DETROIT — Having played some good hockey over the last six weeks, the Detroit Red Wings enter the 2025 4 Nations Face-Off break with a 28-22-5 (61 points) record that has them holding the Eastern Conference’s second Wild-Card spot and sitting in fifth place in the Atlantic Division.
Outside of captain Dylan Larkin and Lucas Raymond, who will be representing the United States and Sweden, respectively, at the international tournament, some time away from the rink will be beneficial for the Red Wings, according to goalie Cam Talbot.
“It’s a long year,” Talbot said. “This helps reset not only physically, but mentally as well. We have a few days of practice when we get back from the break, but there can’t be any kind of letdown. We have to continue to build off what we’ve built up here, but I think for the most part it’s getting healthy, resetting and coming back ready to go.”
Detroit certainly wants to start what is shaping up to be an exciting final stretch of the season with some momentum, especially after seeing both its seven-game winning streak and eight-game point streak end with a 6-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday.
“We can take some time to breathe,” Red Wings head coach Todd McLellan said. “As a staff, we’ll review where we’ve been and what we need to work on. Some of the things we saw [Saturday] are important. Game-management skills are really hard to work on in practice because there is no score or fatigue and not a lot of line-matching. It’s hard to recreate stressful situations, so game-management skills just have to keep coming through video and experience. For us to move forward, those are going to have to improve.”
Detroit will resume game action on Feb. 22, when the club hosts the Minnesota Wild for Kids Day at Little Caesars Arena. Erik Gustafsson pointed out that the Red Wings have “a lot of road games coming up” — 15 of their final 27, to be exact – and he also believes the players should try to enjoy this rare breather in the regular-season schedule.
“I’m going to rest as much as I can,” Gustafsson said. “Spend time with the family. We all need to enjoy the time off because we know it’s going to be a battle when we come back. We’ve worked hard to be in this position in the standings, but we obviously got to keep going.”
While playing for their native countries at the 4 Nations Face-Off will surely be an incredible experience, neither Larkin nor Raymond will have the luxury of the rest and recovery time that their teammates will get.
“You’re now spending another two weeks on the road,” McLellan said. “We just came off a real long road trip. You wash your clothes and then you’re going to leave again right away so you’re going to spend three and a half weeks on the road, for our guys anyhow. The intensity and stress of that tournament is going to travel with them everywhere they go. Then, they’re going to come back and step right into the season again. They miss out on their bodies feeling better and all that type of stuff, but we’ll find days for those two somewhere along the way to try and get them what they need.”
