Khan discusses Filip Hronek’s 2018-19 season possibilities

MLive’s Ansar Khan discusses the 2018-19 season outlook for Filip Hronek this morning:

2018-19 outlook: Hronek, the team’s third selection in the 2016 draft (53rd overall), had a strong rookie AHL season, following a solid OHL year in Saginaw after making the jump from the Czech Republic to North America.

Now he’s ready for the NHL. At least, the Red Wings hope so. They have four defense prospects who are close (Joe Hicketts, Libor Sulak and Dennis Cholowski the others) and believe Hronek leads the pack.

Hronek is mobile, moves the puck well, has offensive ability and shoots right. Those are elements the Red Wings’ blue line lacks.

If the Red Wings use Danny DeKeyser-Mike Green and Trevor Daley-Jonathan Ericsson as their top two defense pairings, Hronek play alongside Niklas Kronwall on the third pairing. Hronek figures to be competing with Nick Jensen for a spot in the lineup. Because he’s waiver-exempt, Hronek likely would return to Grand Rapids if he’s not playing regularly in Detroit.

Strength is usually an issue with younger players and Hronek improved last season by gaining 10 pounds. Despite his offensive ability, whether he plays and how many minutes he logs will depend mostly on how well he plays defensively.

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, 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.

4 thoughts on “Khan discusses Filip Hronek’s 2018-19 season possibilities”

  2. Are there really a lot of spots to fight for.? No goalies, one DMan and not sure about forwards (after Ras and Zadina).

    I am not comfortable hearing all this talk about who is close, maybe a number 7 hot dog eater. Most wings can’t be moved and the few others seem to be in Management’s pocket.

    This rebuild is really tough to understand.

    1. My feeling is who ever gets the nod for D at the start of the season is going to be ahead of Jensen even though Jensen was pretty consistent last season….just not that good either.

  3. I have 2 thoughts on our D this season;

    Since I’m personally familiar with Cholowski’s work in the WHL and I think he compares very favorably with the high-end talent I’ve seen in the last 6-8yrs out here (“high-end” = below the elites like Jones, Dumba, or Reilly but on-a-par with the likes of Cowen, Stone, Severson… solid top-4 types), & Iff the DRW think he’s 2nd on the depth-chart that means things are looking nice.

    And after seeing the Red and White game I’m pretty happy with the look of Veleno once again.

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