Green will bolster already-potent Red Wings power play
Putting Mike Green on the Detroit power play is like putting an extra gear in a sports car.
With the Red Wings already running and gunning the second-best unit in the National Hockey League, the free-agent defenceman came here after running the point all those years with Alexander Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom and the Washington Capitals.
Now Green is going to be working with the likes of Henrik Zetterberg, Pavel Datsyuk, Niklas Kronwall and Gustav Nyquist, all with 20 or more power-play points last year. Three of them were in the league’s top 25 of specialty points.
The only team to beat the Red Wings’ mark of 23.8% efficiency was Green’s old club, which was 25.3%, thanks in part to his 17 points. But Green is still getting his bearings in Detroit after nine years in D.C. The Red Wings, meanwhile, are in experimentation mode, too, giving defenceman Jakub Kindl power-play time he did not merit under previous coach Mike Babcock.
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