team needed a change.
So did his captain, Dylan Larkin.
As a result, Yzerman and Larkin were each speaking to the media on Friday — the day after Yzerman fired head coach Derek Lalonde and replaced him with Todd McLellan.
“Our team isn’t performing up to what my expectations are,” Yzerman said. “Whether anybody agrees or not, I have expectations for the team, and they aren’t meeting them because our players aren’t playing to each of their own individual expectations.”
The Red Wings nearly ended their playoff drought this spring, missing out on a tiebreaker in the last minutes of the regular season, but they have taken a significant step back. At 13-17-4, they are seventh in the Atlantic Division and 28th in the league.
“It’s been a frustrating start to the season — we’re missing something,” Larkin said. “This is something you never want to happen — I really like Derek as a guy — but something needed to happen.”
The timing, though, couldn’t be worse for McLellan and his top assistant, Trent Yawney. Because of the NHL’s holiday break, they will be coaching the Red Wings against the Maple Leafs on Friday night without a single practice in charge.
“Trent Yawney and Todd McLellan aren’t coming in here and waving a wand to change the forecheck, the neutral zone system, the D-zone coverage and the power play,” McLellan said after Friday’s morning skate. “There just isn’t time. What we’ve asked the players is to play harder, play faster and play a little bit smarter.”
McLellan does have ties to the Red Wings, having won a Stanley Cup with them as an assistant coach in 2007-08, but that was a different roster in a different building — Joe Louis Arena. Other than Cam Talbot, who he coached in Edmonton and Los Angeles, his only experience with one of his key players is having Larkin on his Team North America roster at the 2016 World Cup.
“Cam sent me a text after the announcement saying, in a nice way, ‘Again?’” McLellan said. “Team North America was a great experience, coaching so many great talents at 20, 21 or 22 years old. Dylan was a very responsible part of that team.”
McLellan does get one break with the schedule — he expects to have Detroit’s No. 2 and No. 3 defensemen, Simon Edvinsson and Ben Chiarot, available for the Maple Leafs. The Red Wings struggled badly before the break when upper-body injuries sidelined both.
He’ll be using Lalonde’s line combinations and defense pairs against Toronto, but Yzerman made it clear Friday that one of McLellan’s jobs will be giving more playing time to his young forwards.
“We had young guys like Michael Rasmussen and Joe Veleno who took on a bigger role last season, and for whatever reason, those roles were reduced a little bit in the first part of this season,” Yzerman said. “We need those players to play a bigger role again. Jonatan Berggren can play a bigger role.”
At the end of the day, McLellan’s task is simple, but that doesn’t make it easy.
“It’s a very obvious answer,” Yzerman said. “We need to score more and we need to be better defensively. We need to keep the puck out of our net, whether that’s through better defending or better goaltending.
“We just need to get better.”
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