Detroit Red Wings
From The Silky Mitten State: How Can Robby Fabbri Help the Red Wings?
In an excerpt from The Silky Mitten State: What can Robby Fabbri do to help do to help Detroit moving forward?
Now that Robby Fabbri has returned from the lower body injury, a question begs: What is Fabbri's role in helping the Detroit Red Wings moving forward?
Throughout his tenure in Detroit, Fabbri's performance has been defined by a lack of continuity due to injury. He arrived in Hockeytown early in the 2019-20 season, finishing that campaign having played 61 total games (52 of them with the Red Wings). In the three full seasons since, injury has limited him to 30, 56, and 28 games.
In the video above (excerpted from THN Detroit's new podcast, The Silky Mitten State), Connor Earegood and I discuss how Fabbri might (or might not) help what ails the Red Wings at the moment.
While we are rather pessimistic in the video, we do hint at the possibility that Fabbri might provide an offensive boost to Detroit's middle six, which absolutely proved to be the case in Saturday's win over the Blue Jackets (one day after this clip was recorded).
After that game, Derek Lalonde said of Fabbri, Joe Veleno, and Christian Fischer's trio, "that line was excellent. All three just hunt the puck, get above it, creating turnovers, zone time. That second goal our team scored to make it 2-0—what an identity goal. Those guys were on the forecheck, they hunted it, they had a Grade A. Fabs just misses it, they get back on top of it, and he puts it in the back of the net a few seconds later."
If Fabbri can stay healthy and play the way he did Saturday, he might just be a key piece moving forward for the Red Wings.