PREVIEW: Aiming to show resiliency, Red Wings battle visiting Maple Leafs on Saturday

DETROIT -- The Detroit Red Wings will open a home-and-home series against the Toronto Maple Leafs, first squaring off at Little Caesars Arena on Saturday night.

The Red Wings (0-1-0; 0 points) and Maple Leafs (1-0-0; 2 points) will drop the puck at 7 p.m. , with broadcast coverage on FanDuel Sports Network Detroit and the Red Wings Radio Network (97.1 The Ticket in Detroit). The Original Six rivals will then meet at Scotiabank Arena in two days for a Monday matinee that was recently rescheduled to 2 p.m.

Detroit dropped its 2025-26 season opener to the Montreal Canadiens, 5-1, at Little Caesars Arena on Thursday. The Red Wings got off to a good start, with captain Dylan Larkin scoring their lone goal on the power play early in the first period, but the Canadiens went on to net five unanswered goals before the end of the second.

“We can address the problems and the issues that we had, and we certainly did,” Detroit head coach Todd McLellan said. “But it’s the bounce back and the mentality of our team that we’re going to be somewhat resilient. We’re getting tested early in the year right off the bat. No one chose it, but we’ve fallen into it already. Can we be resilient? Can we bounce back? Can we fix things and still be an aggressive hockey club without backing off? That’ll be real important, and then we’ll go from there.”

Looking at the big picture, Andrew Copp said the team is confident it can correct the mistakes that were made on Thursday and play a cleaner brand of hockey moving forward.

“The mistakes we made were just big mistakes,” Copp said. “I think that was the issue and I think that was kind of the issue in the last preseason game as well. A lot of stuff to clean up, but those mistakes should be relatively easy to clean up. It’s Game 1. Can’t ruin our confidence just because of one game. We had a good meeting and practice on [Friday] to hopefully flush those thoughts, then come to the rink [on Saturday] excited and ready to go.”

Copp said the Red Wings aren’t going to fall into the mental trap of overreacting to their first regular-season game either.

“I’ve been on teams where the first game goes like that, then you go on and finish second in the League and go to the Conference Final,” Copp said. “It’s an interesting game; there’s a lot going on between the ceremony and red carpet. We got to get it fixed fast and there’s no excuse for the mistakes, but it’s one out of 82…We’re going to come expecting to win [on Saturday].”

Before taking the ice for Saturday’s morning skate at Little Caesars Arena, Detroit activated James van Riemsdyk from injured/non-roster status and assigned Erik Gustafsson to the American Hockey League’s Grand Rapids Griffins.

Although van Riemsdyk, who has been practicing with the team for over a week after tending to family matters this preseason, will not be in the lineup on Saturday, he’s excited to get back into game action when that time does come.

“Usually, there’s that general build up that you get when you start on Day 1,” van Riemsdyk said. “Obviously, you’re kind of jumping on a little bit of a moving train here when you come a little bit later. But I think with my experience, I’ve been through this sort of thing before. It’s almost like coming back from an injury in a way, where you’re just trying to build yourself back up and that you’re ready to go. I think it’s all about, especially when you first get back in, whenever that may be, mentally just being sharp with your details and things like that.”

The Maple Leafs are coming off a 5-2 victory over the Canadiens on Wednesday. William Nylander led the way offensively with three points (one goal, two assists), while Morgan Rielly (one goal, one assists), John Tavares (two assists) and Steven Lorentz (two assists) registered two points apiece. Netminder Anthony Stolarz, who signed a four-year contract extension with Toronto late last month, made 31 saves.

“They’re offensively gifted,” McLellan said about the Maple Leafs. “Mitch Marner or no Mitch Marner, they can score goals. They pushed the Stanley Cup champs to the brink last year. It didn’t go their way, but that’s the quality and type of team they have. Our task is getting harder, the gauntlet, day by day, so we will look a little bit at some of the exhibition stuff and certainly, the Montreal game that they played.”