Month: September 2023

On the last day of training camp, the Red Wings’ coach, Derek Lalonde, was the only representative of the team who spoke with the media, addressing us for 10 minutes:

Detroit Hockey Now’s Tim Robinson posted a behind-the-paywall article which discusses whether the Red Wings might be able to get more point production out of “Johnny Burgers,” a.k.a. one Jonatan Berggren:

Jonatan Berggren had a respectable debut with the Detroit Red Wings last season.

He had 15 goals in  67 games last year, but for the 23-year-old native of Sweden, the expectations go beyond that.

“He was a great addition for us at times last year,” Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde said last week at the start of training camp in Traverse City. “He was making plays. We went through some of those games where we were looking for some offense. He was one of the guys that could create some offense.’

A good start, to be sure. This season, the Red Wings are looking for more from their first of two second-round picks in the 2018 draft.

Continued (paywall)

It’s a bit of a hype reel, but enjoy:

Check-in Time from Red Wings Training Camp ☑️❤️🤟#GoGRG

ARE YOU READY FOR THIS SEASON YET?? pic.twitter.com/fGWCSNNa3H

— Grand Rapids Griffins (@griffinshockey) September 25, 2023

Update: Here’s the video version:

As advertised:

MLive’s Ansar Khan took note of Simon Edvinsson’s status as probably Grand Rapids Griffins-bound for the start of the 2023-2024 season, as well as the fact that Edvinsson has a mentor sitting next to him in Jeff Petry:

Edvinsson, 20, got a feel for the NHL during a late-season nine-game stint with the Red Wings (two goals, no assists, minus-7), but it didn’t convince the front office that he’s ready to move up a league. The Red Wings have seven NHL defensemen after signing Shayne Gostisbehere and Justin Holl and trading for Jeff Petry.

That means Edvinsson will start the season with the Griffins, barring an injury or two.

“Of course, you want to take a roster spot, but at the same time I want to be a player that’s not just up in the NHL, I want to be someone that helps the team win and puts in the work every time,” Edvinsson said. “I feel like it helped me a lot, the nine games. I know what I’m good at and what I need to build on. Just compete, don’t do unnecessary things. (Be) smarter on the ice and off the ice. How to be a pro.”

He’s getting lessons from Petry, the 13-year pro assigned to sit next to him in the dressing room and sort of serve as a mentor.

“We talk about everything, on the ice and off the ice,” Edvinsson said. “He’s a real nice guy. I’m young, he’s been in the league for a while. I keep my ears and eyes open to see what he does and doesn’t do. He’s a big role model.”

Continued

Detroit News columnist John Niyo, Oakland University coach Greg Kampe and Fox 2’s Dan Miller were on SportsWorks last night, and they addressed the Red Wings between 14:28, when Jennifer Hammond interviews Wings coach Derek Lalonde, and 18:18 of the video. Kampe discusses the expectations the Red Wings face before a long season’s worth of play, and Niyo says that Lucas Raymond and the Wings’ youngsters must step up:

As Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff notes, Simon Edvinsson made a surprising admission during Sunday’s media availability:

When Simon Edvinsson is seeking someone to blame for his failure to make the Detroit Red Wings out of training camp a year ago, he points to the guy in the mirror.

“I think from last year I came with a bad attitude,” Edvinsson explained. “I didn’t compete.”

Chalk it up as a lesson learned for the 20-year-old defenseman. And if he is in requirement of any reinforcement to remind him of those shortcomings, there’s plenty of leaders inside the walls of the Detroit locker room ready to step up and offer Edvinsson a reminder that he’s needing to stay at the top of his game every day he’s in training camp.

“They’ve been on me,” Edvinsson said, pointing specifically to captain Dylan Larkin and Calder Trophy-winning defenseman Moritz Seider as two Red Wings keeping in his ear about keeping up the intensity.

“I hear that. This year I want to compete with them. I see what they do. I try to learn from that. I want to compete against them. I want to compete against everybody. It’s really good players on the roster of the Red Wings overall.”

Continued; my sense last season was that Edvinsson wanted the transition to the NHL to be an easy thing, and he wanted to not have to worry about playing defense, and instead, use his fantastic skating skills to generate offense instead.

He’s a year older now, with a season of AHL experience under his belt, and he knows that, despite his immense talent, he’s got to improve his defensive game in order to succeed at the NHL level. I fully believe that Edvinsson will do just that in thriving as an NHL’er one day, but in the interim, he does need to continue to improve as a two-way defender.

NHL.com’s William Douglas posted a season preview for the Detroit Red Wings this morning. Here are his “3 Keys” to the Wings getting off to a fast start:

1. Jell quickly: General manager Steve Yzerman bolstered the roster from front to back with the additions of forwards Alex DeBrincat, J.T. Compher and Daniel Sprong, center Klim Kostin, defensemen Jeff Petry and Shayne Gostisbehere and goalie James Reimer. These key additions must mesh with the existing core if the Red Wings hope to move up in the Eastern Conference and end their seven-year Stanley Cup Playoffs drought.

2. Score more: Detroit finished 24th in the NHL in goals last season (237) and hasn’t had a 40-goal scorer since Marian Hossa in 2008-09. That could end with the addition of DeBrincat, who scored 41 goals twice with the Chicago Blackhawks (2018-19, 2021-22). He had 66 points (27 goals, 39 assists) for the Ottawa Senators last season and joins an offense led by captain Dylan Larkin who had an NHL career-high 79 points (32 goals, 47 assists) in 80 games last season. The Red Wings should have more firepower with Compher, who had 52 points (17 goals, 35 assists) in 82 games with the Colorado Avalanche last season, and Sprong, who had an NHL career-high 46 points (21 goals, 25 assists) in 66 games with the Seattle Kraken.

3. Better net results: Detroit ranked 22nd in the League in goals against last season (3.35 per game). Goalie Ville Husso had NHL career highs in games played (56), wins (26) and shutouts (four) last season, but struggled down the stretch, when he was 1-6-1 with a 4.32 goals-against average and .839 save percentage in his final eight games. Reimer, who signed on July 1 to be Husso’s backup, was 12-21-8 with a 3.48 GAA, .890 save percentage and three shutouts in 43 games (41 starts) with the San Jose Sharks last season. Should Reimer falter, Detroit also signed Alex Lyon, whose six-game winning streak helped propel the Florida Panthers into the Stanley Cup Playoffs last season. He was 9-4-2 with a 2.89 GAA, .912 save percentage and one shutout in 15 games (14 starts) for the Panthers.

Continued; the Red Wings would probably agree with Douglas’ “3 Keys.” The team’s turned over about 40% of its roster, so it definitely needs to form bonds and familiarity in short order; the Wings do want to score more, and help Ville Husso keep pucks out of the back of his own net, too.

After three days of intense practices at the Red Wings’ 2023 training camp, the Wings let loose to some extent, with a “Red” team battling a “White” team in an intra-squad scrimmage called the “Red vs. White Game.”

The Red Wings played 1 period’s worth of 5-on-5 hockey; they utilized the entire second period to play an assortment of 5-on-4 power plays which lasted exactly one minute; and the third period consisted of 5 minutes of 4-on-4, 5 minutes of 3-on-3, and then a 10-man shootout.

The biggest news of the day might have been Matt Luff’s injury. The 6’3,” 223-pound forward went down along the right wing boards at center ice, in a lot of pain. The trainers came out and attended to him, and Luff, who suffered two major facial injuries last season, couldn’t hold his right arm very well. He went into the medical room to get an x-ray, and didn’t return; those who witnessed his “upper-body injury” up close told me that it looked and sounded like his arm popped out of the shoulder joint.

Otherwise, Daniel Sprong scored the 1-0 goal only 53 seconds in for Team Red, assisted by Joe Veleno and Elmer Soderblom; Griffins-bound Tim Gettinger scored from try-out Artem Anisimov to make it 2-0 at 10:12 of the 1st; in the third period, Simon Edvinsson made the score 3-0 at 25 seconds, from Christian Fischer; Simon Edvinsson scored a beautiful breakaway goal for Team White 55 seconds in, from Klim Kostin, to make it 3-1; Lucas Raymond then scored a 3-2 goal at 2:19, from Albert Johansson and Robby Fabbri, and Jonatan Berggren made it 4-2 from Soderblom and Olli Maatta at 3:13.

The regulation shots were 30-15 Team Red, and the score was 4-2; in the shootout, Taro Hirose and Moritz Seider (on a lovely deke) gave the Red Team two more goals, and Michael Rasmussen and Austin Czarnik scored for the white team, propelling the final score to 6-4 Team Red.

The Traverse City Record-Eagle’s Brendan Quealy posted a recap of the Red vs. White Game on Sunday evening…

The sold-out crowd with only standing-room spots left available warmed up the usually frigid rink as Team Red bested Team White by a 6-4 final.

Red Wings head coach Derek Lalonde called Sunday’s action “productive,” adding that on top of the standard 5-on-5 play, Detroit was also able to get some reps for the special teams as well as the 3-on-3 and 4-on-4 shifts.  Lalonde said he loved the pace of the game, which was formatted a bit differently from previous Red & White games.

“We weren’t trying to think outside the box,” Lalonde said. “We had this vision of how these three periods would look because we wanted to be productive and work on some things. It went smoother than I had anticipated.”

The Red Team led 2-0 after the first period on goals from Daniel Sprong and Tim Gettinger. Unfortunately, Matt Luff, who dealt with a broken arm last season, suffered what Lalonde called an “upper-body injury” late in the first period and was helped off the ice. He did not return to action.

Lalonde said the injury to the 6-foot-3 right-wing “did not look good.”

“He’ll be out for a little bit here, but fortunately there is nothing wrong with his head,” Lalonde said. “My first thought was a head injury, so I was obviously extremely concerned.”

Continued; DetroitRedWings.com’s Jonathan Mills continues the narrative…

“Worked out a lot of things today,” Lalonde said. “Obviously got some 5-on-5 structure in and a ton of special teams. Probably a credit to (Red Wings assistant video coordinator) Jeff Weintraub, who is kind of our behind-the-scenes camp organizer. I thought that went extremely smooth. Then we introduced some 3-on-3 and 4-on-4, which is part of our process along the way. We’ll get some video off it and some reps. I thought some pretty good things and all in all, a productive day.”

Sunday’s scrimmage format consisted of three 20-minute periods, with the Red Wings focusing on 5-on-5 play in the opening frame, special teams in the second and situational play in the third before concluding with a shootout competition.

“It went a lot smoother than I had anticipated,” Lalonde said about the new-look scrimmage. “Pace of the first game and special teams, probably a credit to the staff.”

Defenseman prospect Simon Edvinsson said the scrimmage was a continuation of what has been a “really competitive environment” at Detroit’s 2023 Training Camp.

“Everyone was sharp,” Edvinsson said. “I think everyone has been sharp. It’s been high tempo. Everyone is competing for roster spots, whether it’s in the NHL, AHL or somewhere else.”

Mills also continues; and the 9&10 News’s Jayden Jagtani offers a video report from the game as well.