Month: July 2024

On Thursday afternoon, Inside the Rink’s Andrew Walsh discussed the Red Wings’ prospect pool as its rise will (hopefully) mirror its franchise’s slow but steady ascent:

The Detroit Red Wings drafted forward Michael Brandsegg-Nygård with the fifteenth overall pick in the first round of the 2024 NHL entry draft. The Oslo, Norway native has signed his entry-level contract with the Red Wings. MBN is the best wing prospect currently in the Red Wings’ prospect pool. I recently wrote that Brandsegg-Nygård was the latest in a long line of draft picks made by Red Wings’ general manager, Steve Yzerman, who all fit the same mold.

The Red Wings are widely regarded as having one of the best prospect systems currently in the NHL. The fact that the team has not made the Stanley Cup playoffs since the 2016-17 season is one of the main reasons for this. Drafting higher up in the draft allows teams to conceivably draft better players. However, this does not guarantee that the players that the team drafts will eventually make it to the NHL.

This ranking does not consider players that have made the Red Wings’ roster. Defenseman Simon Edvinsson is one example of this. After being drafted by the Red Wings with the sixth overall pick in the 2021 NHL draft, Edvinsson spent two seasons going back and forth from the Grand Rapids Griffins to the Red Wings. During the 2023-24 season, Edvinsson seems to have found his place on the Red Wings’ roster permanently. In 16 games played for the Red Wings Edvinsson was consistently deployed in high leverage situations on the Red Wings blueline.

Continued;

Just because your team is making high draft picks doesn’t mean that you’re going to witness all of those players succeed in making the NHL, and that’s why I believe that the Red Wings’ scouts have chosen to draft a certain “type” of strong two-way center, power winger, or skating defenseman with their first-round picks.

Out of Lucas Raymond, Simon Edvinsson, Marco Kasper, Nate Danielson, Axel Sandin Pellikka and Michael Brandsegg-Nygard, you’re not going to see seven superstars, but you may see the foundation for the Red Wings franchise captained by 27-year-old Dylan Larkin into his 30’s. That’s the idea here.

Two “list stories” in which article authors utilize the NHL’s 32 teams to make points appeared earlier this afternoon, with EP Rinkside’s J.D. Burke discussing the offseason storylines which have yet to materialize for NHL teams…

Detroit Red Wings: What’s next?

This one isn’t a matter of whether they’ll do something but what exactly they’ll do. Because we know GM Steve Yzerman isn’t done tinkering with his roster yet. He’s got just more than $20 million in available cap space, and while pricey contract extensions loom for Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond, they’re not getting all of that money.

We know the Red Wings have been linked to Gibson this offseason. We’ve also heard a lot about their efforts to acquire Jacob Trouba from the New York Rangers, though that seems to have quieted down a bit of late because of his reluctance to waive his no-trade clause.

Will Yzerman be able to reel in either of these big fish? And if not, then what? Failure to meaningfully improve on last year’s roster could make for a ninth season on the outside looking in at the playoffs.

The Red Wings definitely need to add a right-shooting defenseman of the shut-down variety to their blueline to spell Moritz Seider, but I’m not certain whether Steve Yzerman will dip into his deep pool of prospects to acquire that player this summer. It may take until next year’s trade deadline for the team to address this glaring need.

Also: Daily Faceoff’s Scott Maxwell discussed the “suffering level” of the NHL’s 32 fan bases, and the Wings’ fans don’t get any slack:

21. Detroit Red Wings

Colton’s rank: 19th
Hunter’s rank: 13th
Matt’s rank: 21st
Scott’s rank: 19th
Shane’s rank: 21st
Tyler’s rank: 25th

Matt [Larkin]: It would be a stretch to say we feel sympathy for the Detroit Red Wings fan base in the modern era. This group enjoyed Stanley Cups in 1997, 1998, 2002 and 2008, after all, not to mention a 25-year streak of playoff berths. But that streak has given way to an eight-year playoff drought, the second longest active one in the NHL. It feels like a twisted nightmare to see one of your franchise’s all-time heroes, Steve Yzerman, driving the bus and coming closer to taking it off a cliff than to the promised land. Something feels wrong when an Original Six franchise seems so irrelevant. Will that change soon? I’m not totally convinced. Yzerman blinked too early in the rebuild and has spent several summers weighing down his roster with mid-tier veteran signings.

I’m not delighted that the Red Wings signed Andrew Copp, Ben Chiarot and traded for Ville Husso two summers ago, and this summer’s free agency take wasn’t overwhelming, but I don’t believe that those signings are “weighing down” the Red Wings’ roster, and I don’t believe that the organization is being driven off a cliff.

There’s no doubt that the Red Wings are still in the middle-to-end of what is probably a 10-12-year-long rebuild, but that’s the reality of the situation for most NHL franchises in terms of building a prospect base and seeing returns in terms of bolstering the roster with meaningful free agent signings.

The Patrick Kane signing was supposed to turn the tide, but as it happens, the Red Wings are not yet a “destination,” and when other teams sign the “Grade A” free agents, you can’t simply stand still and pretend that you’ve improved.

The organization has done the best it can with the assets it has been able to accrue, and it’s still in progress in terms of turning a very big ship slowly around.

The NHL Network is going to air an original program called “Welcome to the NHL” this Saturday, and it will mostly focus on several prospects who were drafted within the top 10 of this past June’s NHL Draft in Las Vegas, but one Red Wings prospect will be featured in the program:

The show will premiere on Saturday at 7 p.m. ET on NHL Network and ESPN+ in the U.S. Sportsnet 360 will carry the program on Sunday at 8 p.m. ET for fans in Canada. View the trailer here.

The program provides an unprecedented inside look as the prospects are welcomed to Las Vegas by fans on the red carpet and even a robot, introducing them by name, as they await selection inside Sphere and meet with media, executives and team staff moments after their names are announced by those respective NHL teams.

“This couldn’t be a better time for you to be coming into the game,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said at the start of the program and during the ‘NHL Prospects Welcome Breakfast’. “Take a deep breath, enjoy the process and create the memories that are going to last a lifetime.”

Cameras followed six of the top prospects during the first round: forward Macklin Celebrini (No. 1, San Jose Sharks), forward Cayden Lindstrom (No. 4, Columbus Blue Jackets), defenseman Zayne Parekh (No. 9, Calgary Flames), defenseman Zeev Buium (No. 12, Minnesota Wild), forward Cole Eiserman (No. 20, New York Islanders) and forward Michael Hage (No. 21, Montreal Canadiens). The program captures their anxiety and exhilaration of the NHL draft with their families, friends and advisors.

…

On the second day of the draft, which included rounds 2-7, three players were highlighted: forward Max Plante (Detroit Red Wings), goalie Carter George (Los Angeles Kings) and forward Kevin He (Winnipeg Jets).

Continued; here’s the trailer:

The Hockey News’s Connor Eargood wonders whether Red Wings restricted free agent forward Joe Veleno can break through to the Wings’ “top nine” after playing mostly a fourth-line role for the majority of his NHL career thus far:

Veleno had chances to prove he could score more last season, playing in the top six when Dylan Larkin was out with injuries at times last season. But in those stints, he didn’t prove all that effective. His scoring actually decreased in an elevated role in December, and when he played between Alex DeBrincat and Patrick Kane during some games in March, Veleno still finished the month without a single point. As an indication of the organization’s trust in Veleno’s scoring ability, by the end of the season the Red Wings were quicker to plug AHL depth player Austin Czarnik into the second line rather than promote Veleno. He remains a player that Detroit can lean on in a defensive bottom six role, but there isn’t much evidence 232 games into Veleno’s career that he’ll ever amount to anything larger. Any plans for Veleno’s future shouldn’t bank on a scoring renaissance.

So where does this defensive version of Veleno fit in the long term version of the Red Wings? Maybe that’s what he can answer with his eventual extension. Projected by AFP Analytics to earn a two-year, $2 million extension, any contract within arm’s reach of that would be relatively cheap for a player from whom Detroit knows what it’s getting. 

Continued; as Eargood suggests, with an assortment of young prospect forwards vying for spots on the Red Wings’ roster over the next 2-3 years, it appears that Veleno’s tenure with the Red Wings will be short unless he’s able to break through at the NHL Level.

3 minutes’ worth of highlights:

Bleacher Report’s Adam Gretz posted a set of “Bold Predictions” for every one of the NHL’s 32 teams, and he offers the conventional take on Detroit’s hit-and-miss offseason:

Detroit Red Wings: They Miss the Playoffs Again: At some point there are going to have start being some tough questions asked about whether or not Steve Yzerman is going to get the Red Wings to where they want to be and need to be.

Missing the playoffs for an eighth straight season would probably be the time when those questions really start getting seriously asked.

It is not hard to envision that scenario playing out, either. Mainly because the Red Wings have ignored the single biggest flaw that held them back last season — defense.

In fact, they arguably made it worse by trading Jake Walman to San Jose in a salary dump move. The Red Wings could already score goals and spent the offseason focussing on that aspect of their game, re-signing Patrick Kane and bringing in Vladimir Tarasenko. In a vacuum, there is really nothing wrong with either move. Kane will help the power play. Tarasenko will score some goals. But neither player is going to do anything to help prevent goals, and that looks to be the aspect of the team that will once again hold them back.

Continued; at least under Chris Ilitch, Yzerman doesn’t have to worry about his job as playing the “long game” in terms of rebuilding the organization. Derek Lalonde, on the other hand, might be on the “hot seat”…

And the Wings at least ended up stemming losses on defense via bringing in Erik Gustafsson to replace Shayne Gostisbehere, and they’re expecting improvement from within as Simon Edvinsson and Albert Johansson turn pro.

I believe that the Walman move was a mistake made with the intention of adding a d-man through a trade or free agency signing that probably fell through, but he wasn’t a defensive stalwart, and yes, the Wings need to add a shut-down, right-shooting defenseman to help bolster the blueline…

But in the interim, their “bottom six” is better- equipped to keep pucks out of their own net, their “top six” is going to score more and it’s faster this year, their “D” is treading water at least, and Cam Talbot may be old, but he’s an upgrade on Husso and Lyon in my opinion.

Marginal improvements for sure, but sometimes you swing and miss (and my gut feeling is that the Red Wings wanted Marchessault, not Stamkos) in free agency, and end up losing guys to teams offering more money and term (in David Perron’s case) or a better chance to win (in Shayne Gostisbehere’s case).

Yzerman did the best he could do with the cards he was dealt, and now the Wings need to get this roster sorted out so that they can address any post-Raymond-and-Seider-contract trades to shore up the D or up-front checking.

That, and getting as close to the playoffs as they did will hopefully light a fire under the team’s collective ass, giving the team even more impetus to grind out a spot this upcoming season.

All in all, it’s been an OK offseason for a team that still has some flaws to address, but that doesn’t make its GM or pro scouts incompetent.

Detroit Hockey Now has been discussing “the state of the Red Wings” of late, with articles about the team’s forwards and the Wings’ defensive corps, and this morning, Tim Robinson examines Detroit’s goaltending situation, profiling each of the Wings’ four NHL-caliber goaltenders in Cam Talbot, Alex Lyon, Ville Husso and Jack Campbell:

The Detroit Red Wings had to adapt on the fly last season when it came to their goalies.  They started  the season with Ville Husso as the unquestioned starter and Alex Lyon languishing on the bench. 

After Husso suffered the first of several lower-body injuries, James Reimer temporarily took on a bigger role, only to give way to Lyon before Reimer made a couple of key starts at the end of the season.

In this year’s goalies picture, Reimer is gone, having signed with the Buffalo Sabres as a free agent. The Red Wings also, as of now, have moved on from Michael Hutchinson, who played in one game with them last season while spending the rest of the season in Grand Rapids. He’s a free agent.

The Wings have two solid prospects in net in Sebastian Cossa and Michigan State goalie Trey Augustine. Neither are expected to be ready for at least one year (Cossa) or two (Augustine). 

They’ve added two goalies in the offseason: Cam Talbot, late of the Los Angeles Kings, and Jack Campbell, who flamed out spectacularly after signing a huge contract with Edmonton.

Robinson continues…

The Red Wings signed free agent forward Jakub Rychlovsky from the Czech Extraliga’s Liberec Bili Tygri (the Liberec White Tigers) in an attempt to add goal-scoring to the team’s portfolio. Rychlovsky is 22 years old, and he’ll probably begin the season with the AHL’s Grand Rapids Griffins.

This morning, Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff discusses the fact that the Red Wings haven’t had the best record signing European free agents over the past decade:

Rychlovsky will be coming to Detroit on a high. With 26 goals last season for Liberec Bili Tygri HC, the 22-year-old left shot forward was the leading goal scorer in the Czech Extraliga.

“I really like him,” Red Wings director of player development Dan Cleary said. “Quiet, strong little guy. I was friends with someone who was coaching him in Czech, so he kind of reached out. He thought it was a great signing for us.”

That’s what everyone thought two years ago when the Red Wings were signing Swedish free agent forward Pontus Andreasson. He was also coming to North America off a tide turning European campaign. During the 2021-22 SHL season, Andreasson netted 18 goals for Lulea. He’d scored 12 goals for the AHL Grand Rapids Griffins in 2022-23, then head home to Sweden.

Before Andreasson, Mathias Brome scored one goal in 26 games for Detroit in 2020-21. Slovak defenseman Libor Sulak was minus-four during a six-game Red Wings stint in 2018-19. Slovak goalie Patrik Rybar, Czech goalie Matej Machovsky, Finnish goalie Jussi Olkinuora and and Finnish defenseman Oliwer Kaski never played a single NHL game for Detroit.

Why will Rychlovsky be different? Well, for one thing, he’s got wheels.

Continued; it doesn’t hurt to sign European free agents as it only costs the Wings a contract’s worth of money, but there’s no doubt that the Wings have been hit-or-mostly-miss in the player recruitment department.

Making the jump from Europe to the AHL isn’t easy, and the travel and schedule are punishing, so it takes a lot of character to “tough it out” and deal with those six-hour bus rides while playing 2-in-2’s and 3-in-3’s. Hopefully, Rychlovsky will “click” in Grand Rapids and withstand the adjustment from a 50-game schedule to a 73-game one.

The Red Wings selected a 20-year-old in Prince George Cougars forward Ondrej Becher this past June in Las Vegas, taking a flyer on the young Czech with the 80th overall draft pick.

Becher blossomed with the Cougars this past season, posting 32 goals and 64 assists for 96 points in 58 games played–as well as 19 playoff points in 15 games played–and while Becher can return to his WHL team as an “overager,” he may end up playing for Grand Rapids or Toledo.

The Free Press’s Helene St. James explains why the Wings drafted this older player in a draft that’s usually for 18 and 19-year-olds:

“I got to see Bechs play past few world juniors,” assistant director of player development Dan Cleary said during the team’s early July development camp. “Obviously he has skills. We’ll see what transpires here in terms of where he is going to go play.”

Becher himself wasn’t sure where he will play this coming season, but wherever it is, he knows that, “I have to work hard every day, more than even before.”

A lanky 6 feet 2 and 187 pounds, Becher has spent the past two seasons playing with the Prince George Cougars. He had an OK first season, with 16 goals and 22 assists in 63 games, plus three points in three playoff games.

This past season, though, he had almost as many goals (32) as he had points the previous year (38) and also picked up 64 assists in 58 games, giving him a 1.65 points-per-game average. In the playoffs, he posted 19 points in 15 games. It turned out that when Becher committed to his own end of the ice, he was much more effective in the opponent’s end.

“I think I start playing more defensively, so I become two-way player,” he said. “I wasn’t two-way player before. I try to improve in defensive zone and I think I did. I think that’s why I am here now.”

Continued; Becher’s playing situation is a little complicated due to his age, but there’s no harm in utilizing a middle-of-the-draft pick on a player that amateur scouts believe might become a high-scorer. The Wings need as many scorers as they can get.

This morning, MLive’s Ansar Khan discusses the possibility of Marco Kasper or Carter Mazur making the Red Wings’ roster this September:

Mazur, a right-shooting winger selected 70th overall in 2021 (third round), tallied 17 goals and 37 points in 60 regular season games and three goals and eight points in nine playoff games with the Griffins. It was the first full AHL season for the scrappy 6-foot, 175-pound Jackson native.

Kasper, a left-shooting center taken eighth overall in 2022, collected 14 goals and 35 points in 71 regular season games and four goals and seven points in nine playoff games. He had a tough adjustment during his first season in North America with two goals and eight points in his first 26 games but improved as the season progressed.

“Both of those players had very good seasons,” Red Wings general manager Steve Yzerman said before the draft. “Marco’s play just got stronger and stronger as the year went on. He’s a real good two-way player. The offense started to generate more, in particular in the playoffs. He goes to the net hard, strong on the puck. He’s strong defensively as a centerman. We’re really pleased with his development.

“The same with Carter Mazur. He’s got a real good feel for the game. He knows how to get open, he knows to work, where to go. He goes to all the hard areas, and he gets a puck on his stick and off the stick. It’s a little bit like the (Alex) DeBrincat shot. He shoots the puck and it’s a threat to go in. He’s got that every time he shoots. It’s a scoring chance.”

Continued (paywall); my gut feeling is that Mazur might make the Wings’ roster due to his status as a grinding player who doesn’t need “top six” minutes to excel.