Month: July 2023

Is the ‘Yzerplan’ just ‘tire-spinning?’

EP Rinkside’s Ryan Lambert has never been a fan of the Red Wings Way, and, after an underwhelming free agency performance, Lambert questions logic of the “Yzerplan” in a lengthy edition of “What We Learned”:

What this really reminds me of, quite a bit, is when the Florida Panthers in the early 2010s spent a bunch of money on veterans who fit this same profile: good but not great. Sign a bunch of good-but-not-great players and your results improve slightly. 

The Wings missed the playoffs by 12 points last year. They haven’t come close to adding six wins while the four teams that finished ahead of them for the last wild card spot lost that much. Maybe the Tampa Bay Lightning and Florida regress a little, maybe Boston and Toronto do too. But the gaps between them and Buffalo is significant, as is the gap between Buffalo and Ottawa/Detroit.

It’s admittedly a tough situation. The Wings couldn’t not-spend money this summer, because they had a bunch of roster spots to fill. It feels like it wouldn’t be particularly helpful to go out and sign a bunch of veterans on something close to league-minimum deals. They still have plenty of cap space to make moves.

The good news is that the market the last two summers means they have plenty of players they can deal at this deadline; only seven Red Wings are currently signed beyond 2024-25.

But again, it’s just tire-spinning. Because all these players ensure they’re going to be nowhere near the bottom of the league, which would allow them to pick high, and probably not much closer to the playoffs.

Continued (paywall)

Tweet of note: Kasper scores a ‘shootout hat trick’ on a ‘mic’d up’ Sebastian Cossa

At the end of yesterday’s small-space game, Red Wings prospect Marco Kasper had to break a tie between the red team and the white team, so he participated in a best-of-five shootout competition vs. Sebastian Cossa.

He scored a hat trick on shots 3, 4 and 5:

Morning tidbit from Duff: Reimer’s familial Red Wings connection

Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff takes note of a comment made by new Red Wings goaltender James Reimer during his introductory press conference. It’s just a quick comment, but what the hey:

James Reimer became a Detroit Red Wings netminder on July 1, singing as a UFA with the club. which certainly was great news for his older sister Christy.

“My older sister, and not to embarass her in any way, was and probably is and now again it’s reborn,” Reimer explained. “She’s a diehard Red Wings fan.”

In the 1990s and 200os when Detroit was ruling over the NHL, the Red Wings were also filling the heart of at least one member of Reimer’s family with joy.

“She was big into that (Red Wings) era,” Reimer recalled.

Continued

HSJ in the morning: Regarding J.T. Compher’s ‘fit’

The Free Press’s Helene St. James posted her usual early-morning column today, discussing the “fit” and hopes of one J.T. Comper as he joins the Red Wings for a playoff push:

“There are a lot of attractive parts about playing for the Red Wings,” Compher said Sunday. “I think that at the end of the day was my conversation with Steve and hearing about the direction of the Wings and what he was trying to build. He’s done it before. He has experience, not only as a player, but in management. I really believed in what he’s doing with the team and the sort of people they want to bring in. You want to have a great team on the ice and good guys in the locker room. I know what sort of room I’m getting myself into.”

It doesn’t hurt that the room includes two friends in fellow former Michigan teammates Dylan Larkin and Andrew Copp, both of whom Compher talked to in the week leading up to free agency.

“There’s a lot that attracted me to be a Red Wing,” Compher said. “First of all playing at Michigan and growing up in Chicago, both things things helped me see the great legacy and tradition the Detroit Red Wings have. I have a lot of respect for the organization. I had some really good talks with Steve and the coaching staff and what they are trying to build and how they are trying to build it. In terms of this year and the future, it sounds like a great place to play hockey. On the other side of it, I do have good friends on the team, and I’m excited to get on the ice with those guys as well. “But overall it was the direction of the team, the desire to win. I could hear it in their voice. That’s what you want as a player, a chance to build and try to win a championship.”

Continued; here’s hoping, Mr. Compher.

DetroitHockey.net examines the Red Wings’ Summer Development Campers’ jersey numbers

DetroitHockey.net’s Clark Rasmussen examines the jersey numbers assigned to the Red Wings’ 2023 Summer Development Camp participants this morning:

Jersey numbers in development camp are almost always meaningless but sometimes we see interesting patterns from them.  This year, the somewhat remarkable thing is that only six returning players (Marco Kasper, Carter Mazur, Redmond Savage, Sam Stange, Tnias Mathurin, and Sebastian Cossa) kept the same number as last year.  Of those, Mazur’s #43 had been reassigned to Mark Pysyk in the interim, while Savage’s #67 went to Joel L’Esperance in Detroit’s training camp last fall.

Another player, Amadeus Lombardi, is wearing a different number from last development camp but it’s the same number as he wore last fall in Detroit’s main camp, when he switched from #96 to #78 to accommodate Jake Walman’s switch to #96 last summer.

For the newest Detroit draftees, Nate Danielson was assigned the #29 that hasn’t been used since Thomas Greiss had it, Axel Sandin Pellikka got the #84 that was assigned to camp invitee Julien Anctil last year, Trey Augustine got the #80 worn in last year’s camp by invitee Pierce Charleson, Andrew Gibson got the #26 that was assigned to Pontus Andreasson in last fall’s training camp, Brady Cleveland took the departed Adam Erne’s #73, Noah Dower Nilsson got the #83 previously assigned to William Wallinder, Larry Keenan was given the #86 that had been worn by camp tryout Ivan Ivan, Jack Phelan got the #87 that was assigned to Jacob Mathieu in last fall’s training camp, Kevin Bicker got thew #89 that hasn’t been worn since Sam Gagner had it, Rudy Guimond was assigned the #68 worn in training camp by John Lethemon, and Emmitt Finnie got the #88 previously assigned to Liam Dower Nilsson, which will be worn this season by Daniel Sprong.

With Noah Dower Nilsson having taken his number, Wallinder switched to the #54 worn last year by Steven Kampfer.  Meanwhile, Noah’s brother Liam moved to the #62 worn in the 2022 development camp by Theodor Niederbach (and in last fall’s training camp by Drew Worrad) to accommodate Finnie getting #88, with Niederbach switching to the #70 worn last season by Oskar Sundqvist.

Continued

Bultman discusses the Red Wings’ depth chart after its free agent signings

The Athletic’s Max Bultman examines the Red Wings’ depth chart after the team’s numerous free agent signings:

[At forward, the] big questions here are: Who plays alongside Larkin and Raymond, and where does Compher slot? It’s possible, frankly, that they could answer each other, with Compher slotting right into the Tyler Bertuzzi role.

That would probably take a big preseason performance from Kasper, though, to show he’s ready to handle the 3C job, because with how strong Rasmussen looked on the wing, you have to think he’ll start right there next to Copp next season.

And given all those moving parts — plus Detroit’s desperate need for a right-handed center — the safest expectation is probably to see Compher down the middle, listed here as the “third line” but realistically interchangeable with Copp’s.

In that scenario, Perron’s smarts, battle level and wall play would fit with Larkin and Raymond, and conveniently keep the three most likely members of “PP1” together at even strength, so that’s the one I went with here. (It’s worth noting in the alternative, though, Perron would make one heck of a first linemate and mentor for Kasper.)

Continued (paywall)

Duff on Compher

Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff posted an overnight article discussing new Red Wings center J.T. Compher’s belief that his new employer can turn things around:

“I’ve seen both sides of it and I know what it takes,” Compher said. “[The Avalanche’s Stanley Cup run] was a fun journey to be a part of for sure. It’s hard, it’s not easy at all. It sounds simple but one team wins the Stanley Cup every year.

“We had plenty of teams we thought could do it over the years. Even the year we won there were challenges and adversity to go through. You learn a lot about yourself and teammates when you get in those tight series in the playoffs.”

Arriving in Detroit via unrestricted free agency, Compher agreed to the five-year deal with an AAV of $5.1 million. He’s a former Michigan player who was a captain with the Wolverines and a teammate there of current Red Wings Dylan Larkin and Andrew Copp. He could also find himself slotting into the Detroit depth chart between Larkin and Copp.

Larkin is the No. 1 center for the Red Wings. Ideally, the Detroit brass would like to see Copp skating as the club’s third-line center. That means they’ll need someone to anchor the second forward unit. Compher is capable of delivering those goods.

“I played a little second-line center in the playoffs with Colorado the year we won,” Compher said. “That was good for my confidence, it was good experience. Just continued trusting my own game.”

Continued

Tweet of note: Wings prospects discuss their potential ‘Day Jobs’

The Red Wings’ prospects participating in the 2023 Summer Development Camp weighed in on their potential jobs, should they not end up playing hockey as a profession:

Impressions from the first day of the Red Wings’ 2023 Summer Development Camp

Now, the Red Wings’ brass insists that the team’s annual Summer Development Camp isn’t about evaluating players for jobs–because there are no jobs on the line–as much as it is about exposing players to the “Red Wings’ way,” both on and off the ice.

Over the course of five days, the Wings’ prospects and free agent invites alike work with power skating coaches, skill development coaches and goaltending coaches on the ice, and off the ice, they’re taught the proper ways to work out, approach nutrition, sleep, how to cook and even how to deal with the demands of both traditional and non-traditional media in this non-stop world.

You send me to the Red Wings’ annual Summer Development Camp to make some observations, however, so that’s what I’m going to try to do, bearing in mind that this camp is indeed about player development: it’s the fall Prospect Tournament and the Red Wings’ training camp and exhibition season which determine whether players earn spots on Detroit’s roster.

I do know that the development camp matters in terms of setting the players up with a strong foundation for their skill development (both on and off the ice) over the course of their amateur and minor pro careers, however. I know that because there were as many as fourteen members of the Red Wings’ front office and scouting staff watching on Sunday.

The idea here is to build a strong foundation for self-improvement and guided improvement under the eyes of the Wings’ player development department, and that means that people like assistant director of player development Dan Cleary, European development consultant Niklas Kronwall, and the rest of the Wings’ front office are made available to the players over the course of their seasons, should they wish to consult with Detroit’s best in order to self-improve.

Continue reading Impressions from the first day of the Red Wings’ 2023 Summer Development Camp