Month: August 2019

The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan discusses the state of the Red Wings’ defensive corps today, and Kulfan believes that the blueline will face the biggest questions and biggest changes:

Get ready for some change on the Red Wings’ roster.

Specifically on defense, where the opening night lineup isn’t likely to look the same at the trade deadline.

And, then, even slightly more different to begin the 2020-21 season.

No position group on the Wings is likely to undergo as much change as the defense, where contracts, age and maturation of some recent draft picks all will conspire to force a new look.

Continued

The Red Wings and Labatt Blue teamed up to help renovate Detroit’s Clark Park earlier this week, and Red Wings TV chronicled the event:

MLive’s Ansar Khan continues his set of Red Wings player profiles by examining defenseman Trevor Daley’s 2019-2020 season outlook this morning. Khan believes that Daley won’t finish the season as a member of the Red Wings organization:

2019-20 outlook: The Red Wings signed Daley to a three-year, $9.5 million free-agent contract on July 1, 2017, hoping the veteran, mobile, puck-mover would help boost a declining defense. Now, they will look to move Daley for a draft pick prior to the trade deadline.

Until then, the 15-year veteran figures to play regularly, if healthy, on the third pairing, possibly with Jonathan Ericsson, his partner for much of last season when they were in the lineup together.

Continued

MLive’s Brendan Savage reports that former Red Wings captain Henrik Zetterberg will be taking part in a celebrity golf outing on September 14th:

Former Detroit Red Wings captain Henrik Zetterberg will be the fourth participant in The Ally Challenge Celebrity Shootout, tournament organizers announced this morning.

Zetterberg will join Jack Nicklaus, Dierks Bentley and Kid Rock in the charity exhibition that will take place Sept. 14 during the second round of the $2 million Ally Challenge at Warwick Hills Golf and Country Club.

They’ll tee off on the 10th hole behind the final group of the day in the Ally Challenge.

“Adding Red Wings legend Henrik Zetterberg to the celebrity foursome was the final piece of what will be an amazing day on tournament Saturday,” said Andrea Zimmer, chief marketing and public relations officer for Ally.

Zetterberg and Bentley will play as a team against Nicklaus and Kid Rock in a nine-hole, match-play scramble. They’ll play for $25,000 to benefit Genesee County Habitat for Humanity and United Way of Genesee County.

Continued

As noted by WDIV, today the Red Wings are holding a blood drive at Little Caesars Arena in cooperation with the American Red Cross:

To help address the emergency blood shortage, the American Red Cross and Meijer, Inc. are partnering for a blood drive today from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. in the Via Concourse at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit.

Currently, the Red Cross said it has less than a three-day supply of most blood types and less than a two-day supply of type O blood.

Everyone who goes to donate will receive a pair of complimentary tickets to a Detroit Red Wings and Detroit Pistons preseason game.

There will also be other prize giveaways throughout the day.

The Toledo Blade’s Mark Monroe reports that the Walleye will have to fill a big hole in their lineup, literally and figuratively, as Ben Storm has retired:

Big forward Ben Storm, who played for the Toledo Walleye last season, has announced his retirement.

The 6-foot-7 and 230-pound left winger finished with the second most penalty minutes on the team (103) last season.

Storm, a native of Laurium, Mich., in the Upper Peninsula, played in 54 games during the regular season for Toledo. He had 13 points with five goals and eight assists. Storm then played in all 24 ECHL playoff games for the Walleye, who reached the Kelly Cup Finals for the first time. Storm produced nine points with two goals and seven assists in the postseason.

Storm, 25, was selected by the Colorado Avalanche in the sixth round of the 2013 NHL draft.

“The Toledo Walleye are a top-notch organization with amazing fan support,” Storm wrote on Twitter. “The memories I made during the playoff run are incredible, that’ll last for the rest of my life.”

Continued

Red Wings play-by-play announcer Ken Daniels and color commentator Mickey Redmond appeared on WDIV’s Sports Final Edition on Sunday night, speaking with Jamie Edmonds for seven-and-a-half minutes. WDIV posted a clip of the interview this morning, and while it’s not embeddable, it’s worth your time…

And if you don’t already know, the main topic was the Celebrity Roast of Mickey Redmond, which will be taking place on Saturday, September 7th at the MotorCity Casino.

The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan is examining the Red Wings’ positional depth over the course of a 3-part series of articles, and Kulfan kicks things off with an evaluation of the team’s goaltending position:

With the Red Wings expected to be sellers at the deadline again in the 2019-20 season, and [Jimmy] Howard on a one-year contract, there’s likely a ton of rumors about Howard’s future again.

Howard’s situation will go a long way in determining how the goaltending position will look going forward.

Howard and Jonathan Bernier held the position last season and will do so again beginning in October.

Prospect Filip Larsson will begin his professional career in Grand Rapids, with veteran Calvin Pickard backing Larsson.

Signing Pickard in free agency and establishing some depth in the goaltending position – and a bridge between Howard/Bernier and Larsson – was one of general manager Steve Yzerman’s goals.

Continued

The Hockey News’s Matt Larkin penned a column discussing the “Stanley Cup Windows” of the Atlantic Division’s teams, and as you might expect, the Red Wings’ “window” hasn’t opened yet:

REBUILDERS: Detroit Red Wings, Ottawa Senators

The Wings and Senators know who they are at this point. New Detroit GM Steve Yzerman played things conservatively this off-season. He likely knows he’s hamstrung by the collection of ugly leftover veteran contracts he inherited and didn’t make the mistake of believing his team is ready to contend yet. Detroit has begun doing something it never got to do during its 25-year playoff streak: hoard high-end prospects. Recent first-rounders Filip Zadina, Joe Veleno and Moritz Seider will eventually elevate the team’s talent level to support leader Dylan Larkin and project Michael Rasmussen but, aside from Zadina, won’t be making an NHL impact this season. Detroit remains years away from contention.

The Athletic’s Eric Duhatschek chose to engage in a thought experiment this past week, contracting the NHL from a 32-league team to a 12-team league, and the results thereof would be positive for the Red Wings, as Max Bultman noted:

Based off the question “what if the NHL never expanded beyond 12 teams?” we at The Athletic conducted a “contraction draft” to condense the teams’ talent pools and show what the average roster would look like — how absurd the talent concentration would be, but also what would be lost by keeping the league small. Each team got to protect four active players to preserve its essence, but, as will be no surprise to Red Wings’ fans, that left me at a bit of a disadvantage as their pseudo-GM. Toronto protected four superstars. My last spot was down to Filip Hronek — a rookie who hasn’t even played a full season — and Tyler Bertuzzi, a great player for the current Red Wings, and a prime example of how much of the game would be lost if the league was still so small …but one who ultimately didn’t end up drafted in our simulation.

I kept Hronek for two reasons: one, I didn’t want to protect just forwards; and two, the ultimate assessment of our teams was to be done via simulation. I was hoping Hronek’s combination of production and youth could give him a slight boost in the analytics models.

And when it came time to make some picks, my draft strategy followed a similar set of goals. I consulted with friend of The Athletic (and Analytics Knower) Prashanth Iyer before the draft and decided to prioritize elite forwards early on, load up on defense in the middle rounds and then try and find some late-round gems to fill out the bottom six. I couldn’t have been happier when, after drafting MacKinnon second overall, I got Taylor Hall and Matthew Tkachuk at the next turn. Combining them with Dylan Larkin, that gave me four borderline elite forwards to build around, with keeper Anthony Mantha and middle-round sleeper Viktor Arvidsson filling out the top six.

Bultman continues (paywall)