Month: August 2022

Yesterday, via Kukla’s Korner, I let you know that there were pictures of Moritz Seider looking dapper at the NHL’s Player Media Tour in Paris, which was held over the last two days, and the Red Wings took notice:

The MOst interesting man. pic.twitter.com/7zP0uws7J6— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) August 25, 2022

Apparently, Seider isn’t alone…

Versatile. Vibrant. Vrana. pic.twitter.com/fEldOt4thC— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) August 25, 2022

Here’s the Vrana gallery, and the full NHL Player Media Tour gallery, both from Getty Images.

Also, this Tweet from NHL.com’s Tom Gulitti was revelatory:

Also talked with Jakub Vrana. He said he’s feeling good and able to do full training this offseason after having shoulder surgery last season.

He said his shoulder had bothered him for two years before that. He’s looking forward to healthy start with Red Wings.— Tom Gulitti (@TomGulittiNHL) August 24, 2022

The Cadillac News’s Marc Vieau spoke with author and hockey scribe Keith Gave ahead of an appearance at Horizon Books in Cadillac this Saturday at 1 PM, at which Gave will sign copies of his book Vlad the Impaler.

As you probably know by now, reforms to Michigan’s no-fault auto insurance laws have left the health care system for members of catstrophic car crashes in an incredibly difficult place, so Gave is attempting to raise money for the Konstatinov Special Needs Trust:

Gave, who has a friendship with Konstantinov, is donating a large portion of the proceeds from ‘Vlad The Impaler’ to the trust fund and wants to make people aware of it. So, back to how the second book came about.

‘The Russian Five’ became a best-seller in three languages and spawned a documentary by the same name that Gave was involved in.

The Detroit Free Press and former sports editor Gene Meyers reached out to Gave to help on their book, ‘Stanleytown 25 Years Later.’

“I agreed and told Gene I didn’t want to just cut and paste from the first book,” Gave said. “I wanted to give people some original stuff. I was going through old notes and things from the first book and was thinking to myself that this is really good stuff. I’ve got great excerpts from a lot of people and that’s when I decided I could put together another book. There were just so many more stories that needed to be told.”

Continued

The Athletic’s Corey Pronman has ranked the Red Wings’ pool of players aged 23 and under as the 2nd-best in the NHL, and he discusses several of the Red Wings’ top prospects this morning:

It’s been a painful stretch for Detroit fans, but it looks like there’s a light emerging at the end of the tunnel. Led by Calder Trophy winner Moritz Seider and rising star Lucas Raymond they have one of the best collections of young talent in the league with significant skill at all positions

Key Graduates: Michael Rasmussen, Gustav Lindstrom

Key Additions: Marco Kasper

2021 ranking: No. 9

2022 NHL Draft grade: B

He ranks 15 players/prospects and 8 more players who he believes “have a chance” of playing in the NHL, and you can guess which player is at the very top of his list:

Continue reading The Athletic’s Pronman ranks the Red Wings’ pool of 23-and-under players 2nd best in the NHL

If you’re not already familiar with the situation, former Red Wings forward Sergei Fedorov won a Gargarin Cup as the coach of CSKA Moscow last spring, and, also last spring, former Red Wing Igor Larionov inked a 3-year deal to coach Torpedo Nizhny Novogorod.

Slava Kozlov is also an assistant coach with Moscow’s Spartak, so the coaching bug has caught on with former Russian Red Wings, as Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff notes:

As a player with the Red Wings, Larionov found the defensive hockey preferred by most teams during the NHL of the 1990s to be abhorrent. He kept calling it “destroy hockey.”

His promise as a coach is that his club will play an up-tempo brand of hockey.

“We want to play some exciting hockey, which should be fun to play,” Larionov told KHL.ru. “Our game will be aimed at attacking. We are not interested in playing for a 1-0 result, we want to score a lot in every game. We want to play some combinational, creative hockey.”

Among his players are his son Igor Larionov II and forward Dennis Yan, last season a member of the Red Wings’ top farm club, the AHL Grand Rapids Griffins.

Continued; as Duff notes, Slava Fetisov is the chairman of the KHL’s Board of Directors, and he represents Vladivostok in the Russian Federal Assembly. Fetisov is the reason why Vladivostok’s hockey arena was built, so he had some ties to the original iteration of the Admiral Vladivostok.

As you might imagine, all of this stuff gets a little complicated given that the KHL’s teams are mostly owned by oligarchs who have close ties to a certain hockey-playing despot…

NHL.com’s fantasy hockey staff, a.k.a. Pete Jensen and Anna Dua, offered an analysis of how the NHL’s most significant free agent signings should re-shape the rosters of their respective teams. They offer the following take on the Red Wings’ signings of Andrew Copp and David Perron:

RED WINGS SIGN PERRON, COPP: The Detroit Red Wings signed forwards David Perron (two-year contract) and Andrew Copp (five-year contract), significantly boosting their top-six forward group for this season.  

Copp brings versatility to the rebuilding Red Wings and is likely to be their No. 2 center with exposure to two of the following valuable wings: Perron, Jakub Vrana and Tyler Bertuzzi. Perron had 57 points (27 goals, 30 assists) in 67 games with the St. Louis Blues last regular season and led them in points (13 in 12 games) and goals (nine) during the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Perron, who’s like to play on the second line with Copp, brings the experience and consistency (at least 40 points in six straight seasons) to increase the fantasy value of both forwards. 

Copp was better than a point per game (18 in 16 games) last regular season and an instrumental part of New York’s run to the Eastern Conference Final (14 points in 20 Stanley Cup Playoff games). Copp loses some fantasy appeal moving away from the Rangers’ second line with elite left wing Artemi Panarin but remains in the top 250 for one of the most-improved teams in Detroit, which also acquired Ville Husso from the St. Louis Blues and is expected to incorporate elite defenseman prospect Simon Edvinsson.

Continued; here’s hoping that Edvinsson makes the cut.

Via Paul Kukla of Kukla’s Korner: Red Wings defenseman Moritz Seider took part in the NHL/NHLPA’s Media Tour for European players in Paris, France yesterday and today, and Getty Images posted a slate of dramatic photos of the handsome gentlemen who took part. Including Mr. Seider:

Update: Look who noticed:

The MOst interesting man. pic.twitter.com/7zP0uws7J6— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) August 25, 2022

This is appointment viewing:

Deputy Commissioner of the NHL, Bill Daly joins Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek on 32 Thoughts from Paris, France as part of the European Player Media Tour. Bill discusses a wide range of topics with Elliotte and Jeff including the possibility of the salary cap going up sooner, how to expand the game in Europe and the latest with the Hockey Canada investigation.

New Red Wings goaltender Ville Husso spoke with “The Word on Woodward’s” Daniella Bruce and Art Regner:

With the World Junior Championship coming to an end and the dog days of summer upon us for a couple of days (don’t worry, the news cycle will pick back up very soon), I’ll be leaving to head up to Traverse City for the Red Wings’ prospect tournament and training camp in three weeks, but I’m still not sure how I’m going to pay for it.

The same is true for fixing my 17-year-old Chrysler Pacifica, which needs a new headlight, a new tail light and an oil change…And I don’t have enough money to renew the website at the end of the month, either. Which is not ideal.

So, it’s time to do that fundraising dance again. I apologize in advance, but this is how I survive and hopefully thrive, and it’s all up to reader contributions.

I cranked out 12 days’ worth of World Junior Championship coverage sans a peep, perhaps to my own detriment, but now I’ve got to ask. So I’m asking for help getting up to Traverse City (the hotel alone is $2,000 this year) and renewing the website’s couple hundred bucks’ worth of subscriptions, too.

If you can assist the cause, I would greatly appreciate it. So:

If you’re willing to lend a hand, you can use PayPal at https://paypal.me/TheMalikReport, Venmo at https://venmo.com/george-malik-2, Giftly by using my email, rtxg@yahoo.com, at https://www.giftly.com. And you can contact me via email if you want to send me a paper check.

MLive’s Ansar Khan posted a profile of Red Wings 2022 draft (40th overall) pick Dylan James, who will be entering his freshman season with the University of North Dakota, after having won a Clark Cup with the USHL’s Sioux City Musketeers this past season:

James tallied 28 goals and 61 points in 62 games, including 13 goals and 25 points over the final 18 games [of the 2021-22 USHL Season]. Limited to seven games the previous season with Okotoks in the Alberta Junior Hockey League due to the pandemic, the Calgary native needed some time to get into a rhythm.

“I think I quarantined for like 50 days at three different times (in 2020-21),” James said. “That was tough, on and off. You didn’t know if you were going to practice that afternoon. Coming to the USHL, I was a little nervous. I hadn’t played in a season. After Christmas I feel like I played my best. I feel like I was getting comfortable with the city, the new teammates and the coaches, what they want out of me. Obviously, getting older you’re getting stronger, so that helped.”

James, 18, attended Red Wings development camp last month at Little Caesars Arena as he prepares for his freshman year at North Dakota.

“I was pretty young when I made that decision,” he said. “I loved the coaching staff. You see their history, winning national championships (eight, behind only Michigan and Denver with nine each). That was a big key in going. Their facility is unreal. I’m just going to go there and try to work really hard. Nothing’s given to you there. I’ll just go there and try to get better every day.”

Continued