George Sipple

Detroit Free Press

Tomas Jurco has been a healthy scratch the past few games and the Detroit Red Wings are considering sending him down to Grand Rapids of the American Hockey League to get back on track.

Jurco, 21, has no goals and two assists in 12 games this season. He had eight goals and seven assists for 15 points in 36 games last season for the Wings.

"He got here fast," Wings general manager Ken Holland said of Jurco, who played for Saint John in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League in 2009-12. Jurco had 27 goals and 60 points in 106 games in 1½ seasons with the Griffins.

Holland said Jurco was inconsistent the first half of his first season in the AHL, not unlike a lot of young players.

"People don't realize how good the American (Hockey) League is until you get there," Holland said. "Then he played pretty good the second half of his first year and that team won the American (Hockey) League championship and he played a role. Last year, he was eighth in the American (Hockey) League in scoring in November and early December and down everyone went and up he came here and he played good."

Holland said so far Jurco has found it tough to get going offensively.

"Babs has sat him out the last couple games," Holland said. "I'm going to monitor the situation close.

"We'll have a conversation over the next couple days. Certainly, a guy like Jurco, we want to be playing. If the plan is to get him back into the lineup next week, we'll have a good week of practice. I think if the plan is that other people are sort of ahead of him right now, we've gotta get him playing."

■ NOTEBOOK: After tonight, the Wings don't play again until they host the Blackhawks on Friday. Babcock said the Wings will concentrate on freshening up. "We're going to practice (Monday), we're going to take Tuesday off and practice Wednesday, Thursday and get ready to go," he said. "We'll spend a lot of time on the contact part of the game. When you play every second day you don't get to do much box outs and D-zone coverage and the physical part of it. We can do that both on Monday and Wednesday."

Contact George Sipple: gsipple@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @georgesipple.