Morning news: On ‘strength and conditioning,’ Mike Green and draft pick discussion

Of Red Wings-related note this morning:

1. In the latest episode of The Red and White Authority podcast, DetroitRedWings.com’s Arthur J. Regner speaks with Red Wings strength and conditioning coach Mike Kadar:

2. Hockeybuzz’s Bob Duff examined some of the major personnel decisions that the Red Wings must make this offseason, including Mike Green’s future, the team’s courting of Ilya Kovalchuk, their need for a back-up goaltender and the team’s cooling on re-signing Martin Frk:

This isn’t as much as choice for Detroit as it is for impending unrestricted free agent defenseman Mike Green. He’s been a Red Wing for the past three seasons, and the Wings made it abundantly clear a while back that they’d like to keep him in the fold, tabling an offer to Green not long after the NHL trade deadline passed and he wasn’t moved to another team.

Green hasn’t jumped on the offer, though. He’s 33 and has yet to win a Stanley Cup, and that certainly figures to weigh heavily into his decision. It would appear that at the very least he’s going to wait until July 1 and see what the market has to offer him.

Losing Green would prove costly, because there’s not much out there this summer in terms of available UFA defensemen. The Wings won’t have a shot at Washington’s John Carlson, and beyond him the class of 2018 includes the likes of Jack Johnson, Calvin de Haan, John Moore, Thomas Hickey and Roman Polak.

Continued

3. The Athletic’s Craig Custance discusses the Wings’ options with their 6th overall pick. As you might imagine, the situation is somewhat fluid as of this morning:

6. Detroit Red Wings: The Red Wings’ preference is to take a defenseman or center with this pick, and it could be that the best player available is a winger. That makes Detroit a real candidate to trade down, but there’s no appetite internally to drop out of the top 10. Plus, the Red Wings already have another first-round pick and two high second-round picks. All that ammunition makes Detroit a team to watch in this spot. There are a lot of teams that would love a crack at the cluster of defensemen in this range and they know Ken Holland is a deal-maker, so there will be calls.

4. Finally, the Free Press’s Helene St. James has posted a mock draft (having the Wings select U of M defenseman Quinn Hughes at #6), a list of prospects both available in the neighborhood of the 6th overall and 30th overall picks; St. James offered a set of booms and busts picked 6th overall throughout draft history, and this morning, the Free Press posted a video of the Wings’ in-the-top-10 picks since 1983, when they drafted Steve Yzerman:

 

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George Malik

My name is George Malik, and I'm the Malik Report's editor/blogger/poster. I have been blogging about the Red Wings since 2006, when MLive hired me to work their SlapShots blog, and I joined Kukla's Korner in 2011 as The Malik Report. I'm starting The Malik Report as a stand-alone site, hoping that having my readers fund the website is indeed the way to go to build a better community and create better content.

One thought on “Morning news: On ‘strength and conditioning,’ Mike Green and draft pick discussion”

  1. This draft is going to be so interesting, largely because of the Wings being right in the middle of things at #6. There’s a group of 10 players that seem to have separated themselves from the rest. The #1 and #2 picks seem quite certain but after that the rest of the top 10 could go in any order whatsoever…and there could very well be teams moving up or down early on.

    I can’t wait till Friday. I just hope I’m as excited after the Wings 1st rd pick(s) as before.

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