Month: November 2020

The Score’s Matt Teague issues “NHL offseason grades” to each and every one of the Atlantic Division’s 16 teams, and he gives the Red Wings fairly high marks for a busy “summer’s” worth of additions and subtractions:

Several longtime regulars won’t be back with the Red Wings after Detroit took a few more offseason steps on its slow ascent back to contention.

With the old guard out, general manager Steve Yzerman shifted his attention to the team’s young nucleus. Yzerman locked up goal-scorer Mantha to a four-year deal, gave Fabbri an extension, and inked Bertuzzi for one year to keep his RFA status intact next offseason.

The Red Wings also wisely landed a second-round pick for taking Staal‘s expiring contract from the Rangers. The 33-year-old won’t necessarily improve Detroit’s chances of winning, but his veteran presence could go a long way for the club’s young core.

Bringing in Greiss to play alongside Jonathan Bernier gives Detroit a respectable tandem in goal, though it remains to be seen how successful the German puck-stopper will be without the Islanders’ strong defensive system in front of him.

Overall, the Red Wings took care of their in-house talent and added some veteran pieces that should make the team more competitive than it was in 2019-20.

Grade: B+

Continued;

The Athletic posted three items of Red Wings-related note this morning.

1. First, The Athletic’s Max Bultman asks Red Wings fans to fill out a semi-annual fan survey as to the state of the organization;
2. Next, James Mirtle offers a set of “Future Power Rankings” for the 2023-2024 season, ranking the Wings 6th overall (I can’t post the photo describing the Wings’ rankings, but Mirtle’s commentary tells the story:

Continue reading A trio of tidbits from The Athletic

This one almost slipped under the radar. Pavel Datsyuk’s signature deke-and-score goal vs. Marty Turco battles Evgeny Malkin for the latest round of Sportsnet’s “The Greatest: Goal of the 21st Century’s” “Round of 8”:

Sportsnet’s Mark Spector discussed the AHL’s “Return to Play” plan with AHL president Scott Howson, and at present, it doesn’t sound like the AHL’s status is any clearer than that of their parent league’s situation:

While the NHL tries to put a number on just how much money they are willing to lose while pounding a rounded version of the 2020-21 season through an increasingly square hole, its primary development league is waiting patiently for a turn at Commissioner Gary Bettman’s negotiating table.

And you can probably guess what they need to talk about.

“It’s got to make sense,” began Scott Howson, the AHL’s new president and CEO. “If we’re able to play it’s going to be more about player supply and player development this year than anything else. Without fans in the buildings, it’s certainly not going to be about any meaningful revenue. So yes, we’re going to want to know what the NHL is doing before we finalize what our plan is going to be.”

By “what the NHL is doing,” Howson means any number of things. For one, if the NHL doesn’t play, the AHL will not play either.

But Howson will also have to know how the NHL plans to support the 12 AHL teams (out of 31) that are not owned by an NHL club. What is the NHL is doing about the three Western Canadian teams with farm clubs in the U.S. — Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton in Utica, Stockton and Bakersfield, respectively — and how are they supposed to call players up with a 14-day, cross-border quarantine in place?

And while we’re asking, how can a minor league as ticket-dependent as the AHL weather a season that may pass without a single ticket being sold? Not without a lot of help from the NHL, that’s how.

Continued; remember, the Red Wings do not own the Grand Rapids Griffins, so, for the Griffins to play, the Red Wings are going to have to offer some sort of assistance…

There was only one Red Wings prospect in action today, and he came up on the short end of his game:

In the SHL, Joe Veleno finished at -1 with 1 shot, 2 penalty minutes and a 40% faceoff winning percentage in an increasing 16:46 of ice time as the Malmo Redhawks lost 3-0 to the Vaxjo Lakers. Malmo needs to gain some traction in the SHL standings fast.

The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan answers “burning questions” in a subscriber-only article today, and among his more interesting answers are the following:

What will [the NHL’s 2020-2021 season] look like? It’ll definitely be a shortened season, somewhere between 48 and 60 games, with the playoffs completed before the July Summer Olympics.

For this one season, the divisions will be realigned with a greater emphasis on geography, including an all-Canadian division because of the borders being closed.

Similar to Major League Baseball, the NHL is likely to go to a heavy, maybe exclusive, intra-division schedule, which could ignite some rivalries. And in Canada, that realignment should make fans go bonkers with excitement.

Who will be in the Wings’ division? There’s been so many guesses, so much speculation, but here’s another one.

How about the Wings in some sort of “Central Division” with Buffalo, Carolina, Columbus, Chicago, Nashville, Minnesota and Pittsburgh. Travel would be minimized, and some rivalries would be kept alive or reignited (Detroit-Chicago!).

But make no mistake: It’s going to be impossible to please every team and fan base, and difficult to evenly distribute these teams geographically.

Continued (paywall)

I wrote up a little “What I’m Thankful for” spiel on Facebook, and I’m sharing it with you here because I’m writing this entry on a laptop computer that the readers of The Malik Report subsidized. I’m still blown away by the fact that Moonshot is my workstation now, and today I’m particularly grateful for the small community of readers that forms TMR.

I hope that you are celebrating American Thanksgiving as safely as possible this morning, and I hope that you’re well as possible given the situation.

Also:

You know you were born a certain distance from the U.S.-Canadian border when you involuntarily describe Thanksgivings (plural) as “American” or “Canadian”–and inform people that they must clarify whether London is in Ontario or England.— George Malik (@georgemalik) November 26, 2020

The Free Press’s Helene St. James answers a reader’s question as to which of the Red Wings’ free agent signings was most astute this morning, and St. James answers in triplicate–praising the signings of Thomas Greiss (most important), Vladislav Namestnikov (best signing) and Bobby Ryan (most underrated) in a subscriber-only article. I’m going to focus on the Ryan signing:

The most underrated signing was Ryan. For one year, $1 million, the Wings got a 33-year-old former 30-goal scorer motivated to reboot his career after a rough 2019-20 (Ryan missed three months dealing with substance abuse issues, and, after playing in just 24 games, was bought out by the Ottawa Senators). It speaks to Yzerman’s thoroughness that even for a one-year contract, he did a lot of research on Ryan, partly to make sure he’d be a good fit in a mostly young locker room. It speaks volumes about Ryan, who wasn’t exactly kicking away suitors, that he did his own research, reaching out to Dylan Larkin to get a feel for the culture and character in the Wings’ locker room.

Ryan could find a longer-term home with the Wings — or he could appeal at the trade deadline to a contender looking for scoring help, and be flipped for a draft pick. There’s no risk, just potential reward with this signing.

Continued (paywall); I’m not a big believer in stacking a rebuilding team’s roster with veterans–I prefer to “let the kids play”–but I do believe that the additions of a couple of key mentors can stabilize the team’s youthful core, and Ryan appears to be a near-perfect fit in that department, regardless of how long he spends with the organization.

NHL.com’s “31 in 31” series focuses on the Detroit Red Wings today, and NHL.com has posted five articles and a video in which Dan Rosen and Nicholas J. Cotsonika discuss the questions facing the Wings and the possible effects of the team’s offseason additions:

As for the text component of the “31 in 31” preview, Cotsonika emphasizes the point that the Red Wings and their fans shouldn’t get their hopes up regarding winning a Stanley Cup championship out of the blue just yet, but Cotsonika does note that the Wings made multiple free agent additions to rebound from a truly dreadful 2019-2020 campaign…

They are taking a patient, methodical approach to their rebuild. General manager Steve Yzerman declines to give a timeline for a return to the Stanley Cup Playoffs, which the Red Wings have missed the past four seasons.

They need to wait for the development of top prospects like forward Lucas Raymond, the No. 4 pick in the 2020 NHL Draft, and defenseman Moritz Seider, the No. 6 pick in the 2019 NHL Draft.

But that does not mean they were content to stand pat after last season, when they went 17-49-5, finished last in the League and had the worst points percentage (.275) since the NHL salary cap was introduced in 2005-06.

“We’ll just kind of continue to do what we’re doing,” Yzerman said. “We’ll look for ways to improve the team. The plan isn’t just to sit and not try to improve and get better from year to year. We’re going to try and get better from year to year. The reality is, you’re limited to what you can do, and you’re limited, or you’re restricted, by the time it takes for each prospect to develop. [Becoming a contender is] just not as simple as just going out and making a bunch of trades and getting really good players and signing a bunch of free agents.”

And Cotsonika’s “Three questions facing the Detroit Red Wings” discuss both improvement on the ice, and a certain bit of off-ice business that will be taken care of prior to the start of the 2020-2021 season:

Continue reading NHL.com’s ’31 in 31′ series examines the Red Wings

Red Wings prospect Givani Smith penned a new installment of his “Taking Flight” blog on DetroitRedWings.com, discussing the ways in which Detroit and Grand Rapids’ going-on-nine-month-long offseason has affected him:

Whether I’m in Canada or the U.S., I have stayed in contact with the Wings. Dan Cleary calls me, Shawn Horcoff calls me and Ben Simon, the head coach in Grand Rapids, he calls me and we just talk. Our conversations, they’re pretty generic. With Ben Simon, we just talk about what’s new, what’s new with myself, with him, what has he heard between the ongoing season and how we’re going to start the season or anything. With Horcs and Clears, it’s just more like catching up on things and making sure I’m still doing the right program and on step to achieve my goals that I want to achieve.

During this extended break, my training, if anything I’ve been able to do it better. With all this time, I’ve learned to realize that there’s many different styles and different ways to do things, to get things done. Through all this time, I’ve been learning and spending my time wisely and just trying to get better as a person, as a player, and also just learning new skills. I also do watch what I eat. I don’t count my calories, but I watch what I put into my body because whatever I put into my body, that’s how I’m going to feel. As I said earlier, my routine is pretty routine. A typical day for me would be I’d wake up, head to training for about two to three hours and then just come back, relax and hang out with my brothers back at home, study, and then pretty much repeat the whole process.

Continued