Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde spoke with 97.1 the Ticket’s Stoney and Jansen show this morning…
And 97.1 the Ticket’s Will Burchfield posted two columns about the interview, first noting Lalonde’s more quotable remarks…
When the Red Wings open the season Thursday night in New Jersey, they won’t have a single first- or second-year player on the roster — which feels counterintuitive for a rebuilding team. Derek Lalonde says it’s a reflection of a deeper roster with higher ambitions.
After the Wings added several veterans this summer, key prospects like Simon Edvinsson, Marco Kasper and Jonatan Berggren will start the season in Grand Rapids.
“I do think you’re going to see plenty of those guys, but they’re not fitting what we’re trying to do right now,” Lalonde said Wednesday on 97.1 The Ticket. “Our goal is to win now, of course with the vision of improving in the future. When you say is it important for them to play? I would agree with you. Absolutely, it’s important for them to play 23 minutes in a significant game (in the AHL rather) than seven, eight minutes with us and growing on the fly with mistakes or sitting up in the press box.”
The Red Wings have leaned toward the latter the last few years, said Lalonde, without gaining much ground. He pointed to Berggren, a 2018 second-round pick who debuted in Detroit last season and scored 16 goals in 67 games, and said, “No disrespect to Jonatan Berggren, but he was forced to play for us last year where with we were at.”
And then questioning the Red Wings’ identity as a rebuilding team:
If the Red Wings are still rebuilding, they don’t have an Opening Night roster that looks like it. If the Red Wings have set their sights on the playoffs, they’re not exactly talking like a team that expects to get there. It leaves them in a strange place entering this season, loitering between two ways of life in the NHL.
It doesn’t mean either is wrong. The Red Wings do have developing young talent on their roster in Moritz Seider, Lucas Raymond and Jake Walman. You could even place nine-year vet — nine-year vet!! — Dylan Larkin in this group. Indeed, if he’s done developing, Detroit is in trouble. And the team does feel better about its chances in the East after adding another batch of proven players to the locker room. The Red Wings expect to improve this season.
“We’re deeper throughout,” Derek Lalonde said Wednesday on 97.1 The Ticket. “Even talking in the office yesterday when these opening rosters came out, six players on our Opening Night last year are not even in the league right now. They’re starting in the AHL, elsewhere or with us.”
By our count, that number is actually four: forwards Adam Erne and Elmer Soderblom and defensemen Robert Hagg and Gustav Lindstrom. (The Wings might also have a freshly-signed $10 million defenseman starting in the press box, but we digress.) It nevertheless reflects growth in the team’s baseline of talent, just not the sort of growth that fuels a future. The roster has been reshaped by veteran imports rather than rising prospects. Alex DeBrincat is the one arrival who alters the long-term outlook. You could make a case for J.T. Compher.
Steve Yzerman, to be clear, added vets as a way of shielding prospects from early exposure. In his own words, to “allow these younger players to develop and play at a reasonable pace, instead of just throwing them into the NHL and hoping they’re OK.” As Lalonde noted Wednesday, the Red Wings have more or less done the opposite in recent seasons without gaining much ground. Simon Edvinsson, Marco Kasper and Jonatan Berggren will start this season in Grand Rapids, and “no disrespect to Berggren,” said Lalonde, “but he was forced to play for us last year where we were at.”
