Evening news: Five Wings will be Upper Deck ‘Young Guns’; Kulfan on the road trip; Walleye Teddy Bear Toss scheduled for December 1st; Abdelkader, Knuble partner with MI health organizations

Of Red Wings-related note this evening:

1. According to Beckett’s Ryan Cracknell, four five Red Wings will be featured in Upper Deck’s 2018-19 Series One hockey set, with Filip Hronek (#214), Michael Rasmussen (#226), Libor Sulak (#227), Dennis Cholowski (#231) and Christoffer Ehn (#234) making their cardboard debuts as short-printed Young Guns;

2. Among the Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan’s off-day Wings reflections:

That young defense isn’t playing badly at all: It’s almost getting to the point where you begin to wonder what’ll happen when Trevor Daley (upper body), Jonathan Ericsson (upper body), Mike Green (infection) and Niklas Kronwall (lower body) begin returning to the lineup – all are day-to-day except for Green, who is more week-to-week — and some of these young players are sent to Grand Rapids.

Dennis Cholowski is here to stay, he’s played well. Filip Hronek and Libor Sulak have had ups and downs, though both have shown NHL-ability mostly, and getting sent back to Grand Rapids, you wonder how beneficial that really would be. Joe Hicketts appears low man on the totem pole among the four young defensemen, and could be the first one returned to the AHL.

What’s been impressive about the four is they’ve been aggressive, not afrad to make mistakes, they’ve played physical, and particularly in Cholowski’s case, they’ve injected offense into the equation, particularly on the power play.

Kulfan continues, and my short take on the Wings’ defense is simple: what we’re witnessing is what the Red Wings’ defense is going to look like in 2019-2020 this fall.

It won’t surprise me when everyone but Cholowski is sent back to Grand Rapids–the Griffins need the help, frankly–but I don’t believe that the Red Wings will end the season with only Cholowski on their blueline. Whether that happens via trade or attrition, I’m not sure, but the Wings’ management is always half-a-season behind the personnel situation, by next summer, they’ll have to make permanent room for “the kids.”

3. In the charitable news department, part 1: The Toledo Walleye have scheduled their Teddy Bear Toss for December 1st vs. the Indy Fuel;

4. And both Red Wings forward Justin Abdelkader and Grand Rapids Griffins assistant coach Mike Knuble have announced partnerships with Michigan health organizations:

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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!

One thought on “Evening news: Five Wings will be Upper Deck ‘Young Guns’; Kulfan on the road trip; Walleye Teddy Bear Toss scheduled for December 1st; Abdelkader, Knuble partner with MI health organizations”

  1. I watched the Wings (Kiddie D) on their west coast trip. The all played well (better than DeK). Cholo had around 48 mins total for both games and looked strong at the end of the Ducks game.

    I think they would improve in the NHL vs GR. They are bigger, faster, mistakes don’t bother them. But Vet Contracts are the only obstacle this year.

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