Month: September 2021

From DetroitRedWings.com’s Ethan Sears:

When Red Wings executive vice president and general manager Steve Yzerman spoke to reporters ahead of training camp, he made sure to note the physical growth of Joe Veleno.

“I don’t know if you had a chance to see him but he’s pretty fit,” Yzerman said. “Like, he’s thick.”

Indeed, Veleno is listed at 206 pounds, up from 198 previously, and Yzerman is far from the only one to notice.

“The physical gains are undeniable,” Blashill said. “He’s really made himself a man. He’s turned his body into a pro body, into an NHL body. He’s way bigger and stronger than he was two years ago so he can hold onto the puck, he can defend down low.”

Added Moritz Seider, who played against Veleno when both were in Sweden last season: “It’s hard to get him off the puck. It’s really cool to see.”

After playing five games at the end of last season, the 21-year-old Veleno is competing for a roster spot in camp. Yzerman said that for young players, his emphasis will be on making sure they play enough minutes each night to develop, whether it be in Detroit or in the minors.

Continued

FYI:

Made it! ? pic.twitter.com/EBX6gMHQB3— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) September 25, 2021

Enjoy…

The Free Press’s Ryan Ford chose six of the most notable Red Wings rookie defensemen as examples for which Moritz Seider must strive to equal or exceed during his rookie NHL season, and his comparisons include Red Kelly, Vladimir Konstantinov, and, of course, Nicklas Lidstrom:

[Ulf] Samuelsson was right about the offense, but a little off about everything else. After just 18 games, Lidstrom was already second in the league among all players in plus-minus at plus-15 (behind his partner on the blue line, Brad McCrimmon, at plus-16), first among rookies in assists (11) and tied for first among rookies in points (14). Named NHL Rookie of the Month in November and December 1991, Lidstrom hit the All-Star break with seven goals and 33 assists in 45 games, with a plus-30 rating. A month after that, the Lidstrom legend had already taken root, as coach Bryan Murray raved to the Freep: “He’s so poised and under control,” Murray said. “I’ll bet if I told him he would be playing 45 minutes a game, there’d be no problem at all.”

Lidstrom did slow down a bit in the second half; he had four goals and 16 assists in 35 games, finishing the season with 11 goals and 49 assists. That slight slump likely cost him the Calder; he finished tied for second, with 23 first-place votes, behind a future Hall of Famer: the Vancouver Canucks’ Pavel Bure, who had 26 firsts. (Lidstrom tied with New York Rangers wing Tony Amonte, who led all rookies with 35 goals.) Still, there were plenty of honors in Lidstrom’s future: 11 All-Star Game berths, 10 All-NHL first-team nods, seven Norris Trophies, six seasons as captain of the Wings, four Stanley Cups, the 2002 Conn Smythe Trophy (as the postseason MVP), induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2015, and, of course, his No. 5 raised to the rafters at Joe Louis Arena and Little Caesars Arena.

Continued (without a paywall, for once)

The Free Press’s Helene St. James posted a subscriber-only article regarding Alex Nedeljkovic this morning, discussing his summertime trade to the Red Wings and the high likelihood that Nedljkovic and Thomas Greiss will split time in Detroit’s crease this season:

Early expectations are that the Wings will split starts between Nedeljkovic and Thomas Greiss, who had a disappointing start but solid finish last season, the first of a two-year contract the 35-year-old signed last October.

“I think both are going to have an impact on our season,” coach Jeff Blashill said. “I certainly think that both will get looks early. We’ll get through the exhibition season and see how each one is playing. We have enough back-to-backs certainly, and as we watch the exhibition season, we’ll get a plan in place where we have guys in position to start and get their feet underneath them. And then as the year plays out, the guy that plays the best will play, and if they both play great, they’ll both play.”

The six days the Wings are spending in Traverse City are easing Nedeljkovic’s transition.

“You’ve got a lot of new faces to learn and a lot of faces to finally actually meet, and then on top of that, you have to learn a new system, and get acclimated and build new chemistry,” he said. “So these few days up here are going to be immensely beneficial for everybody.

“The intensity has been high, the speed has been good. The pace has been great. You can tell guys have been itching to get going. Summer skates are great — they’re fun, they’re relaxed and easy going. But there’s nothing like an actual practice.”

Continued (paywall)

The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn offers his Red Wings season preview this morning, and it’s not all gloom and doom…okay, mostly, it is:

Even after six years at or near the bottom, the Red Wings still find themselves in the exact same spot. The team’s likeliest landing spot is right around the bottom five once again with a near 50-50 shot at being a bottom five team. Being in the bottom third is even more certain at 80 percent, which is roughly the same as the team’s chances of being one of the bottom three teams in the Atlantic. There’s a wide chasm between the top four teams and the bottom three teams, but even fifth in the division looks like a bit of a pipe dream.

The division isn’t the main reason Detroit’s chances are so low — the Red Wings have a poor team — but it does play a role. The next best team, a Pacific-based team, is projected to finish with just one more point but has nearly twice the odds of making the postseason. Either way, Detroit is a long shot.

That’s probably for the best though as this roster isn’t quite ready to take the next step. While the rebuild has been going on for a while, it hasn’t exactly been fruitful in terms of building a future core. Detroit has been consistently bad, but that hasn’t resulted in a top-three pick, which has led to a lower chance of drafting a franchise cornerstone. 

It’s been slow and steady, but for this rebuild to be worthwhile the Red Wings need to find some elite pieces to build around. The current roster isn’t exactly flush with those, although there is one very exciting newcomer that looks ready to check some boxes.

Continued (paywall)

The Detroit Red Wings built upon their first day of training camp as Thursday gave way to Friday’s second set of sessions at Centre ICE Arena.

On a day where everyone was more dialed-in, from the six skaters and goaltender on Team Lindsay to the bigger squads in Teams Howe and Delvecchio, the Red Wings’ coaches put their charges through their paces in sets of battle drills, puck retrievals, dump-and-chase plays and especially power play and penalty-killing situations. The players were skated–hard.

Coaches Doug Houda (defense, penalty-killing) and Alex Tanguay (offense, power play) also worked with split squads during parts of practice, ensuring that players who might not necessarily earn a spot on the PP or PK unit familiarized themselves with the Wings’ systems of play, including the wrinkles that Tanguay is adding to the PP.

Continue reading Impressions from the second day of Red Wings training camp 2021

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…

John Keating of Bally Sports Detroit spoke with Shawn Horcoff regarding all things prospect-related, including Moritz Seider’s status, over the course of a 5-minute conversation:

Updated 2x at 6:56 PM: Red Wings defenseman Moritz Seider spoke in surprisingly hushed tones when he addressed the media today…

But Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff duly notes that it’s officially Seider season, after a long set of social media crushes on the German defender turned Swedish Hockey League superstar, and while Seider is genuinely happy to have finally reached the cusp of making an NHL team’s roster, he’s not letting the memes go to his head:

“I’m super happy right now,” Seider said. “It was a big wait to get here. I’m really proud of myself, making my way up here and now I’m here and I’m really looking forward to it.”

As for all the social media buzz about Seider, touting him as the German Lidstrom, insisting that there will be nothing but blue skies in the Red Wings’ future from the moment he plays his first shift, well, hate to break it to you but your crush – yeah, he hasn’t really noticed you.

“It’s definitely not getting in my head,” Seider said of the social media frenzy surrounding him. “I just want to be around the guys. I want to come to the rink and work hard and so far I’m enjoying that. It’s obviously cool that the fans are really excited. All in all, I think I’m even more excited.”

There probably hasn’t been this much hype about the arrival of a Red Wings prospect since Henrik Zetterberg showed up for the NHL rookie tournament in 2002. And that one turned out okay. That being the case, the Wings are of the belief that the best tack to take with the good ship is to dial back the intensity.

“I’m not going to put an expectation on him,” Wings coach Jeff Blashill said. “I think he’ll get the opportunity to play and play big minutes as he earns them. If he earns more, he’ll get more. If he doesn’t earn more, he won’t get more. So, we’ll see how it goes. He’s definitely a guy who’s got a lot of potential that I think is going to become reality but now he has to go out on a game by game basis and do it.”

Continued; I’m expecting Seider to make the team, and take some lumps early on, but learn from them quickly.

Update: Here’s a little more on Seider from MLive’s Ansar Khan:

Continue reading Duff: Fall is here, and so is Seider season