The Red Wings re-signed Christian Fischer for his grit, determination, heart and work ethic. Fischer is a strong 5-on-5 player and a good penalty-killer. This afternoon, the Hockey News’s Sam Stockton offered this take on Fischer’s media availability on Monday…
Having just signed a one-year, $1.25 million contract to remain in Detroit, Fischer greets the assembled media for his Zoom press conference from a boat, nautical gauges mounted on the wooden wall behind him. He expresses seriocomic surprise that anyone would stick around now that Patrick Kane and Vladimir Tarasenko have already spoken. Later on in his availability, with help from the confirmation of a disembodied voice offscreen, he reveals he is Zooming in from off the coast of Capri.
That Fischer delivers such idyllic offseason vibes should come as no surprise. Days before he spoke, his general manager Steve Yzerman said, in explanation of the desire to bring back the hard-working, light-scoring forward, “he’s a very popular player on our team. He’s very versatile on the ice…His character and his personality and the role he’s gonna play on our team are the biggest factors in bringing him back.”
Of course, the offseason didn’t begin so peachily. By Fischer’s account, there were “probably quite a few emotions” in the immediate aftermath of the Red Wings bitterly close playoff pursuit. Fischer himself was out of a contract for the second summer in a row. That shrouded his summer in uncertainty until the option he desired all along formally opened. “Once Steve called, I think it was a no-brainer on our side,” Fischer said. “We didn’t wait for another call.”
To Fischer, the willingness of superstars like Kane and Tarasenko to choose Detroit affirms the seriousness of the Red Wings’ ambitions: “We got Hall-of-Famers signing contracts with us. A guy like Patrick, he could go to any team…I think that says a lot about our organization. You look at Tarasenko, the guy’s just won. He has two Stanley Cups. He’s not coming just to play hockey. That guy obviously sees something in the Red Wings.”
Stockton continues, and Stockton’s fellow Wings columnist at the Hockey News, Connor Eargood, discusses Fischer and free agent signing Tyler Motte’s respective impacts on the Red Wings’ penalty-kill:
Looking at their transactions this offseason, though, it’s hard to see where that maturation happened on an individual level. Detroit traded shutdown defenseman Jake Walman to San Jose on a cap dump, then let battle-winning winger David Perron go in free agency. Before free agency, it re-signed the defensively milquetoast winger Patrick Kane and doubled down by adding winger Vladimir Tarasenko, who’s no shutdown player either. For a Red Wings roster that wanted to get better defensively, its offseason decisions didn’t particularly focus on defensive improvement.
That is, except for one area: the penalty kill. That’s where the Red Wings’ clearest defensive improvements have come, at least as much as one can say three months before the season starts.
Detroit signed defensive forward and penalty killer Tyler Motte to a one-year deal July 2, a day after re-signing Christian Fischer for another season. While neither player is particularly noticeable on the scoresheet, their play in the defensive zone limits opponents in a way that the Red Wings struggled to do so last season. Those traits particularly shine on the penalty kill, where Motte is an established leader and Fischer is a rising contributor.
Continued, with an extensive examination of the “fancy stats” which underlie Fischer and Motte’s performances…
