Red Wings vs. Boston Bruins 2-14-16

Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill (right) reassigned assistant coach Pat Ferschweiler (left), who ran the power play this past season.

(AP file photo)

DETROIT - The Detroit Red Wings have one more assistant coaching vacancy to fill, and experience running a power play is a prerequisite for the job.

An ineffective power play was costly during the regular season and more damaging in the first-round playoff series against the Tampa Bay Lightning, when the Red Wings went 1 for 25.

The struggles were puzzling, since the Red Wings ranked second in the NHL on the power play the previous season and added key components Mike Green and Brad Richards in free agency, without losing anybody. They finished 13th following a late-season surge, but were ranked in the mid-20s most of the season.

Coach Jeff Blashill said he would like to add an assistant who is innovative in that regard, but also made it clear that schemes and strategy aside, it's up to the players to execute.

"I don't think there's lots of different things going on in the NHL regarding the power play," Blashill said. "I still think it comes down to execution on a nightly basis by the players. I think different ways to practice and different ways to create habits on the power play are real important, but in the end it's still going to come down to our guys that come back on the power play are going to have to execute at a real high level."

The Red Wings hired Doug Houda on Tuesday. He'll work with the defense and the penalty-killing units. Blashill said they'll take some time to hire an assistant who'll be in charge of forwards and the power play.

The Red Wings are expected to talk to Todd Richards, an assistant coach for Team USA at the World Championship. He has more than five years of head coaching experience with the Minnesota Wild and Columbus Blue Jackets.

Other potential candidates include former NHL head coaches Dave Cameron, Paul MacLean and Mike Yeo.

Blashill said experience as an NHL head coach would be ideal, but not a must.

"A number of the candidates that I'd like to talk to are guys that have had NHL head coaching experience," Blashill said. "It certainly won't be restricted to just that but there's decisions throughout the year and throughout games that if somebody's been through those roles they've got a unique perspective and one that I'd like to be able to learn from and grow our staff as a result of. We'll see if that comes to fruition."

Blashill said he approached general manager Ken Holland after the season about making changes to the staff. Assistant Tony Granato had accepted the head coaching job at Wisconsin.

They decided to reassign the other assistant, Pat Ferschweiler, who ran the power play.

"The idea of adding another bench coach was because I wanted to add some more NHL experience to our bench," Blashill said.

"I also felt one of the best areas for growth with our hockey team is going to be the internal growth of our individual players. One of Pat Ferschweiler's greatest strengths is the skill development aspect of his coaching. He was in charge of player development for me at Western Michigan and in Grand Rapids and that is going to be a significant part of his role moving forward, to create a systematic approach tailor-made to each player to develop each player to the best of his abilities. Not just our young players, but the majority of our players."

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