Khan notes that Vanek, Green hope to mentor Wings’ youngsters

MLive’s Ansar Khan reeexamines the comments made on Sunday by Red Wings GM Ken Holland, Thomas Vanek and Mike Green.

Both players expressed enthusiasm about playing with the Red Wings this upcoming season, and both players stated that they hope to mentor the next generation of Red Wings players:

“I loved it there. It was a good fit,” Vanek said. “I really liked the whole culture of the organization and the guys were great. We tried to make it work last year, it didn’t work out, so I’m happy it did this year.”

Vanek believes he can mentor young wingers like Anthony Mantha and Andreas Athanasiou and, if they make the team, Michael Rasmussen and Filip Zadina.

“I’ve done that the last 2-3 years, getting to know the young guys, and if they want some advice I’ll give it to them,” Vanek said. “In Detroit, I did that with AA, Mo, Larks (Dylan Larkin). They are great players. They just need a little bit of time. I’m there to help everyone, help myself. The good, young kids we have, Rasmussen, Zadina, I’ll be there to help them as well.”

…

“I love it in Detroit,” Green said. “I love the organization, I love the culture, I love the guys. I think it’s easy at times to go somewhere else, especially with the transition that’s going on in Detroit, but I feel I can be useful in the next couple of years to help the younger guys develop quicker and speed up that process.”

Continued

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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, and have worked with MLive and Kukla's Korner. Thank you for reading!

14 thoughts on “Khan notes that Vanek, Green hope to mentor Wings’ youngsters”

  2. one dimensional player mentoring kids that want to be one dimensional.
    sure fits with the wings 200′ game doesn’t it.

  3. they will mentor the young players that won’t have an opportunity to play due to poor roster management… smart

    1. Colleagues. In the real business, everything is much more complicated than it seems from the outside. You do not know a lot. Be patient. You can not be so negative.

      1. Hows this for positive.
        If the wings and kenny continue they way they have for the past 6 years. I am positive Chris Illitch will have to give away cars, like his dad did, to fill LCA.

        1. I’m not sure that Chris Ilitch would give away anything at Wings games if he could get away with it. He’s got a reputation as quite pinchy with his pennies.

          2. To me, that might indicate he’ll spend to a level that fills some business-derived percentage of seats plus two playoff rounds, but forget elite status under his Papa.

      2. Colleagues?

        Is your insight straight from Woodwood Avenue (Illitch Holdings)?

        1. Being “quite pinchy with his pennies” could lead to that.
          Like bellybuttons, each of us has an opinion! 🙂
          [BTW, note use of words such as ‘might’ and ‘could’]

      3. you assume too much and imply you know more? We see the actions of the team and by that can make determinations that our current management is lacking in proper vision and leadership.

        1. Nope–no implication of knowing ‘more,’ probably ‘know less’ is more accurate (since I live in South Texas).
          But the younger Ilitch, as George stated or implied (his business approach is also well documented), has a truly business oriented bottom line approach towards his many (I believe 9) business entities—and yes, that’s fine & good for him.
          So I have expected (after Papa passed} a more penurious approach, while hoping and praying we aren’t under constraints to not spend to the cap. Some teams, I believe are under that ownership constraint.
          So please explain what I assumed that was ‘too much.’ [Or maybe we should drop the subject! :-)]

          1. I was replying to lev, guess this site doesn’t place replies in proper order

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