What are the chances NHL players will opt-out themselves?
“It’s something that’s pretty real,” Red Wings forward Dylan Larkin said during the NHL/NHLPA Player Media Tour last week. “You see it in guys’ contracts; everyone’s preparing for a [work stoppage] with signing bonus money. I don’t think we’re very happy with the deal we got; we’re looking for more for ourselves. I think it’s very real but … I definitely don’t want that to happen. [I’m] pretty grateful for every day in the NHL, so I wouldn’t want to waste time being young and entering a prime age.”
Larkin, 22, signed a six-year, $30.5 million extension with the Winged Wheel this summer. He’s one of the rare all-star- calibre players to not get some sort of “lockout protection” in the form of a signing bonus for the 2020-21 season, which will paid out on July 1 before any work stoppage would go into effect.
According to CapFriendly.com, 78 players will collect $252 million in signing bonuses for 2020-21 to protect against potential lost wages. That might give you an indication as to what players (and agents) think about the likelihood of a work stoppage.
Updated repeatedly at 6:39 PM: Here are the stories available regarding Henrik Zetterberg’s decision to step away from hockey, on a source-by-source basis:
“For me, I’ve kind of been living this for a while,” Zetterberg said. “Starting in January last year I knew something was not quite right. I found a way to play through that season but kind of mid-summer here when we hoped it was going to get a little bit better and it kind of wasn’t. I went to see Dr. Camissa last week and got the final result and nothing really had changed, so that’s kind of when it kicked in.
“Obviously, it is emotional. It’s been 15 years here. Even though I knew I was on my last couple years, I wish that I could have played a little bit longer.”
Because the condition is degenerative, general manager Ken Holland said that there is no solution that would have allowed Zetterberg to safely continue to play.
“Part of the degenerative condition is significant arthritis,” Holland said. “Nothing can be done, no back surgery, no rehab, no more time off is going to have any positive impact. Obviously if he plays professional hockey, it’s going to accelerate the degeneration and if he does get a bad hit or something, then he’s risking a significant back surgery. Henrik has decided that his quality of life is more important than taking the risk of back surgery.”
Wakiji continues, and the Red Wings posted videos of Holland and Zetterberg’s pressers, as well as comments from Dylan Larkin and Niklas Kronwall:
Red Wings captain Henrik Zetterberg “stepped away from the game” today, which is a nice way of saying that he’s retired from hockey, but can’t formally retire because he’s going to go on the LTIR for the next three years.
For this observer and partisan Wings fan, being there in the first person to witness Holland and Zetterberg speak was…a little surreal.
First and foremost, Holland spoke, dropping the highly-anticipated bombshell that Zetterberg would no longer be able to play per recommendations from Wings team doctor Douglas Plagens and Dr. Frank Cammisa, who performed the discectomy on Zetterberg in 2014. Holland was as blunt and as brief as Holland can possibly be regarding the situation, and so, several feet away from me, the career of one of the most celebrated Wings ever drew to a close…
And then, in the bowels of a rink where cell phone coverage is spotty and the internet is up-and-down, Zetterberg himself came out, and a person who I admire as a human being first and a hockey player second did his best to keep things together while explaining why he’s stepping away from the game. There were more than a few moments when the corners of his mouth quivered from emotion, but the captain kept his cool, delivered a unified message, and that was that.
Except for me, that wasn’t that…I had to wrap my head around the finality of what had just taken place while covering the rest of training camp, watching the practices, peeking at the scrimmages and listening in and occasionally chiming in during the media availabilities that stretched from 9:30 until 3:30.
You probably know more right now about Henrik Zetterberg’s condition and comments than I do, and that’s very specifically because my marching orders come from you, and I was sent up here to cover all of training camp, not just part of it. That’s yielded a dearth of information that I wish I could have posted, but…I had to pay attention to the other 70-something players, too, and get in on the scrums to get good audio.
I’m sorry. I feel like I’ve failed by not being able to be behind the computer picking up Swedish stories and not being able to follow all the disparate threads at once. This was a weird day, and I’ll likely spend the vast majority of my afternoon and evening not writing, but reading and translating.
Training camp itself was fast-paced, hard-charging, and involved a lot of dump-and-chase recovery drills as the Wings’ players worked on their outlet and breakout passes and plays. I can tell you that wearing shot-blocking protection on the gloves is the new fad among the Wings’ players equipment-wise, and a couple of players have changed brands. I can tell you that Jonathan Bernier looks quite good at first glance, while Thomas Vanek is still slow, and some of the Walleye’s signings look like they mean business, as do the Griffins in attendance.
More on that later, I suppose, because the captain has stepped away…and I got to see it happen live, which was very, very strange.
Red Wings forward Thomas Vanek and goaltender Jonathan Bernier had late media availabilities on Friday, and both players discussed their reasons for (re)joining the Red Wings, their memories of playing with and against Henrik Zetterberg, and their respective outlooks for the 2018-19 season:
Here are my audio clips from the first day of training camp. Niklas Kronwall and Dylan Larkin almost entirely addressed Henrik Zetterberg’s announcement; Michael Rasmussen and Joe Hicketts discussed their first days of camp, and coach Blashill blended talk about Zetterberg with discussion about the first day of training camp:
Red Wings forward Henrik Zetterberg has chosen to step away from hockey as he has a degenerative back condition that would only worsen with play. Ken Holland and then Zetterberg spoke with the media this morning, and Zetterberg was very emotional in discussing the end of his playing career.
Here are audio clips of Holland and Zetterberg’s pressers. I’ll cover as much as I can when I get back to the hotel as the wifi is…something else…here at the rink.
“I think after two years of not being good enough, it’s as wide open a camp as we’ve had here in a long, long time,” Blashill said. “I hope that a bunch of guys we’ve had on our team got better this summer. Then I hope a bunch of young guys are in position to really challenge and try to take other guys’ jobs.”
The Red Wings anticipate the most competitive camp and preseason they’ve had in some time. After drafting high the past two years, the team has assembled a group of talented prospects, some who are expected to be NHL-ready this season.
When camp starts Friday at Centre I.C.E., forwards Michael Rasmussen, Filip Zadina and Evgeny Svechnikov and defensemen Filip Hronek, Joe Hicketts, Libor Sulak and Dennis Rasmussen will be among the group of young players vying for jobs. At least two spots at forward and one on defense are open.
“We’re hoping young people not only are pushing for jobs on the team but pushing for bigger roles on the team,” general manager Ken Holland said. “Part of that is these younger players got to come in and either take a job or take a bigger role on the team. As we go forward, either this year or next year, the plan is to work more and more young people into our team and then hopefully they’re going to have a bigger role on our team and they’ll eventually take the team over.
“It takes a period of time, it doesn’t happen over a month or a few games. You earn that right. That’s what the last generation of Red Wings did. They came in and took it – (Pavel) Datsyuk, (Henrik) Zetterberg, (Niklas) Kronwall, (Johan) Franzen and all those players, they came in and earned the ice time. That’s why we were able to, from 2005 to 2015, have a great decade. I don’t believe in entitlement. Those younger players got to come in and earn the ice time.”
Are there parallels between how a person played and how they coach?
Just because you’re a phenomenal player doesn’t mean you’re going to be a phenomenal coach. And I don’t think because you’re a terrible player you’re going to be a terrible coach. It’s good to draw on your experiences both good and bad and to use those experiences to help convey to these players that, hey, we’re not that far removed from the game, and to learn from our mistakes and to use our experiences that were positive to help these guys along.
The roster is not close to being set, but can you comment on just the pool of players that will be eligible for Grand Rapids this season?
Detroit has always done a phenomenal job of, I won’t say stocking, but putting good veteran players down here to help the younger players develop. Now that being said, there’s a lot of opportunity that’s available in Detroit right now, so I don’t want to say ‘he’s going to be here, he’s going to be here’ because you never know. Up top, they’ve got an open mind.
The old philosophy in Detroit was the tie goes to the veteran, the older guy. Now I think if it gets to a close fight between a younger guy and a vet, they’re going to try to find a way to help that young guy in a rebuild to make Detroit. There’s a lot of opportunity in Detroit, but in terms of guys who could be here, we’re looking at some guys that have great offensive capabilities. We’re going to be a little bit young defensively and we’ll have to learn quickly.
How excited are you for the start of training camp?
There’s always that rejuvenation. It’s a new season, it’s fresh, everyone’s got a clean slate. It’s the excitement of the new year and a new beginning for everyone. It’s another season but it’s another adventure with a different group of guys; that’s always exciting. The adventure, that’s what you remember the most. It’s not the wins and losses, it’s the people and the players along the way, and the learning mistakes and the learning accomplishments.
I had my annual pre-training camp anxiety attack, so I was down and out for a couple of hours this afternoon. As a result, here are this evening’s crop of Red Wings-related stories:
1. The Red Wings posted a clip of Jeff Blashill’s Thurdsay presser with the media. The Free Press,MLive and the Detroit News also posted shorter clips of the full 12-minute media availability:
Wings fans must ask themselves one question? Would this be the way they would want to remember Yzerman?
The GM can’t pick up the puck in a tie game and score a memorable goal. He can’t be the hero. Only the goat.
Perhaps Wings owners Mike and Marian Ilitch family best expressed the feelings of the Wings faithful as Yzerman left to be GM of the Lightning.
“It’s hard to imagine Steve Yzerman in anything other than the red-and-white Winged Wheel,” the Ilitches said in a statement at the time. “He has been synonymous with the Red Wings and Hockeytown for as long as most of us can remember.”
To run the Wings, Yzerman would risk more than the difference between winning and losing. He’d risk his reputation.
