Notes: Green joins team for trip, optional morning skate

TAMPA -- There was a bright new addition to the Red Wings' optional morning skate Thursday in Tampa- defenseman Mike Green.
Green has been out since training camp with a virus but is now feeling good enough to join the team on the trip and practice a bit.

"First of all, it's good to see him," Wings coach Jeff Blashill said. "I haven't seen him much and just good to have him around. I think he's a great leader so just being around us I think is a positive thing. He's a guy that lots of guys care about and a real good leader. He's an upper-tier NHL defenseman, in my opinion. He moves the puck out of the zone really well, he gets you out of your zone, you don't spend as much time playing defense and he puts the other team on their heels a little bit with the attack mentality.
"So we haven't had that but that's the way it goes. I don't have a timeline when he'll be back but certainly when he comes back it'll be a good boost whenever that happens."
Green said he started feeling the effects of the virus before arriving in Traverse City for training camp.
"I think camp really pushed me to the limits and that's when we knew sort of knew something was wrong," Green said. "I don't know how I got it but I think with a variety of things it kind of hit me hard and unfortunately I had to take some time to rest and recover."
Green believes he is near the end of the virus and is hoping to start getting to the point where he is ready to play.
"Now I'm back on the ice and feeling a lot better every time I skate," Green said. "Because I haven't skated all that much over the last while and now it's about being back in shape and playing form and that's the next step."
Blashill had said previously that one of the challenges Green faced was not being able to ramp up his activity level quickly because it aggravated the virus.
"There's a fine balance of trying to stay on the ice and not doing too much," Green said. "I think we've done a good job of sort of monitoring and slowly increasing each time without pushing too hard. It's unfortunate. It takes time. I wish there was a time frame or an answer but I guess not with these sorts of things."
In addition to Green, all of the other veteran defensemen have missed time with various injuries.
Niklas Kronwall missed the first three games with a lower-body injury, Trevor Daley missed the last four with an upper-body injury, Jonathan Ericsson has missed all six games with an upper-body injury and Danny DeKeyser missed the game in Montreal with a hand injury.
"Very few young defensemen in this league can come in and just survive on their own without somebody to kind of help them along and help manage the game or help get through certain spots," Blashill said. "So they've had to basically be totally on their own and it's hard to judge, to be dead honest with you. The fact that a guy like Dennis Cholowski has played real well, I think speaks to the level of player that he is, he's been able to do it without tons of guys out there that have been around lots. In the end, it's the situation, there's nothing that we can do about it and I think for the most part our D have done a good job. It's certainly no excuse to not winning games."
Green said he's been pretty impressed with Cholowski, Joe Hicketts, Filip Hronek and Libor Sulak.
"They're showing a lot of talent and skill and diversity to the back end," Green said. "Now it's just about fine-tuning the pro game. I know from experience how it is as a young guy with the league and how the league will take advantage of you if you don't know the tendencies of how things work and now it's just a matter of us informing them and the quicker we can do that and get them in that sort of mind frame, the better off we'll be in the long run."
DALEY RETURNS: While Green has returned to practice, Daley is ready to get back in a game after missing the last four since leaving in the first period in Los Angeles on Oct. 7.
"Obviously very excited to get back at it," Daley said. "I was feeling good about myself coming in and obviously injuries kind of are a part of it. I'm looking forward to getting back in."
The Red Wings could certainly use another veteran to help the young defensemen continue to adjust to the NHL and prevent things from snowballing in the wrong direction.
"Do things the right way, whatever it is. Limit mistakes, limit bad habit stuff," Daley said. "When that stuff creeps in, it's kind of contagious, it's hard to get out. The quicker we get to playing the game the right way and consistently -- consistency is a tough thing in this league -- once we do it consistently, I think we'll be fine."
Daley will be paired with Cholowski against Tampa Bay.
Blashill said Ericsson won't play against the Lightning but could return against Florida Saturday night.
SULAK IN GRAND RAPIDS: With Daley returning to the lineup, the Red Wings sent Sulak to Grand Rapids on Wednesday.
"I would say Hicketts is a little bit better penalty kill," Blashill said. "I would say the biggest thing though, to be honest with you, is I think Libor Sulak has lots of potential. I want him to go down and he still needs to learn how to play the North American league game, learn the space, learn what's going to make him special and that's defending more than anything else. I want him to go down and learn some of those lessons in the American League where they're easier to learn there than they are here where every time you make a mistake, you're under so much scrutiny.
"My thought on that and I know Ken's thought on that is let's see if we can't, a month from now, two months from now, have them calling us saying, 'Boy, you got to get him back up, he's really become an elite NHL defenseman.'"
Sulak, 24, did not record a point in his six games with the Wings, had six penalty minutes and was minus-4.
"I'm so happy I can play there," Sulak said in Grand Rapids. "It's my dream. Everybody want to play in the NHL, it's amazing. I think it's tough to play there, everything's quicker. The guys in the NHL has good skills."
The Red Wings have talked to Sulak about the things they want him to work on in Grand Rapids.
"I have to do good job here and keep going, good defensively, good gap I have to do, first pass," Sulak said. "That's the way I can get back to Detroit. Good defensively, good first pass and good skating, use my body and that's it."
LIGHTNING STRIKE: Tampa is not the ideal destination for a Red Wings team seeking their first victory of the season.
The Lightning have won 11 straight against the Wings and 11 straight against them at home.
"We know they got some great players over there that we got to make sure we recognize when they're on the ice," Daley said. "We got to take advantage of the opportunities we get when we do get our chances. We got to take advantage of them and not play from behind. And obviously stay out of the box."
Among the top Red Wings killers are Nikita Kucherov, with 12 goals and nine assists in 19 games; Tyler Johnson has six goals and eight assists in 20 games; Ondrej Palat has four goals and 12 assists in 20 games; Brayden Point has two goals and four assists in nine games; Yanni Gourde has three goals and two assists in six games; Victor Hedman has one goal and 17 assists in 21 games; and Steven Stamkos has 11 goals and seven assists in 20 games.
The last time the Red Wings beat the Lightning was a 2-1 win on Nov. 3, 2015 at Joe Louis Arena.
The last time the Wings beat the Lightning on the road was a 6-2 win on Feb. 17, 2011.
"They're a really good team, obviously one of the better teams," Blashill said. "I think lots of people had them picked to win the whole thing in the last couple years. The only thing that's held them back is coaching. They come at you, they play with no fear because they can score and they know the goalie makes lots of saves. You're going to get your chances. We got to make sure we play great defense and then we got to capitalize when we get our chances. Really that's got to be our focus anyways.
"We've gotten away from playing good defensively and we better get back to playing good defensively and understand that you've got to check for your chances and if we check for our chances tonight, we'll be in a good spot. If it's an easy game where they're flowing up the ice like Montreal was in the second period, it'll be a really, really hard game. So we got to get back to making sure we play real good defense."
Blashill was kidding about the coaching as he always does because he and Lightning coach Jon Cooper are good friends.
For his part, Cooper said his team knows better than to take the Red Wings lightly.
"The one thing I've learned in this league, every team is a National Hockey League team. Anybody can beat anybody on any different night," Cooper said. "I know Detroit is winless but if you've watched their games, they don't deserve to be winless. I know two games for sure they should have won and just bad breaks probably cost them wins. You look at their schedule, they played one home game and then they have to go out west and play back-to-back and then come back and go out on the road so the schedule gods haven't helped them out too much either. So they're trying to grind through this and get through all the injuries they have. It's just kind of a little recipe for what's happened to them so far.
"The one thing I know is Jeff always has the team, they play hard and they're structured. We just, unfortunately, for them we have to try and, it's another two points we got to get and we can't feel sorry that they don't have a win yet. We just hope their next win comes in their next game when they play Florida."
Art Regner contributed to this report.