Month: July 2024

Yzerman ‘on the hot seat’ in Detroit?

The Hockey News’s Adam Proteau has been surveying the NHL’s 32 teams for a set of “Hot Seat Radar” articles, and, as is the fashion at this time, he suggests that the Red Wings’ general manager is under pressure to produce a playoff-worthy team:

Success has been much harder to come by for him in the past five years, with the Wings missing the playoffs and finishing no higher than fifth place in their division in that span. While most of those years have been in a rebuild, they just missed out last season and could have looked to have been more competitive the year prior.

Yzerman also has made some questionable decisions in recent years. Did you know Detroit’s second-highest-paid defenseman at the moment is frequent healthy scratch Justin Holl? That will change when star blueliner and RFA Moritz Seider agrees to a contract extension, but it’s difficult to see what the Red Wings were thinking with that deal for Holl.

Similarly, Yzerman’s signing of center Andrew Copp has not panned out as hoped, with the 30-year-old center posting only 13 goals and 33 points in 79 games this past season. Given that Copp has three years left at a salary cap hit of $5.625 million, his contract is an overpayment so far. 

Once again this summer, with the free-agent acquisitions of winger Vladimir Tarasenko, defenseman Erik Gustafsson and goalies Cam Talbot and Jack Campbell, Yzerman has spent money trying to augment the lineup. But there are few people who see the Red Wings as a 100-percent lock to get back into the post-season. And if Detroit does miss the playoffs this coming year, the focus will center around Yzerman’s blueprint for success. And it won’t be positive.

You can only dine out on your reputation for so long before your current stretch of success or failure overrides that reputation. That’s where Yzerman is with the Wings today. Few playoff bubble teams are dealing with more pressure than Detroit is, and the ramifications of another year of disappointment will greatly influence how much longer Yzerman has the keys to the kingdom.

Continued; Yzerman has had some hits and some big misses in the free agent marketplace, to be sure, but it would take a very dumb, impatient owner to dump the GM because the rebuild isn’t over yet.

You and I can say a lot of things about Chris Ilitch, but he isn’t dumb or impatient.

Kicking off the annual prospect tournament and training camp fundraiser

It’s late July, but we’re only about six weeks out from the Red Wings’ two-game prospect tournament vs. Dallas in Traverse City on September 14th and 15th, and the five-day training camp which will follow from September 19th through 23rd.

We’re also a month out from having to raise approximately $400 to renew my web server bills with Bluehost and Jetpack.

As such, I’m starting the official fundraiser for the 2024 Prospect Tournament and Training Camp (with server fees included).

You may know by now that going up to the truncated prospect tournament and training camp requires us to rent a vehicle (about $2,000, as our present vehicle doesn’t even function; we’re working on getting it fixed via outside assistance) and secure a handicapped-accessible room ($2,200, so that I may bring my Aunt Annie, who’s 82 and is four months removed from double hip replacement surgery.

Continue reading Kicking off the annual prospect tournament and training camp fundraiser

Stadium Series tickets already appearing on secondary market sites

I’m generally not a fan of third-party, secondary-market ticket sites, but the Columbus Blue Jackets are going to sell the majority of their Stadium Series tickets to their full and partial season-ticket holders, so:

Cleveland.com’s Robert Fenbers reports that tickets are already showing up on ticket resale sites, should you wish to head down to Ohio State University to take in the Red Wings-Blue Jackets Stadium Series game next March 1st:

Ohio Stadium will transform from a football field into a tundra as the Columbus Blue Jackets battle the Detroit Red Wings in an NHL Stadium Series matchup on March 1, 2025. Presale tickets for the highly anticipated game went on sale this morning and are available on major-third party sites.

The game time and TV channel are yet to be determined for this one-of-a-kind rivalry matchup on the banks of the Olentangy River. More than 122,000 tickets have been requested to Columbus’ first outdoor game. The stadium capacity is 102,780.

Get your seats to Blue Jackets vs. Red Wings at the 2025 Navy Federal Credit Union NHL Stadium Series from Seat Geek, Vivid Seats, StubHub, Viagogo, TicketCity and Ticketmaster.

As of July 30, the cheapest overall tickets I found were for $169 on Vivid Seats. The cheapest lower bowl seating is also from Vivid Seats at $337.

Continued; good luck finding tickets if you wish to attend the game.

Tweet of note: Dylan Larkin turns 28 today

Per Bally Sports Detroit and the Detroit Red Wings on Twitter, Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin hits 28 years of age today.

For what it’s worth, Larkin’s birthday is the same as my late father’s. Dad would have been 77 today.

THN’s Eargood interviews Jesse Kiiskinen

Earlier this morning, Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff discussed new Red Wings prospect Jesse Kiiskinen’s displaying an edge at the World Junior Summer Showcase, and the Hockey News’s Connor Eargood has now posted a wide-ranging interview with the former Nashville Predators prospect:

Because of Kiiskinen’s mandatory military service [this summer], the Red Wings haven’t gotten a chance to see their newly acquired prospect in action since the trade until the ongoing World Junior Summer Showcase, where Kiiskinen is captaining Team Finland. What they see should impress them. Though he hasn’t been perfect and is scoreless in two games played, Kiiskinen’s skating and sticktoitiveness have stood out on a young Finnish roster. So has his leadership, a commodity in need for Finland thus far.

“He has good character,” Finland coach Lauri Mikkola told The Hockey News. “He is a good person and just a little bit leader in the locker room there. He has lots of giving for the team.”

A team-first forward that plays to win? In the Red Wings organization? Yeah, that’s not very surprising. In fact, Detroit had interest in adding Kiiskinen to its prospect pool for a while, including in his 2023 draft year. 

“I had a lot of meetings and calls with the Finnish scout (Antonin Routa) from Detroit,” Kiiskinen explained, “and (when) I was (at the) combine, I had the interview with those guys and I was thinking they were interested.”

Eventually, the Red Wings were interested enough to acquire him. It just took some time and the right circumstance to do so.

Continued; again, the Red Wings traded a pretty good prospect in defenseman Andrew Gibson to Nashville for both Kiiskinen, a right wing who’s going to play for HPK Hameenliina of the Finnish Liiga, and the 2nd-round pick that Detroit used to send Jake Walman and his $3.4 million salary to San Jose.

My take after reading Eargood’s interview is that the Wings put a lot of faith in Antonin Routa and the rest of the Wings’ European scouts in order to swap the physical Gibson for Kiiskinen, so we’ll see how Kiiskinen develops playing his second pro season in the Liiga. Although he swapped out the Lahti Pelicans for HPK, he should be more comfortable and self-assured this season.

Wings’ Shai Buium ready and willing to join the Griffins

MLive’s Ansar Khan looks back to the Red Wings’ Summer Development Camp this morning, discussing big defenseman Shai Buium’s learning curve as the University of Denver alumnus graduates to play pro hockey in Grand Rapids.

The 21-year-old defender played in 1 game for the Griffins this past spring, after his University of Denver Pioneers won their second NCAA Division 1 Hockey Championship in 3 seasons. Buium told Khan that he needs to keep working on his skating as he “turns pro”:

“Obviously, the game gets faster, guys are stronger,” Buium said this month at Red Wings development camp. “Skating and building strength, I think they come together. When you have good strength and your edgework is getting better, it’ll come together and you’ll be a better skater, faster and stronger.”

The Red Wings selected Buium 36th overall (second round) in 2021 and watched the 6-4, 210-pound left-shooting defenseman progress each season. He tallied seven goals and 36 points in 43 games last season, doubling his production from his freshman year.

“I think I got a lot better defensively,” Buium said. “Just learn new things every year. I like to be a sponge and just take it all in. Good defense just generates more offense for me. I like to be on the offensive side of things and playing good defense helps with that.”

Buium joins former Denver teammates Carter Mazur and Antti Tuomisto in Grand Rapids, after winning an NCAA title with them in 2022. He joins a Griffins defense that won’t have Simon Edvinsson and Albert Johansson, who’ll be in Detroit, and will feature fellow prospects Tuomisto, William Wallinder and Eemil Viro as well as veterans Brogan Rafferty, Josiah Didier, William Lagesson and Tory Dello.

Continued (paywall); Shai doesn’t have his brother Zeev’s offensive upside, but the elder Buium is likely to become a shut-down defenseman with a bit of a mean streak.

Whipple, Kiiskinen battle it out in Plymouth

Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff reports that Red Wings prospects John Whipple and Jesse Kiiskinen vigorously battled each other as Team USA Blue won a hard-fought 5-3 victory over Team Finland:

[Their competition] led to some heated battles between the pair, which had to warm the cockles of any Red Wings fans in attendance. If there’s been one element that been found consistently wanting on the Detroit roster in recent seasons, it’s been locating hard-nosed players who were willing to not only go to the dirty areas on the ice, but were also willing to arrive at those spots in ill humor.

For both Kiiskinen and Whipple, that’s a way of life. In fact, it’s the only way they know how to play the game.

“Just trying to be as mean as I can and shut plays down,” was how Whipple described his style.

Kiiskinen also takes pride in being a thorn in the opposition’s side.

“That’s what I do,” Kiiskinen said. “I like that. I feel confident when I hit the boards and hit the other guy. Everything like that. In front of the net, the battles, I like those battles.”

Continued; the Red Wings drafted Whipple knowing that he possessed a nasty edge, but I’ll admit that I was disappointed when the Red Wings traded a similarly rough-and-tumble defenseman in John Gibson to Nashville for Kiiskinen (who is serving as Finland’s captain at the WJSS).

It’s good to hear that Kiiskinen, who’s going to play for HPK Hameenlinna of the Finnish Liiga this upcoming season, was giving Whipple, a University of Minnesota commit, everything he could handle.

Tweet of note: Glamour shots

Via Paul Kukla of Kukla’s Korner/Abel to Yzerman comes another Tweet regarding Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman and assistant GM/director of amateur scouting Kris Draper’s appearance at the Detroit Lions’ training camp today: