Month: August 2024

A little Red Wings ‘Vibe Check’

Bleacher report’s Sara Civian offers a late-summer “Vibe Check” on NHL teams this morning, and her “Summer Thoughts” discuss the so-called “Yzerplan” and its hiccups of late:

Yzerplan: Yay or Nay?

I’m usually on the same page as my beloved Detroiters when it comes to their beloved Red Wings, but I ruffled some feathers on X when I suggested Vladimir Tarasenko’s two-year, $9.5 million contract was an overpay.

Look, two things can be true at the same time: That’s a slight overpay for the veteran winger, especially when you look at how the Cup champion Panthers were able to acquire him midseason. But unlike the Panthers, the Red Wings can afford a slight overpay for this player on a less-than-three year contract.

Detroit isn’t expected to contend right now, nor does it have too much money tied up in other overpays. I like Tarasenko on this team and his flexibility in the top six as some of the younger players hopefully evolve into bigger roles. A player like him gives some space and time for that to happen.

Then, there are the deals for Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond that GM Steve Yzerman has had to take into consideration. That’s perhaps why you lose a player like Jake Walman seemingly out of nowhere.

All in all, I still believe in the Yzerplan—the plan was to cultivate in-house and have a rotating cast of outside talent until it’s time to seriously contend, right? I’m good with two more years of letting the kids grow up.

Continued; I’ll readily admit that now I’m starting to get a little nervous about the Raymond and Seider contracts getting done, but Yzerman seems to be one of those wait-until-all-extra-time-has-expired GM’s, so I’m trying to have a little faith in that.

As for Tarasenko, yeah, the Wings gave him maybe half-a-million to a million more dollars than a contender would have, but that’s okay. The Red Wings do have to continue to sign star or near-star players to build up their cachet as a free agency destination, and sometimes, that means making hard decisions–like bringing in Tarasenko after David Perron left for more money and term than he was worth, or making a lateral move in signing Erik Gustafsson after Shayne Gostisbehere signed a cheap-for-a-contender contract with Carolina.

This free agency business isn’t easy–see one Andrew Copp–and sometimes mistakes are made. Here’s hoping that Tarasenko ends up fitting in well.

Video link: A bit more about the ‘Yoopers United’ vs. Red Wings Alumni game on September 13th

The Detroit Red Wings’ Alumni Association is going to face off against a team of Yoopers representing the United Way of Marquette County on September 13th, and Steve Carlson from Slap Shot will be giving the Yoopers a hand.

This morning, the United Way of Marquette County‘s executive director, Andrew Rickauer, appeared on Marquette’s TV 6 to discuss the event further.

I can’t embed the video, but Mr. Rickauer discusses some of the logistics of the event, its two-year history, and the day’s events.

The alumni will apparently be wearing a uniquely-designed jersey as well, and the jerseys for the Wings’ alums will be auctioned off after the game.

Talking about playoff droughts

Daily Faceoff’s Matt Larkin examines the five teams with the longest playoff droughts, including the Red Wings:

  1. Detroit Red Wings, eight seasons

Last playoff appearance: 2015-16

By summer 2016, GM Ken Holland’s Red Wings had made the playoffs 25 consecutive seasons but were no longer any kind of threat once they got in, limping along as a veteran-laden club loaded with questionable contracts. I asked him whether the 25-year streak had actually become a curse, because it created a pressure to keep winning and handing out veteran deals when it might have been wiser to take a step backward. His response was that he couldn’t bring himself to make a determination about the team five years in the future and that he had to keep trying to win as long as he had a roster constructed to be competitive. He felt a true rebuild would require missing the playoffs five, six, seven years in a row.

Yikes, did those words ever prove prophetic. It took Detroit so long to get out from under the Justin Abdelkaders and Frans Nielsens of the world that the 25-year run indeed set them back badly, to the point Detroit has now gone eight years without making it. It’s debatable whether GM Steve Yzerman acted too rashly in free agency in the past few summers and built a veteran-heavy roster before assembling a strong enough young talent pool, but he has undeniably made the Wings more competitive. They missed the playoffs on a tiebreaker this past season, so even the tiniest amount of progression could halt the drought.

Continued; as we all know by now, a real rebuild takes something like 10-12 years, and the Red Wings are doing it the hard way, without any draft lottery luck. It’s obvious that there’s enough shine off the “Yzerplan” to conclude that the GM is in fact human and not a god-like figure, but other than that, Mr. Yzerman’s methodical rebuild is going about as well as we can expect.

Roughly translated: Axel Sandin Pellikka won’t attend training camp

This morning, Hockeysverige.se’s Rasmus Kagstrom clarifies the rumors and reports that Axel Sandin Pellikka will attend the Red Wings’ training camp alongside teammate Michael Brandsegg-Nygard. According to Kagstrom, Sandin Pellikka has told Norran.se’s Robin Lindgren that he will not attend Detroit’s training camp:

Axel Sandin Pellikka is not going to Detroit Red Wings training camp

After winning SHL gold with Skelleftea, the great talent Axel Sandin Pellikka signed an NHL contract with the Detroit Red Wings. Now the defensive prospect tells Norran that he will not go over to the team’s NHL camp this fall.

Michael Brandsegg-Nygard will go over to the Detroit Red Wings’ training camp this fall, and thus risks missing the start of the SHL regular season. Skelleftea AIK has risked that the promising Axel Sandin Pellikka will join Michael Brandsegg-Nygard–but that’s not the case.

To Norran, the defensive talent confirms that he’s not going to training camp.

“We talked and since I will be playing here with Skelleftea this upcoming season, we agreed that I will stay here the whole season,” says Sandin Pellikka to the newspaper.

Last season, Axel Sandin Pellikka posted 18 points (10 goals and 8 assists) in 39 regular season games played, and another seven points (2 goals and 5 assists) in 14 playoff games for Skelleftea.

Detroit’s training camp begins on September 19th, two days before the SHL premiere, and lasts until the NHL premiere on the night of October 5th, Swedish time. During that period, the Red Wings will play eight exhibition games.

Khan predicts the Wings finishing 5th in the Atlantic Division

MLive’s Ansar Khan discusses how teams in the Atlantic Division will finish this upcoming season, and he’s predicting that the Red Wings will finish 5th in the division:

5. Detroit

Key additions: LW Vladimir Tarasenko, D Erik Gustafsson, G Cam Talbot, C Tyler Motte.

Key losses: RWs David Perron, Daniel Sprong, LW, Robby Fabbri, Ds Shayne Gostisbehere, Jake Walman, G James Reimer.

The Red Wings are not as strong on paper as the team that missed a playoff spot due to a tiebreaker. They lost a lot of offense, including a key power-play component in Gostisbehere. Tarasenko, Jonatan Berggren and improvement from within will compensate to some degree, but they must move up several spots from 24th in the league in goals against to end an eight-year playoff drought.

Continued; no Perron, no Gostisbehere, no Sprong, yeah, that looks like a “step back,” but the goaltending situation is going to get sorted out, Tarasenko might ride shotgun with a fully healthy Patrick Kane…

And you lose the defensive struggles and penalties committed by David Perron’s slow-footed status, Gostisbehere’s inability to defend at even strength, and Sprong’s inconsistency.

Sometimes there’s “addition by subtraction,” and while the losses in terms of goals-for will hurt, if the Red Wings work on their goals-against average, and players like Simon Edvinsson, Jonatan Berggren and Joe Veleno take steps forward, they’ll be all right.

Twitter video: NHL Network’s Coyle and Grimson discuss Raymond and Seider’s next contracts

Red Wings players Lucas Raymond, Moritz Seider and Jonatan Berggren are still restricted free agents, and the NHL Nework’s Jameson Coyle and Stu Grimson discussed the “big fishes'” likely contractual terms:

News about Jakub Vrana and Valtteri Filppula

Of alumni-department note today:

  1. Former Red Wing Jakub Vrana has signed a pro try-out with the Washington Capitals, most likely saying, “No, thank you” to some lucrative offers from Czech Extraliga teams in the process;
  2. And, as the Hockey News’s Connor Eargood notes, Valtteri Filppula, who’s 40 years old, is going to join Jokerit HC of the Finnish Mestis. Ilta-Sanomat’s Sami Hofr and Marko Lempinen report that Filppula will officially be named to the team next Monday, and, as Eargood reports, Filppula’s going to try to bring Jokerit back up to the Finnish Liiga:

Filppula and Jokerit will play 2024-25 in the second-tier Mestis. He will also be a co-owner of the team once he’s done playing, joining an ownership group full of NHL alumni.

Way back in the early 2000s, Filppula was a force for Jokerit before joining the Red Wings system. He scored more than a point per game in both the Finnish U18 and U20 leagues as a prospect, debuting with the club’s senior team at 19 years old. In his rookie season with Jokerit, Filppula notched 18 points in 49 games, the highest total of any U20 player that season. He remained an elite player in 2004-05, when he led his age group with 30 points in 55 games amid a surge of NHL talent in the league due to the NHL lockout. 

This success earned him an entry-level contract with Detroit, where he played 591 of his 1,056 career games and won the 2008 Stanley Cup. That Stanley Cup, plus gold medals at the 2022 World Championship and Winter Olympics made him the first ever Finn to join the illustrious Triple Gold Club.

It’s this kind of pedigree that could really help Jokerit. While Filppula spent 16 years in the NHL, his former club took a decline. In 2014, Jokerit moved from the Finnish Liiga to the Russian KHL, where it saw mild regular season success that didn’t really translate to the playoffs. Then, controversy struck. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Jokerit left the league before the playoffs due to pressure from investors and fans alike. This departure, and the need to sever all its financial ties with Russia, caused Jokerit to lay dormant in 2022-23. Last season saw a grand return for Jokerit orchestrated by a management group full of Finnish NHLers, but the team is still in the country’s second-tier league. The Jokers finished third in the league with a 23-10-10-5 record before losing in the quarterfinal of the league’s playoffs.

Jokerit’s owned by people like Teemu Selanne and Jari Kurri, and Filppula, who’s coming off a Swiss league title with Geneve-Servette, brings them a huge cachet of star power as a member of the IIHF’s Triple Gold Club.

He’s going to play for Jokerit for at least a year before joining ownership, and the “long play” is for Jokerit to work its way up to promotion to the Liiga, which is going to take some significant work.

A bit more about the Red Wings ‘season preview party’ prior to training camp in Traverse City

This morning, the Red Wings officially released the details of their truncated prospect tournament and main training camp, and this evening, the Traverse City Record-Eagle’s James Cook has more details regarding the new wrinkle in training camp, a “Season Preview Party” on the evening before training camp begins:

The Red Wings open training camp with a season preview party Sept. 18 at Delamar Traverse City. The new event provides guests with opportunities to meet Red Wings players, coaches and personalities, and hear directly from team leadership ahead of the 2024-25 season.

Hosted by Red Wings TV broadcasters Ken Daniels and Mickey Redmond, the party also features a silent and live auction, as well as a VIP package that includes an exclusive meet and greet with Red Wings Executive Vice President and General Manager Steve Yzerman and head coach Derek Lalonde, and reserved seating with a Red Wings player for the season preview show. Proceeds from the event benefit Involved Citizens Enterprises (I.C.E.), a 501(c)3 non-profit organization providing affordable skating programs to Northern Michigan.

Tickets to the event start at $200 per person, which includes two drink tickets and two tickets to the opening day of training camp. The VIP package starts at $600 per person, with discounts for purchases of four tickets ($2,000 total), eight ($3,750) or 12 for $5,000. VIP packages include two drink tickets at the party, two tickets to opening day of training camp, two club-level tickets to a Red Wings home game. Full details are available at centreice.org/drwseasonpreviewparty.

This is an intriguing post-COVID way of raising more funds for Centre ICE, hearkening back to the pre-camp galas of the past. Here’s hoping the media’s invited, too!

Tweets of note: U of M, MSU to play outdoors at Wrigley Field after the Winter Classic

Per EP Rinkside’s Sean Shapiro…

The Chicago Sun-Times’ Ben Pope…

And Michigan State University hockey…

Tweet of note: ASP + MBN at Wings camp?

Per IceHockeyG on Twitter:

Also: