Month: July 2024

HSJ in the morning: Wings prospect goaltender Trey Augustine says his last year’s been ‘super cool’

The Free Press’s Helene St. James posted a subscriber-only article which discusses Red Wings prospect goaltender Trey Augustine, who spent the past year tending the net for the resurgent Michigan State University Spartans, and then playing for the men’s World Championship team in Czechia:

Being selected was tremendous recognition for Augustine, a 2023 second-round pick (No. 41 overall), and fitting given his freshman year. The South Lyon native posted a 2.96 goals-against average and .915 save percentage in 35 games for the Spartans. He had three shutouts in his first season at MSU, leading the Spartans to their first Big Ten title ever, as well as their first NCAA tournament appearance since 2012.

“I got to watch Trey play quite a bit at State,” Wings assistant director of player development Dan Cleary said. “When I watch Trey, he just gives me a lot of confidence, and I’m not even on his team. He’s got a great demeanor about him. A nice calm, cool demeanor, but competitive — that fire burns within him. Tremendous season for him. Going to [the] World Championships was a cool experience for him, playing against NHL caliber players. It’s been a lot for him.”

It has been quite a lot for Augustine, which is why he took the previous two weeks off from skating, sort of an opportunity to mentally refresh before bearing down and gearing up for his sophomore year. From being drafted to playing at State to the World stage and back at development camp, it has been a whirlwind.

“I think that’s a good time for me to reflect on the 12-month span I’ve had,” Augustine said. “I’ve had some unbelievable opportunities and I’m super thankful to everyone who has helped me get to this position I’m in today. It’s super cool and I’m looking to have some more coolness in the future.”

Continued (paywall)

A bit about new Red Wings prospect Fisher Scott

The Red Wings selected Dubuque Fighting Saints defenseman and incoming Colorado College freshman Fisher Scott with the 208th overall pick in last weekend’s 2024 NHL Draft. The Aspen Daily News’s Rich Allen checked in with Scott as he attends the Red Wings’ 2024 Summer Development Camp. Allen also spoke with Scott’s coach in Dubuque, Kirk MacDonald, and Red Wings assistant GM/director of amateur scouting Kris Draper regarding Scott’s potential:

“Fisher’s progression over the last few years of junior hockey has been impressive,” Kris Draper, Detroit’s assistant general manager and director of amateur scouting, told the Aspen Daily News via an email statement. “He is a very good skater. His skating, along with good stick detail, allows him to end plays quickly. He’s a high-character kid which we value. He’s smooth in transition, moving pucks on time. We’d like to see him work on his strength like most young players but we’re very happy to have him in the organization.”

Draper’s name should be familiar to hockey fans in Colorado: As a player, he was a central figure in the Red Wings-Avalanche rivalry at its peak around the turn of the century. That could’ve made it awkward for Scott, who grew up cheering on the Avs, but he said he’s just elated to play pro hockey.

“As a player, you dream of being in the NHL. It doesn’t matter what team you go to, you’re pretty happy and fortunate to be anywhere,” Scott said.

…

In most cases, a seventh-round draft pick is considered a long shot or a lottery ticket to make it to the bigs. A study by DobberProspects.com in 2020 using data from 2000-2009 showed that only 5.5% of the league’s players came out of the seventh round, and the odds of a seventh rounder reaching the NHL was at 10%.

But even with those odds, Scott’s stock has seemingly been rising from the obscurity of Aspen to the main stage in Las Vegas — and his former coach likes his chances.

“F—ing right I do,” MacDonald said when asked if thinks Scott could be an NHL player one day. “There’s no doubt in my mind that Fish can play. … I think he’s going to go into CC this year and make an immediate impact this year, no doubt in my mind he’s going to be great for them for as long as he’s there. And hopefully when the time is right, he makes that transition to pro hockey and he’s just going to continue to grow. I think he’s going to make Detroit look really smart a few years down the road.”

Continued

Duff: Cam Talbot eyes the Red Wings’ starting job

Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff posted an article which discusses goaltender Cam Talbot’s belief that he can earn the Red Wings’ starting job this upcoming season:

“Absolutely,” Talbot, 36, declared. “That’s one of the reasons why I chose to sign here. There’s gonna be the competition no matter what between three three or four of us. I feel healthy and good even at my age.”

Signed to a two-year, $5 million deal as a UFA, Talbot is coming off a solid season with the Los Angeles Kings. While posting a .913 save percentage and 2.50 GAA, he was also earning the Pacific Division nod for the NHL All-Star Game.

“I played 54 games last year, made an All-Star appearance,” Talbot said. “I still feel like I got a lot to give. That’s one of the biggest reasons why I wanted a two-year deal to come in and try to help a team win and still come in and compete for starts. That’s a big factor for me coming in.”

Continued; the competition for playing time in goal should be very healthy this season as Talbot, Ville Husso and Alex Lyon vie for two goaltender’s jobs, with Jack Campbell and Sebastian Cossa not to be ruled out of the back-up’s position just yet.

Grading the Tarasenko deal

ESPN’s Ryan Clark weighs in on the Red Wings’ signing of Vladimir Tarasenko to a 2-year, $9.5-million contract, grading the transaction:

Grade: B+

Where does he fit? Tarasenko was attractive given his ability to play a top-six role, and it appears that’s the part he will play for the Red Wings. Tarasenko’s arrival adds to a group that already had Alex DeBrincat, Patrick Kane and Lucas Raymond on the roster.

DeBrincat is a six-time 20-goal scorer with three seasons of more than 30 goals; he scored 27 goals in 2023-24 for a consecutive season. Kane is a future Hall of Famer who had 20 goals and 47 points in 50 games, while Raymond had the strongest season of his career, with 31 goals and 72 points.

Adding Tarasenko, who scored 23 goals between his time with the Ottawa Senators and Florida Panthers, gives them another option in an offseason that saw them lose David Perron in free agency. Altogether, the Red Wings look to have one of the more formidable top-six winger situations as they seek to climb back into the playoffs after an eight-year hiatus.

Does it make sense? The Red Wings had 13 players who finished with more than 10 goals during the 2023-24 season; however, they lost three of those players this offseason. Perron and defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere left in free agency while Jake Walman was traded to the San Jose Sharks.

It left an opening for a proven goal scorer for a team just barely missed the playoffs. So who better to call, or sign, than a two-time Stanley Cup winner who not only gives the Red Wings another top-six option but adds another figure to a power play that was ninth in the NHL with a 23.1% success rate?

As for the actual contract itself, giving him two years at $4.75 million AAV is the type of deal that provides a sense of comfort for Red Wings. It’s a pact that’s long enough to build continuity, but not too long that it’s an inescapable deal in the event he struggles to find consistency. — Clark

Continued (paywall)

A THN teaser offers praise for the Wings’ slow burn

The Hockey News’s Jared Clinton and Adam Proteau discuss the Red Wings’ rebuilding process in a positive light, suggesting that the Red Wings’ coaching staff and front office are attempting to balance building a playoff team with affording the team’s younger players a place to grow:

Even the most pragmatic fan can get swept up in romanticism. It was difficult to look at what Yzerman had accomplished with the Bolts without having visions of a Red Wings resurgence. At their height, the Wings had become the paragon of competitiveness not only in the game but in all of professional sport, a model organization that was, for a time, the destination for the NHL’s title-hungry stars, each of whom knew the path to glory almost inevitably wound its way through the now-shuttered Joe Louis Arena. Surely, the thinking went, the Red Wings would rediscover that former glory now that Yzerman was at the helm.

Somewhere amid this fervor, ‘The Yzerplan’ was born.

Four-and-a-half seasons later, the Red Wings still haven’t sniffed the playoffs. In a business where careers are made and reputations tarnished on the basis of wins and losses, that might be enough for another GM to get his walking papers. But that Yzerman has been given leniency and more than a little latitude should come as no surprise. After all, he was allowed to take to the business of reshaping the Red Wings following his arrival less with pruning shears than with gasoline and a blowtorch.

When he was unveiled as GM, Yzerman referred to a core, the centerpiece of which was Dylan Larkin. In that regard, nothing has changed: the Michigan born-and-bred Larkin is now the Wings captain, and even then, he was the heir apparent for the ‘C.’ But different fates have befallen Anthony Mantha, Andreas Athanasiou, Tyler Bertuzzi and Filip Hronek, the other players Yzerman cited on that day as part of the foundation. None of those four are still with the Wings. In fact, Larkin and Michael Rasmussen are the only NHL regulars remaining from the roster that Yzerman inherited.

Though this dismantling took place over the course of the past four seasons, the broader picture it paints is instructive of what exactly Yzerman’s grand designs were for the Red Wings, at least initially.

“If we follow the process, we do our job right, and, truthfully, we get a little bit of luck,” said Yzerman during his introductory press conference, “we’ll get back to where we need to, where we’re expecting to be.”

Continued; and this is a “teaser” excerpt from the Hockey News’s “Future Watch” edition, which apparently takes a “deeper dive” into the Red Wings’ attempts to revive the franchise.

I don’t believe that Yzerman would have been fired elsewhere; I happen to believe that the Red Wings needed so much work–and still need more–as a franchise with a talent base necessary to sustain itself that we really are somewhere in the middle-starting-toward-the-end of a much longer rebuilding process.

It’s been six years. We may have three-to-five more years to go. That’s just the reality of rebuilding in the NHL, especially when you don’t have first-round lottery luck.

Missing ‘Wally’ and his infectious enthusiasm for the game

Former Red Wings defenseman Jake Walman is embracing his role as something of a veteran on the rebuilding San Jose Sharks–or at least he was suggesting as much while expressing his excitement about joining the Macklin Celibrini-led team on a conference call with reporters yesterday. As a result, that infectious enthusiasm was on full display, as noted by San Jose Hockey Now’s Sheng Peng–and that’s what I’m going to miss about Walman:

Walman, on bringing the Griddy and lightheartedness to San Jose: I told Macklin, that was one of the things I said, we got to start growing this game. It starts with you guys, you got to live up to the hype. You’ll see me doing some celebrations too. I have some stuff in store, for sure.

We had some really interesting meetings this weekend at the PA meetings. Short story is hockey is pretty old school and thought about [in] an old school mentality.

[A celebration like the Griddy is] just who I am. You’ll see when I’m at the rink, even off the ice: I’m laughing, enjoying it. Being serious when it counts, but I think you need that light personality. Like you said, it’s not showboating.

My favorite player growing up was Alex Ovechkin. I just saw his crazy [celebrations] and how fired up he got when he scored, and when stuff was going well for his team. That’s why I first started celebrating. But we turned it into a positive this year when I was in Detroit.

I actually just finished coming from dropping off a check [in relation to the Griddy]: We did a charity t-shirt drop for the Boys and Girls Club there, and it did really well.  I’d say about 90 percent of the messages are positive and 10 percent that I get are people that are pissed off or the other team thinks it’s silly. Fans of the other team.

But in the end, the thing that I do it for is I get those 90 percent of messages from parents that send me videos of their kids doing [the Griddy] on the ice. Other kids doing it. People wearing 96 jerseys and their kids doing it after they score. Or, wanting to play hockey. That’s really why I do it. Just trying to grow the game because I remember when I was young, I loved meeting NHL players or going to watch a game in Toronto. So that’s really why I do it. It’s nothing more than that.

Continued; it’s too bad that he’s gone, but the business of hockey is a brutal one.

Niyo weighs in on the Red Wings’ offseason…thus far

The Detroit News’s John Niyo posted a column which discusses Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman’s “lukewarm approach” to the NHL offseason this spring and summer. Niyo critiques the “Yzerplan” without using that word out loud, and he suggests that the Red Wings’ offseason signings have been a net…somewhere in the middle of things…as compared to the all-in approach of Barry Trotz’s Nashville Predators:

Here in Hockeytown, though, it’s a different state of affairs, even if Patrick Kane’s decision to re-sign with Detroit — on a surprising one-year deal — sends an encouraging message about the prospects for another serious playoff push next season. Kane, who produced 20 goals and 47 points in 50 games, coming off hip surgery, is getting a full offseason to train for a full regular season, neither of which he had a year ago.

[Vladimir] Tarasenko’s addition, meanwhile, satisfies Yzerman’s stated goal of adding an “impact” forward to the Wings’ top six. A six-time 30-goal scorer in the NHL, Tarasenko potted 23 last season for Ottawa and Florida, then added five more in the Panthers’ Cup run while showing he still possesses both an elite shot and, at 6-foot-1 and 220-plus pounds, an ability to win puck battles and operate in tough spaces.

That fills some of the void left by David Perron’s signing in Ottawa, but it doesn’t change the fact Yzerman needs to replace upwards of 60 goals from a roster that, according to the analytics, netted more than its fair share a year ago. And the decision to move Fabbri (18 goals in 68 games) certainly leaves the door open for more maneuvering here.

But it also leaves room for some of the young talent waiting in the wings, including former first-round pick Marco Kasper, who proved he’s ready in the AHL last season. That’s something Yzerman hinted at after last season, and it’s where the Wings’ GM has shifted his focus over the last few years. After trying to accelerate the rebuild in free agency in 2022, and handing out a few contracts he likely regrets as the team continued to spin its wheels, now we’re finally getting an acknowledgment of the real timeline here.

“I’m hopeful that somehow in the next couple of years, (with) this nucleus of relatively young players that we have,” Yzerman said last month, pointing to Dylan Larkin and Alex DeBrincat on one end and his most recent top picks on the other, ”all of a sudden, we have a group of 12 guys who are 21 to 29 (years old) and that’s our group for that playoff window.”

Continued; I never thought that this was less than a 10-year rebuild, and that doesn’t make me “Doubt the Yzerplan”; it makes me someone who’s tried to be realistic about the machinations of a GM and front office who sometimes make masterful choices, but are just as prone to make mistakes as any other fallible human beings are wont to do.

Press release: Red Wings make the Fabbri-for-Gage trade official

Per the Detroit Red Wings:

Red Wings acquire goaltender Gage Alexander from Anaheim Ducks in exchange for Robby Fabbri and conditional fourth-round pick in 2025 NHL entry draft

6-Foot-6 netminder was selected by Anaheim in fifth round of 2021 NHL entry draft

DETROIT – The Detroit Red Wings today acquired goaltender Gage Alexander from the Anaheim Ducks in exchange for forward Robby Fabbri and a conditional fourth-round pick in the 2025 NHL Entry Draft.

Alexander, 22, spent the entire 2023-24 season with the ECHL’s Tulsa Oilers, posting a 5-8-2 record with a 3.76 goals-against average, an 0.887 save percentage and one shutout in 19 appearances. The 6-foot-6, 205-pound netminder split time between the American Hockey League’s San Diego Gulls and Tulsa in 2022-23, logging a 5-7-3 record with a 3.59 goals-against average, an 0.887 save percentage and one shutout in 16 games with the Gulls, in addition to a 1-4-1 record with a 3.61 goals-against average and an 0.875 save percentage in six appearances with the Oilers. Originally selected by Anaheim in the fifth round (148th overall) of the 2021 NHL Entry Draft, Alexander has totaled a 3.72 goals-against average and an 0.884 save percentage in 25 ECHL contests with Tulsa.

Continue reading Press release: Red Wings make the Fabbri-for-Gage trade official