Both on the ice and behind the bench, the Red Wings will be a much different team when they host the Devils Saturday night at Little Caesars Arena.
Head coach Jeff Blashill, assistant coach Alex Tanguay and goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic were among the latest members of the club to be placed in the NHL's COVID-19 protocol Saturday morning, joining the likes of Robby Fabbri and Michael Rasmussen. As such, Steve Yzerman summoned Grand Rapids Griffins head coach coach Ben Simon and assistant coach Todd Krygier to join Red Wings assistant coach Doug Houda behind the bench until Blashill and Tanguay can return. The team also called up goalie Calvin Pickard and forward Riley Barber.
"This is interesting," Yzerman said Saturday morning. "The head coach is with the team every single day and knows his players inside and out, whether it be line combinations or adjustments to line combinations, the power play units, things like that. For the most part, Ben and Todd know our players really well. Five or six of them were playing for them this year, so it shouldn't be too bad of a transition. I'm curious to see how it goes."
To ease the transition, Yzerman said Blashill might be communicating with his coaches remotely during Saturday's game.
"I'm sure they've been on the phone constantly since yesterday afternoon, going through all the different scenarios and talking about our players and what adjustments Jeff Blashill would make and what recommendations Ben will have. So I think we'll get through it fine," Yzerman said. "And I think our coaches (in protocol), other than not being behind the bench, they'll be literally on the phone, maybe on an ear piece."
So to summarize, the Wings will be without their head coach, one of their key assistants, their starting goalie, a top-six forward and a top-nine center, among others, for Saturday night and potentially the next 10 days, based on the NHL's protocol. Yzerman said "there's a chance" the "asymptomatic guys" could return earlier than the usual 10-day standard. The protocol, he said, is "changing constantly."
"What's important to note," Yzerman added, "is that among all of our players and coaches, and to the best of my knowledge the teams around the league, nobody has experienced any significant illness in contracting the virus. It's nothing more, at this point, than a minor cold. So that's the one thing. As long as we have bodies, players that we can recall, we'll ice the best team we can."
Yzerman has been supportive of the NHL's COVID-19 protocols from the start. He's fully vaccinated. He's encouraging all of his players and coaches to get the booster. But, if he's being honest, the protocols are starting to defy logic. Teams across the league are playing with diminished rosters -- or not playing at all -- because fully-vaccinated players with "a minor cold" are being forced to sit out for 10 days. When he was asked if the Wings made a mistake playing on Thursday against a COVID-19-ravaged Hurricanes team that already had several players in the protocol, Yzerman said, "I'm not so sure."
"I don't know what the right thing is," he said. "At the end of the day -- now I'm getting political -- but at the end of the day, our players are testing positive with very little symptoms, if any symptoms at all. I don't see it as a threat to their health at this point. So I think you might take it a step further and question why are we even testing for guys that have no symptoms."
Yzerman said that if any of Detroit's players feel the NHL should shut down play out of concern for their health, "they haven't expressed that to us."
"Our players have been very positive in just, tell us what we need to do and we'll do it. They've been accepting of the protocols. Whether they like them or not is irrelevant, but they've been willing to do them. Ultimately, they just want to play. Nobody wants anybody to get violently ill or deathly ill. Guys are willing to do their part. But right now, my perception is they'll do what they have to do. They want to play and get through it," said Yzerman.
As for the possibility of the Red Wings postponing games instead of playing with a stripped-down lineup -- the Avalanche, Flames and Panthers have postponed games through Christmas due to COVID-19 limitations -- Yzerman said the NHL is "going on a day-to-day basis and a team-to-team basis and making a judgment call at that time."
"What parameters play into that decision, I really don't know," he said. "As of this moment, we're playing tonight. Our entire team and staff that's here have tested negative and we plan on playing, but I really don't know what the protocol is. I've talked to some of the managers of the teams who have been postponed and again, it's just making a call -- the league, with their doctors and the Players Association, combining to come up with a decision on whether to play or not."
