Of Red Wings-related note this morning:
- The Free Press’s Helene St. James discusses Jonatan Berggren’s situation as the restricted free agent hopes to earn regular playing time with the Wings this season:
“He’s shown the ability to create offense,” Lalonde said earlier in August. “When he’s been with us, he’s created offense. But we have a lot of guys with similar DNA. We need him to be responsible, like we are going to ask our whole team to be conscious of their two-way game, without taking away from some of his offense.”
The coaching staff’s issue with Berggren, a second-round pick (No. 33) in 2018, is they already have offensive-minded wingers in Alex DeBrincat, Patrick Kane and Raymond. Berggren, who plays in the bottom six, would have more trust from the coaches if he was stronger in his own end. It’s what ultimately led to Daniel Sprong not being re-signed — he scored 18 goals in 76 games averaging only 12 minutes, but down the stretch, when the games gained in magnitude, he was a healthy scratch until illnesses forced him back into the lineup.
With Sprong, David Perron, Robby Fabbri and Shayne Gostisbehere — a combined 63 goals — gone either via free agency or trade, improving team defense will be tantamount to success. If Berggren buys into that, he can start building on what he showed in 2022-23, when he had 15 goals in 67 games (along with a minus-14 rating). That was supposed to have been Berggren’s springboard to the NHL, but instead, he spent most of last season in the minors.
“It’s a credit to him,” Lalonde said. “He did a good job in a really tough situation last year. I would never say anyone has played themselves out of the AHL; it’s just too good of a league. But he’s proven, or maybe more he’s earned, this opportunity. He’ll have to show us, and he’ll have to do it in camp.”
2. MLive’s Ansar Khan discussed the Red Wings’ slowly-but-surely improving goaltending prospect pipeline, beyond Sebastian Cossa and Trey Augustine, anyway:
The Red Wings also have some depth in their system, selecting Jan Bednar (who signed a one-year contract with the Grand Rapids Griffins in June) in 2020 and Carter Gylander (who the Red Wings inked to a two-year entry-level deal in March) in 2019.
Rudy Guimond, a sixth-round pick in 2023, played for Cedar Rapids (USHL) last season and is bound for Yale in 2025-26.
The Red Wings added to their goaltending prospect pool this year by taking Landon Miller of Sault Ste. Marie in the fourth round (126th overall).
“We don’t want to draft a goalie just to draft a goalie, but we like to have enough goalie prospects, prospects at every position,” general manager Steve Yzerman said. “With the goaltending thing, it’s a little more complicated. You want to make sure they have a runway, so to speak, to get to where they’re going and when they do turn pro, they have a spot to play and we don’t have a logjam of goalies because we only have so many spots for goalies.”
3. And Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff tells the story of Michael Brandsegg-Nygard and friend/teammate Stian Solberg being pranked by Norwegian teammates and icons Mats Zuccarello and Patrick Thoresen, which came from Hockeysverige.se’s Uffe Bodin.
It’s a great story. I posted it on August 8th, and here’s the gist of it:
“Me and Stian were downtown in Prague. Then Mats and Thoresen bought blue cheese. The kind of cheese that smells absolutely awful. Then they took small pieces and placed them around [our hotel] room. When we got back it smelled so damn bad.
Brandsegg-Nygard was convinced that it was the room’s air conditioner that was malfunctioning, and he started looking into it.
“I thought it smelled like when you haven’t changed the filter on the car’s AC. Mats and Thoresen thought it was unbelievable because they knew it was the cheese when I was sure it was the AC.
A lot. But perhaps above all, despite their age, they still have a child’s mind.
Had to change rooms
The duo ended up having to change rooms.
“We went down to reception and had the owner come up with two caretakers who started examining the fridge and lots of stuff. In the end they said that we should switch rooms,” he says, laughing.
