New Red Wings goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic spoke with the media today, and the matter-of-fact young man insisted that he’s not going to change much of anything in terms of his puck-stopping tendencies in Detroit, but what he does plan on doing is seizing his opportunity to become the Red Wings’ starting goaltender. The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan has more in his training camp notebook:
Nedeljkovic was coming off a season in which he was a finalist for the Calder Trophy (rookie of the year), with a 15-5-3 record, 1.90 goals-against average and .932 save percentage. He started nine playoff games for Carolina, with a .920 save percentage.
It seemed like Carolina had found its starting goaltender. But Nedeljkovic was a restricted free agent with arbitration rights, and Carolina decided to avert any risk of a salary it didn’t want.
The Wings signed Nedeljkovic to a two-year contract worth $6 million ($3 million cap hit per year).
Now they have a goaltender who could hold the net for a long time.
“It’s a great opportunity,” Nedeljkovic said of his joining the Wings. “When the trade happened you kind of see the writing on the wall and this was an opportunity for me to come in and hopefully play a lot of games, or potentially split 50-50 with Greisser (Thomas Greiss).”
Continued with a bit about Adam Erne and a bit about Filip Zadina…
