Red Wings know ramping up intensity, continuing to work hard during mini-Training Camp will pay dividends down the stretch

DETROIT -- Continuing to settle back into their regular-season routine, the Detroit Red Wings turned up the physicality during their practice at Little Caesars Arena’s BELFOR Training Center on Wednesday morning.

“It felt way better today,” Andrew Copp said. “I think most of the guys skated in some capacity and everyone took care of themselves, but you come back and the speed of the practice and all that…You’re going to feel it a little bit and yesterday’s, especially the start of practice, was very high pace. Today, I think everyone felt a lot better. I think our execution was way better today and got way better throughout practice too, so we just got to keep ramping it up and putting in the work now because it’s going to pay dividends when everyone comes back.”

Wednesday’s practice concluded with Copp and his teammates – aside from Detroit’s goaltending tandem of John Gibson and Cam Talbot in addition to Simon Edvinsson, who focused on his skating and stickhandling on the other end of the ice as he works his way back from a lower-body injury that has sidelined him since Jan. 21 – go through a spirited gauntlet drill along the boards.

“It brought me back to my freshman football days and everyone going through tackling drills,” said Copp, who was a record-setting quarterback at Skyline High School in Ann Arbor, Mich. “I think it was just to get a little contact, fight through it a little bit. Battle-type conditioning as opposed to just the pure skating-type conditioning that you saw yesterday. So yeah, it was fun. Some guys were definitely taking extra shots at some other guys that maybe deserved it over the course of the first 58, so it was fun in there.”

Red Wings head coach Todd McLellan noted the physical drill served multiple purposes.

“I’ve used that in the past, obviously haven’t here yet, and it’s a real strenuous drill,” McLellan said. “It takes your heart rate up. It puts you in a situation where there’s some contact and some wrestling. It’s a little bit of team building. Guys don’t want to do it every day, but the first few times they do it, they have a little bit of fun with it. We got heart rates up. Our sports science department will be happy that we got some contact in and did some of those things. I hope our guys had a little bit of fun with it.”

McLellan has watched Detroit’s team chemistry steadily grow throughout its Centennial campaign, crediting a shared commitment as a significant driver behind the club’s progress to date.

“We evaluate a lot more in this building, on the plane, on the road and at the rink, but a lot of the team building happens away from the rink and the fun they have, the stories they tell, the card games on the plane or whatever they’re doing,” McLellan said. “There’s a lot of camaraderie that’s built there, so we stay out of their way when they’re doing those things…At the rink, I think the commitment from one player to another, regardless of position or stature on the team, has grown throughout the year so far, which means the belief system is a little bit higher. Those are real positive things. When you believe you still have a chance and when you’re still in it, you’re prepared to give a little bit more in practice and work harder at things.”

Edvinsson stressed down the stretch, the Red Wings will need to play with even higher levels of focus and intensity if they expect to secure a spot in the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

“The last 24 games are always harder than the first 24 games,” Edvinsson said. “We know where we are in the standings and what we have to do to really be where we want to be after those 24 games. The intensity on the ice and work ethic compared to last year, I feel like everybody is in a different spot. We feel we have high demands of each other, and everybody works hard out there. You can feel it.”

As far as how he feels, Edvinsson said the recovery process for that lower-body injury “has been going great.”

But hockey, like all sports, unfortunately carries risk of injury that can occur at any time.

“We think about the NHL, but we have Eduards Tralmaks there and he’s a big impact player for Grand Rapids,” McLellan said when asked about player injury risk at the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026. “So, we don’t want him to get injured…But any athlete that goes to the Olympics runs the risk of injury, not just the hockey players. That’s the dream of all of them. We could lose, knock on wood, a player or two in practice today. You can’t live your life in a bubble, so that’s part of the risk.”

On the topic of these Olympics, McLellan also said captain Dylan Larkin, Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider will all get some well-deserved time off before getting back on the ice alongside the rest of their teammates.

“They’ve adapted to a different time zone and will need a bit of rest as far as that goes,” McLellan said. “They haven’t had any time off. Mo, for example, I’ll talk to him later today. We’ll talk about his plans, how he’s feeling, where he’s at injury-wise, anything nagging and then we’ll determine when he’ll come back and join the team. And we’ll either get Larks or Razor back later today. Unfortunately, one of them has to be coming back, so I expect whoever the two are to join the group together and then the third one, depending on how long he goes, and adjust his schedule a little bit.”