“Treesome”, “Big Boy Line”, “Redwoods”, “The Viking Line”, “The Skyline”….
Call the Detroit Red Wings’ third line whatever you want, but what cannot be debated is the impact the towering trio has had in the early part of the 2022-23 season.
Consisting of Michael Rasmussen, Oskar Sundqvist and rookie Elmer Söderblom, the Red Wings’ third line is massive, with Sundqvist (who stands at 6-foot-3, 220 pounds) being the “smallest” among the three. Naturally, their line has come up big in the early days of this season, proving to be hard to contain by opposing defenses. To that point, they combined for six points in their first game together: the Red Wings’ season opener against the Montreal Canadiens.
The rest of the Red Wings’ forward group is not nearly as big, with the next-largest forward being Dominik Kubalik, who stands at 6-foot-2, 190 pounds. Still, Detroit’s third line is proving to be a tone-setter for the Red Wings this season. As the team looks to form an identity under new head coach Derek Lalonde, this line could become a symbol for what Red Wings hockey is all about this season.
Lalonde Wants the Red Wings to Be Hard to Play Against
The concept of being “hard to play against” isn’t something new. Not to Detroit, nor to any other team in the NHL. However, it’s a phrase that carries different meanings depending on how it is applied.
A team can be hard to play against because they have so much firepower that mistakes simply aren’t an option against them.
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A team can be hard to play against because they aren’t afraid to take the body and wear down their opponents physically.
For Lalonde and the Red Wings, that phrase means a combination of things.
“We want puck possession,” Lalonde told the media during training camp while also highlighting the importance of minimizing risky decision-making on the ice. Going back to his introductory press conference, he also stated, “we want to be a team thatâs hard to play against. The uniqueness of playing in the division and playing as many times as (Detroit and the Tampa Bay Lightning) did the last couple of years, we saw parts of that, where (the Red Wings) were hard to play against, they were gapped, they were not giving us an inch. Our goal is to be a little more consistent in that.â
So, to summarize, Lalonde wants the Red Wings to play with the puck, manage it well, and give the opposition as little time and space as possible when Detroit does not have the puck. With that in mind, it’s easy to see why Lalonde sees the team’s third line as a group that is embracing those ideals.
“Yeah, absolutely,” Lalonde answered when asked if the team’s third line was emerging as an identity line. “They do things right, they get above, they’re hard to play against…. They give us some momentum when they can gain some…extended zone time.”
According to Natural Stat Trick, the trio of Rasmussen, Sundqvist and Söderblom have an even-strength Corsi-for percentage of 62 percent. While that’s a sample of just three games (and two of those games were against teams that aren’t expected to make the playoffs this season), that’s a level of dominance that is rarely seen outside of the very best lines in the league.
Rasmussen, Sundqvist & Söderblom Find Their Roles
Entering training camp, there was some question about where all three of these players would fit in the Red Wings’ lineup. In the case of Söderblom, most assumed that he wasn’t even going to make the team, let alone become a difference-maker on an identity line. And yet here they are, and all three of them bring something unique to the table:
Rasmussen
The player they call “Moose” has continued his ascent from late last season. Rasmussen seems to be entrenched as the Red Wings’ third line center in the early going this season, a distinction that was earned after showing some real progress this calendar year after a slow start to his NHL career.
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With six blocked shots and 10 hits so far this season, Rasmussen isn’t afraid to put his body on the line. At 6-foot-6, 230 pounds, he is showing progress in terms of his ability to forecheck and be a big body in the offensive zone. As he continues to round out his two-way game, he could become an effective all-use player for the Red Wings heading into the future.
Sundqvist
Despite missing out on all of the preseason, Sundqvist has stepped into the lineup seamlessly. While he’s never been known as a high-end point producer in the NHL, he has five goals and 12 points in 21 games since joining the Red Wings at last season’s trade deadline, including four points in three games this season. As the veteran of the trio, he shoulders some responsibility to show his linemates how it’s done, both in the defensive and offensive zones. That’s exactly what he did when he scored the biggest goal of Detroit’s season through the first three games:
Lalonde noted after the game that the Red Wings’ locker room was “quiet and reserved” until Sundqvist arrived. The 28-year-old Swede has a big personality, and that injected some life into the locker room – that energy can be seen clear as day when watching the celebration after he scored the game-tying goal against the Los Angeles Kings.
Söderblom
Söderblom has proven that he can be effective in the NHL as a 21-year-old, giving the Red Wings an offensive weapon that no other team can match. His size (6-foot-8, 250 pounds) makes him hard to knock off the puck, and he has played a smooth, simple game that is fitting of the line he is on. He only has one goal so far, but he leads his line with nine shots through the first three games.
Söderblom now stands as the best current example of the progress of the Red Wings’ rebuild. While it is great that Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond made their marks last season, both of those guys are first round picks, with Raymond being the team’s highest draft pick since 1990 (Keith Primeau, third overall). It is expected that those types of prospects are going to make a difference once they reach the NHL; in Söderblom, the Red Wings have a former sixth-round pick (159th overall, 2019) that sure seems like he’s in the NHL to stay.
When you look at how general manager Steve Yzerman built his last club, the Tampa Bay Lightning, you’ll find players like Steven Stamkos, Victor Hedman and Andrei Vasilevskiy that were all first round picks. However, guys like Brayden Point, Nikita Kucherov and Anthony Cirelli were all drafted after the first round, with Kucherov being the highest pick out of those three, going 58th overall in 2011.
If you’re building a team through the draft, you have to find success outside of the first round. That’s how you expedite the timeline of the rebuild and avoid a perpetual cycle of rebuilding like what has gone on with the Arizona Coyotes and Buffalo Sabres over the last decade.
Redwood Line Showcases the Red Wings’ Future
If you are privy to the Red Wings’ prospect pool, you know that there is a lot of size coming up the pipeline, specifically on the blue line. Simon Edvinsson can stand eye-to-eye with Rasmussen, William Wallinder is built similarly to Seider, and Shai Buium should be right around Sundqvist’s size once he starts developing in the pro leagues. All of these guys offer a mix of size and skill that is hard to deal with if the other team is not equipped for it, and that’s exactly why the Red Wings’ third line has been such an early stand-out this season.
It is important to restate the Red Wings are still just three games into their season; what is successful today may not be successful next week as the other 31 NHL teams gather tape and develop a gameplan to contain the giants on Detroit’s third line. We saw it with Raymond last season: it’s not about how good you start, it’s about how quickly you can adapt once the opposition shuts you down. If the trio of Rasmussen, Sundqvist and Söderblom can remain effective into the slog that is the months of December and January, it’ll be pretty safe to assume that Lalonde and his staff have captured lightning in a bottle.
While national media will hype up this trio because of their size, Detroit will become endeared to them if they become something of a modern day “grind line” that grinds down the opposition and chips in on offense every so often. The potential for that is there – we’ve already seen it in the first week of this season. If we continue to see it as we get deeper into the 2022-23 season, it won’t be long before opposing fans identify the Red Wings as a team that is big, skilled and tenacious – three words that perfectly describe this line of behemoths.