Notes: Red Wings aware specialty teams must pick it up

DETROIT -- Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill has harped on it all season.
"I said in the beginning of the year we need elite specialty teams and I thought for a portion of the year we had that and right now we don't," Blashill reiterated after Thursday's practice at the BEFOR Training Center. "If we want to win games before the All-Star break, we need elite specialty teams."

In their last 10 games, the Wings' power play is 2-of-33 and since the bye week, they are 1-of-13.
Overall, Detroit's power play is 18th in the NHL, converting at 18.7 percent (26-of-139). The penalty kill is 19th in the league, giving up 28 power-play goals in 139 attempts.
But it is the power play that has drawn the most concern.
A major sore spot last season, the power play appeared to have been corrected this season, hovering around the top 10 for much of the season, but recently, it has been a struggle.
"Yeah, for sure after the break here when we started in Pittsburgh, just since then, our entries have been pretty bad," Gustav Nyquist said. "I don't think we've executed enough. Our entries over the course of the year have been pretty good, but that's something we need to clean up again in the zone and just get set up.
"To be honest with you, I don't know that we've gotten set up that much over the last three games. So especially entries we've got to clean up."
Nyquist also said he feels the Red Wings have not been shooting the puck enough, whether it's on the power play or during the course of the game.
Against Dallas, the Wings managed just 15 shots on net. The Stars may be a defensive-minded team under coach Ken Hitchcock, but 15 shots is hard to accept.
"Over the course of the year, that's something we've been talking about," Nyquist said. "I think we need to be more of a shooting team or have that shooting mentality than we've had over the year.
"We have a lot of players in this room that maybe want to make that extra play instead of creating a chance shooting off the net and getting a rebound. So I think that's something that's been talked about all year.
"Obviously 15 shots, that's not going to help the cause. Goalies are too good in this league, so you've got to get more pucks on net and create offense that way."
Blashill indicated he may switch his power-play units up to spread out the Wings' speed.
"Our entries have gone a little dry, that's an area for certain we have to work on. Might have to make some tweaks in personnel that helps in those entries," Blashill said. "Zetterberg's unit for most of the year got in real easy and now all of a sudden they're having a hard time getting in, so we may tweak a little bit in terms of personnel, just shifting guys from one unit to the other to give ourselves a little more speed on each unit, and then we got to get back into getting pucks into the cage area and scoring some ugly goals.
"I think we've gotten a little bit on the outside of the dots too much. Probably the most important, if I had to go in order, it would be entries, unforced errors and then the mentality of attacking the net, those would be the three things."
Andreas Athanasiou would most likely play with Zetterberg's unit.
"You got (Dylan) Larkin and AA (Athanasiou) on the same unit, and they're both real good entry guys with the speed. We hadn't needed it until recently, but that's something we're going to look at going into tomorrow's practice," Blashill said. "Most probably just mixing and matching. The one guy that's not on it that's healthy for us right now that I think is a good power-play player is Frans Nielsen.
"For the most part, I think we have the power play guys on there. Frans has had a good history on the power play. Is he better than the guys that are on there? I don't know. We'll have to keep watching and seeing."
As for Detroit's penalty kill, Blashill sees it still developing to a degree because of Detroit's injury situation.
"Part of having a good power play or penalty kill is having good penalty killers. I think we have guys in those spots that can do a good job, but I also think between Glenny (Luke Glendening), (Darren) Helm and Abby (Justin Abdelkader), you're missing three guys that have done an excellent job for us this year and I thought propelled us into the top 10. Nothing we can do about that on Saturday (against Carolina).
"So, then we got to find a way with the group we have, which I think is a good group. The only issue is they haven't had lots of reps, so they're learning on the fly. AA hasn't had tons of reps. Certainly (Dominic) Turgeon hasn't had any reps with us. Bert (Tyler Bertuzzi) you'll look at times, he hasn't had hardly any reps. He didn't kill in the minors much. Boother, (David Booth) same thing.
"We got to get some reps for those guys. We'll get it in practice tomorrow a little bit and then just as we keep going, they're going to have to keep finding little nuances of being better."
SCHEDULE IS TOUGH TO FIGURE OUT: If it seems the Red Wings have had a lot of time off lately, you're absolutely correct.
After last week's five-day bye week, the Wings resumed action last Saturday in Pittsburgh, played in Chicago on Sunday, hosted Dallas on Tuesday and are now in the midst of a three-day break.
Detroit will next play on Saturday, hosting the Carolina Hurricanes at Little Caesars Arena.
Next week, the Red Wings will play three games in four days (Monday in New Jersey, Tuesday hosting the Philadelphia Flyers and Thursday when Chicago comes to town).
Once the Chicago game ends, the Red Wings will begin their All-Star break, which means Detroit will have another five-day layoff.
"You're kind of in a weird cycle here between Christmas and the bye week and then you got the All-Star Game and then these games," Blashill said. "But this is a little different. We had the day off, which came at a good time because we played three in four, and you come off a break and go hard and then get a little bit of a breather.
"It gives us a couple days to practice and you can practice harder today (Thursday) than when you're not playing the next day, so it gave us a chance to work on some battle stuff.
"It's definitely out of your rhythm a little bit. The one thing I'll remind them of tomorrow is we got four games until another break, so we goT to really buckle down and focus in on those four games."
ZETTERBERG AND BERTUZZI MISS PRACTICE:Captain Henrik Zetterberg and forward Tyler Bertuzzi were given Thursday off and according to Blashill, it is not a cause for alarm.
"I think Tyler, it's a maintenance thing," Blashill said. "I expect him to practice tomorrow and play on Saturday."
He said essentially the same thing about Zetterberg.
Throughout this season, Zetterberg has been given a few 'maintenance days' to allow his 37-year-old body to recuperate.