Detroit Red Wings head coach Todd McLellan had his players go through a football-style drill that, for some, harkened back to their days on the gridiron.
The Detroit Red Wings completed their second day of practice in what head coach Todd McLellan said before the Olympic break would resemble a “mini Training Camp.”
While several familiar on-ice drills were part of the brisk session, a new training exercise caught nearly every media member in attendance by surprise.
Players were instructed to power through a waveof bodies along the boards in a drill that could easily have been mistaken for a football practice.
Afterward, Todd McLellan said he had never used that particular exercise with the Red Wings in Detroit.
"I've used that in the past but not here yet; it's a real strenuous drill,” McLellan said. “It takes your heart rate up, and puts you in a situation where there’s some contact and some wrestling, and there's a little bit of team-building. The guys, they don’t want to do it every day, but the first few times they do it, they have a little bit of fun with it.
"We got our heart rates up, our sports science department will be happy that we got some contact in, and I hope the guys had a little bit of fun with it.”
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Forward Andrew Copp said that it took him back to his days playing football locally in Ann Arbor as a high school student.
"It brought me back to my freshman football days, tackling drills, everyone going through them," he said. "Yeah, I think it’s just to get a little contact, fight through a little bit, battle-type conditioning as opposed to just pure skating-type conditioning that you saw yesterday, so it was fun."
Copp also said that the drill gave some players a chance to dish out a little long-awaited physicality.
"Some guys were definitely taking some extra shots at some guys who they thought maybe deserved it over the course of the first 58 (games)," Copp said with a smile. "I’m sure some guys took some extra shots with the rookies, maybe some other guys that have been mouthing off throughout the first part of the year."
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