The Hockey News’s Sam Stockton discusses three questions concerning the shape of the Red Wings’ opening-night lineup this afternoon. Among them:
At this point, amongst under-23 players, there are two locks, one probable, and four hopefuls for the Red Wings’ line-up on the first night of the season.
Mortiz Seider, 22, and Lucas Raymond, 21, have long since established themselves not just as NHL regulars but as featured players in Detroit. The only possible impediment to their places on Derek Lalonde’s line-up card is *knock on wood* health.
The probable is 22-year-old winger Jonatan Berggren. Berggren played 67 NHL games a year ago, scoring 15 goals and giving 13 assists. He plays a mature offensive game and had commendable two-way impacts as a first-year NHLer. With the new off-season acquisitions, Berggren (not unlike Joe Veleno, who at 23 is just too old to qualify for this discussion) needs to establish his role within a re-shuffled and re-vamped forward group, but he should be on track to have comfortably done so by October 12th.
That leaves Elmer Soderblom (22), Simon Edvinsson (20), Carter Mazur (21), and Marco Kasper (19) as the hopefuls. Within that context, it might be a bit harsh to Soderblom to only refer to him as a hopeful, considering his 20 NHL games played are twice as many as anyone else in that cohort. (Edvisonsson has played nine, Kasper one, and Mazur none).
Still, the path for all four to play opening night looks difficult because of the arrival of Daniel Sprong, Klim Kostin, and Christian Fischer to fill bottom six roles, J.T. Compher slotting into the center depth chart, and Shayne Gostisbehere and Justin Holl joining the D corps.
This summer, Steve Yzerman has been explicit in his desire to remain patient with all four of these prospects, almost preferring there to be traffic between them and the NHL to ensure that the youngsters will have to earn NHL roster spots, rather than be handed them.
Continued; as Sam says later in his article, there’s ample reason for those who want “the kids to play” to be frustrated with Yzerman’s approach, but there are always injuries over the course of an 82-game season, and there are always prospects who “steal jobs” as a result.
