Red Wings Demote Raymond to Third Line, Shake Up Top Six Ahead of Flyers Clash

The Detroit Red Wings are changing the look of their forward group in a bid to snap out of an early-season funk. Head coach Todd McLellan shuffled three of his four lines at Thursday's morning skate, most notably bumping Lucas Raymond off captain Dylan Larkin's unit and down to the third line alongside Andrew Copp and Michael Rasmussen.

Raymond, who has four assists but no goals through six games, was replaced on the top trio by Nate Danielson, who will skate with Larkin and Viktor Arvidsson against the winless Philadelphia Flyers at Little Caesars Arena on Thursday night. Danielson has one assist in five games and was a healthy scratch in Detroit's last outing.

"Right now, it's not quite working for them," McLellan said of the Larkin line. "They haven't been horrible. They haven't been hurting us. They just haven't been producing. So we'll give them a different look."

Raymond made no excuses for the demotion. "I want to score," he said. "I think I'm getting the looks. I just need to maybe shoot a bit more, get to those areas a bit more and hopefully it'll go in."

The only line left untouched was the group of Emmitt Finnie, Alex DeBrincat and Michael Brandsegg-Nygard, which combined for four goals and three assists in Tuesday's 5-4 overtime loss to New Jersey — a day before DeBrincat signed his seven-year, $91 million extension. Keegan Kolesar moved to a fourth line with J.T. Compher and Sheldon Dries, while Daniil Tarasov is set to make his first start at Little Caesars Arena.

Detroit (1-3-2) faces Philadelphia (0-5-2) in a matchup of the Eastern Conference's bottom two clubs. McLellan acknowledged his team's defensive lapses have been the bigger issue: "We've been in games that we haven't been able to win. We scored enough last night. It was the defensive miscues that cost us."