Notes: Athanasiou, Howard ready; Marchenko very close

DETROIT - The ranks of the Red Wings' walking wounded are getting a little thinner.
Jimmy Howard, Andreas Athanasiou and Alexey Marchenko all returned to full practice Thursday.

Wings general manager Ken Holland said Athanasiou was ready to play in Friday's contest against the Columbus Blue Jackets after missing the last 11 games.
"I feel good today," Athanasiou said. "It's feeling strong. I think we did a real good job of rehabbing it and I feel back up to speed."
The NHL has a lot of teams that are fast and the Wings were missing two of their fastest players in Athanasiou and Darren Helm.
"He certainly adds an element of speed that's obviously important in the league, and he can self-create," Wings coach Jeff Blashill said. "It's hard to self-create in this league, and he's one of the guys that can do it. So he brings another guy in our lineup that can do a good job. That said, I think the guys that have been in the lineup have done a good job as well. When Andreas comes back he needs to make sure he's ready to be an impact player."
Helm remains out with a shoulder injury.
Athanasiou had four goals and one assist in 13 games before suffering a knee injury on a hit by Vancouver's Nikita Tryamkin on Nov. 10.
"I'm excited," Athanasiou said. "It's so tough being out and watching. I'm looking forward to it."
Because Athanasiou's game is predicated on speed, he had to make sure he could do everything on the ice before returning. Now he said he knows he is.
"I think just how I was getting better every single day no matter if it was stopping or turning, cutting back on that inside edge," Athanasiou said. "Like I said, it's been getting better every day and it feels good. I think everything is ready."
Petr Mrazek was in the starter's net for practice, but Howard participated fully in practice the day after Jared Coreau and Tomas Nosek returned to Grand Rapids.
"I'm ready to go and excited to get back in," Howard said. "I knew it wasn't going to be that long. Having the severe before and this one probably needed a couple days rest and then some rehab and that's exactly what we did and the groin responded well."
Howard left the Nov. 25 game in New Jersey after allowing one goal on three shots in 11:31. He has missed five games.
"It happened on the first goal, just went to push off the post and where they drilled the holes for the pegs they drilled just a little too big so when I went to push off there was no ice there and my skate was in a hole," Howard said.
At first, Howard thought he might be able to play through it.
"I really didn't want to come out," Howard said. "It was Piet's (Van Zant, athletic trainer) call. He asked me if it was tightening up more and more and I told him yes so he decided right then and there it was time to come out so hopefully I didn't get more injured."
Blashill said he leaves those decisions up to the player and Van Zant.
"I think in that case, if you're not sure on a groin-type issue, you don't want to make it worse," Blashill said. "I thought they made the right decision there and Jimmy's spent the right amount of time to make sure he's ready."
Marchenko has been out with a shoulder injury since leaving the Nov. 20 game after a hit by Calgary's Micheal Ferland.
"Not bad. I feel pretty good," Marchenko said. "Maybe tomorrow decision. It's pretty good to play. If it would be like playoffs, I would play."
If not Friday, then Marchenko said he would certainly play Sunday against Philadelphia. Marchenko has missed the last seven games.
"For sure it's great to feel better and better every day," Marchenko said. "You don't want to be injured, don't want to slip up. You don't want to feel like bad like injured shoulder bother you every time, you can't sleep so it's not a great feeling. Better when you feel healthy."
Getting players back and having to decide which ones to sit is a good problem for Blashill.
"We'd like to have more hard decisions," Blashill said. "The more hard decisions you have it means the more good players you have around. Sometimes you can go in reverse and say let's have easy decisions by people playing great. That's the one way to ensure yourself a spot in the lineup is by playing great.
"Sometimes the question I get is, 'What did I do to come out?' and my question back is, 'What did you do to stay in?' You got to make to make sure as a player your job is make sure you play as great as possible to make your case and then my job is to make those hard decisions and we'd like to make as many hard ones as possible by everyone playing great ultimately."
Still out are Helm, Tyler Bertuzzi (ankle), Brendan Smith (knee) and Justin Abdelkader (knee).
SCORING MORE: The Wings scored 10 goals in their three-game trip to Pittsburgh, New York and Winnipeg, giving them 69 for the season.
Although they are well behind the New York Rangers' gaudy total of 97, they're now ahead of eight other teams in the Eastern Conference.
"Obviously I like the number of goals," Blashill said. "I'd like to do it without giving up as many as we did. I like to be a little bit tighter defensively. I just think it's a constant pendulum of trying to create offense but not give up much defensively. I think long-term success you have to be real good in limiting your chances. If you limit your chances, you give your goalies the best opportunities to be impact players. I think we got to make sure that we continue to try to get offense but make better decision to minimize the chances against. Because I don't think it's one or the other, I think you can do both. I think you can be great offensively and great defensively. While I was happy that we were able to score a little bit more, we got to make sure we keep that goals-against down."
The Wings allowed 11 goals in the three games.