Red Wings Prioritize Recovery to Stay Sharp for Pivotal Final Seven Games
What will it take for the Red Wings find the physical and mental clarity to persevere over the seven games left in the regular season?
© Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports - Red Wings Prioritize Recovery to Stay Sharp for Pivotal Final Seven GamesIt's not exactly been a smooth first 75 games of the season, but with seven games remaining, the Detroit Red Wings have the chance to stamp the 2023-24 campaign as an unequivocally successful one by clinching the franchise's first playoff berth since 2016. Suffice it to say, the stakes are high, and to meet them, the Red Wings need to be at their sharpest over the two weeks remaining in the regular season.
"These last seven games, you're gonna treat every one like a game seven," said Christian Fischer from his locker Wednesday afternoon. "I think it's almost mental too as much as it is physical. We obviously have all the help that we need with all the training, and we have enough people telling us what we need to do and what to do. But I think just mentally getting yourself locked in for how big these games are—every puck battle, every D zone coverage, every battle could determine the game."
As coach Derek Lalonde pointed out, energy is a precious resource for Detroit at this juncture of the season, one he and his coaching staff need to factor that into their practice design. That balance has grown trickier to strike as illness swept through the Red Wing locker room over the last two weeks.
"Energy is a big part of it right now," said Lalonde Wednesday. "We're in the office at eight in the morning, and we had boxes checked on different systems. We were gonna do some situational stuff. We can't help ourselves; we're coaches. We're gonna over-coach the whole thing, and we were gonna be productive and get some things done today that we think are important. And then, we just didn't have the bodies. I think that speaks volumes on...the reality of where your energy level is. Obviously it's well-known we went through a huge flu bug as a team, so there's always that balance of being productive, trying to clean up some holes in your game, but to have energy where we need it Friday."
As Andrew Copp explained to The Hockey News last week, the issue at this stage of the season is less conditioning than it is recovery, saying "Everyone is in game condition. I would say there's a large amount of recovery that goes on between games, whether it's flushing the legs or needling or certain exercises. There's so much that you can do. I would say that's probably the most important this time of year. I don't think practice is really gonna get you in more game shape than you already are right now."
On Thursday, Alex Lyon pointed out that the stretch run isn't the time of year for forming habits around recovery but rather leaning on a pre-established routine. "It's easy in November and December to stay on top of your details and make sure your body is good and your diet is good," he told THN.
"But the reason that you work so hard in those times is you wanna create those habits for right now when I don't want to think about those things, I want those things to be ingrained. I've seen it happen plenty of times—it happened to me when I was younger—where you start getting in a playoff situation where down the line at the end of the year, you're playing every other day, and it's a grind, but you're not used to the grind. It sneaks up on you because these games are intense, and probably the emotional part more so than the physical part but both sides coincide. You wanna have those details locked in and ready to go, so you can just be at your best, and that's why you create those habits."
"It's pretty extensive at times," said Copp of his own priorities with respect to recovery between games. "Each guy has their own regimen that works for them. I like to get heavy chiropractic needling treatment once a week. And then I have the things I want to do daily at the rink before I skate, after I skate, before game, night before games, all that kind of stuff."
Copp's process also includes a post-game routine that "depends on if you're playing the next day or in two days. Maybe if you're playing two days later, you can maybe not do as much, but especially when you're playing the next night, everyone has their own routine of stretching, spine-lengthening stuff, muscle recovery, nutrition right away." "It really is a 24-7, full-time [commitment]," he added. "You're not ever doing nothing."
At 29 and in his 10th NHL season, Copp has seen a league-wide shift in attitudes and attention to detail with respect to recovery and recuperation over the course of his career, and his own routine has evolved too. He also points out that as useful and informative as the team's training staff is, it becomes important for veteran players to have independent trainers they can count on over the course of their careers.
"The Red Wings have a great training staff and everything like that, but I would say most guys have guys outside of the team that they revert back to," said Copp. "And have their own plans in place, their own people in place that they trust, that you see even throughout the summer too."
"You're gonna go from team to team, and you wanna have some continuity with your training and the people that you trust," he continued. "I'm lucky to be from here, so my people—there's a lot of continuity there. But when I was in Winnipeg, having people you trust during the summer, having people you trust there, flying people in if something's wrong. There's a couple people I really trust depending on what you're dealing with, whether it's head or something else."
For Patrick Kane, a veteran of numerous long and successful postseason runs, staying sharp at this stage in the season is a matter of maximizing each opportunity. "When you practice, you want to take advantage of those days and practice hard and make sure you're practicing at a game pace, but most everything this time of year is mostly maintenance, recovery, trying to get yourself as ready as possible for the next game," he told THN.
Kane's season didn't begin until December because of rehab from hip surgery in June, but, as he tells it, that rehab process hasn't changed much about his approach to in-season recovery. "I've felt pretty good as far as my conditioning and endurance and things like that," he said. "Worked hard at it over the summer even though I was rehabbing a lot. You want to stay on top of it. Probably skated over 60, 65 times, so you take conditioning into effect when you're doing those type of skates."
Perhaps the late start to the year because of his offseason rehab has left Kane a bit fresher now than he otherwise would have been, but he's also looking forward to the upcoming summer, because he'll be able to focus on his whole body, not just his hip:
"You look at the last few summers for me, it's been a lot of rehab, mostly focused on one part of the body. This upcoming summer will be...the first summer I've had in a while just training and actually focusing on full body. I guess there's some benefit to—I don't want to say worn down—but at the end of the season, 82 games is a lot obviously. I think I'm at 40 right now. Still feeling pretty fresh, pretty good, but definitely looking forward to getting back to summer training and not just worried about one part of the body."
"No one had us in the playoffs at the beginning of the year," said Lalonde yesterday. "It's the reality. Look back on every article, every projection there was. No one expected us to be here right now, and I love the fact that expectations have changed a little bit. The guys have done that. The guys have won; they've battled; they've hung in the fight...Now we have an unbelievable opportunity with seven games left...No matter what happens this is going to be fun."
The best of that fun will come on the ice, if Detroit can get the results it needs to snap the league's second longest playoff drought, but to make that fun happen, what happens between those seven games still assured in what's left of the season will be as important as the games themselves for the Red Wings.