"This Team Can Make the Playoffs and Do Special Things": Tarasenko Looks to Continue Success with Red Wings

As a two-time Stanley Cup champion at 32 having wrapped up his 203-24 season with a parade through a driving South Floridian rainstorm, Vladimir Tarasenko has every incentive to embrace a mindset of self-satisfaction.  Instead, Tarasenko adopted the opposite approach, declaring at his introductory press conference as the Red Wings marquee free agent acquisition, "I'm not a person to just come and hang out and don't try to win."

In Detroit, Tarasenko sees the chance to add to his collection of hardware.  "That's the reason I came because I like the way the team played," he said.  "I believe this team can make the playoffs and do some special things."  Between his 2019 champion Blues and this year's Panthers, Tarasenko has a good idea of what a winner looks like.  "What was similar is the way the team played hard," he explains, when asked by The Hockey News about the resemblance between his two championship teams.  

"One of the biggest similarities was the group itself, the locker room, was very tight," he continues, citing the example of the Cats rallying from three straight losses to clinch the Cup on home ice.  "And when the group is tight and there is good relationships inside and a high level of trust, you can raise your confidence.  What happened in Game Seven in the finals [was] because the group we had, when we lost three games in a row, we were able to come close together and think, 'it's one game.  We can win it.  Let's go.'  And work for each other and trust and give us the result."

In Detroit, Tarasenko will reunite with Patrick Kane, with whom he spent half a season as New York Rangers following the 2023 trade deadline.  Tarasenko smiles at the mention of Kane's name, then explains that he knows the playmaking winger better as a rival than he does as a teammate, having played against one another for years in Chicago and St. Louis while never playing on a line together with the Rangers.  

He adds that "it would be amazing" to play on a line with Kane as Red Wings and notes that last season he played as a left winger for the first time in his career, making the prospect more practical given that Kane has spent his career on the right.

Tarasenko's reputation has always been as a sniper, but he's also spent the bulk of his career—whether at his long-time home in St. Louis or his most recent with the Panthers—on team's that prided defense.  Those environments, as well as the success he's achieved in them, appear to have rubbed off.

"I still like to score goals," Tarasenko says with a wry-smile, when asked whether his two-way game has improved with age. "Don't get me wrong. I still have some not only team but personal goals too...I never wanted to not play defense. Sometimes I just don't understand what to do. But when the years come by, the more I played, I just realized you have to this in order for your team to win the championship, I think this is the way to go."

Christian Fischer offers first-hand testimonial that the challenge in trying to check that his new teammate lies not just in skill but in physicality and work rate.  "You don't want him to shoot the puck with a clear lane, and I think that is very evident," Fischer says.  "He's one of the most elite shots in the NHL, scored huge goals. I think the big thing about him too that I really respect about his game is, as talented as he is and how gifted he is offensively, I think he has some meanness to him, and he competes his ass off...You go up against him, he is a heavy, thick, thick boy that can outmuscle you too."

Growing up in Yaroslavl, Tarasenko didn't have much of a chance to watch the NHL, but a lack of access to live games wasn't enough to stop him from catching word of the franchise he just joined.  "Detroit is one of the most famous if not the most famous team in the world when you talk about hockey history," he said. "Growing up in Russia, a lot of people followed Detroit because of the Russian 5. On my first PlayStation I played with Detroit too."  Now, Tarasenko will set aside the PlayStation controller and take the chance to add his own chapter to the Red Wing legacy.