Month: August 2024

NHL.com praises Lucas Raymond as an up-and-coming winger

The NHL Network is about to reveal its top 10 players who play on the wing, and they listed 10 players who will have the opportunity to crack their list over the next couple of seasons. Lucas Raymond ranks among their top 10 “young wings”:

Lucas Raymond, Detroit Red Wings

The 22-year-old, the No. 4 pick of the 2020 draft, had 57 points (23 goals, 34 assists) in 82 games in 2021-22. Raymond finished fourth in the voting for the Calder Trophy, which goes to the NHL rookie of the year. After taking a step back in 2022-23, when he had 45 points (17 goals, 28 assists) in 74 games, he leapt forward last season with 72 points (31 goals, 41 assists) in 82 games, leading Detroit in scoring. Much of that was due to natural maturation, physically and mentally. He has the potential to be one of the best wings in the League, and the Red Wings will need him to be as they try to become a consistent playoff contender. — Nicholas J. Cotsonika, columnist

Continued; Raymond put on 11 pounds before last season, so it will be interesting to see whether his body continues to mature in terms of strength.

He’s never going to be a huge player, but, at 5’11” and 188 pounds, it’s more about how well Raymond can absorb and deliver a tight-checking bump-and-grind game than anything else.

He can still win a few more battles for the puck against bigger, stronger players via leverage and experience, and as he continues to grow into his body and grow into the NHL game, he’s only going to get better in tight.

Do the Broberg/Holloway offer sheets matter for Raymond and Seider?

The hockey world is abuzz over the St. Louis Blues’ offer sheets to Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway today, but given that the Red Wings have $17.65 million in salary cap space (per PuckPedia), it’s incredibly difficult to imagine that Steve Yzerman or the Red Wings’ management team are at all worried about having to match similar offer sheets when it comes to re-signing Jonatan Berggren, Lucas Raymond or Moritz Seider.

Sure, the offer sheets remind us that it’s almost the middle of August, and that the Red Wings need to gain some traction here as training camp is about a month away, but I’m just not in agreement with the Hockey News’s Connor Eargood here:

As a general manager, Yzerman has always proceeded with patience. When other GMs jump, he calculates. When others give their star players extensions well ahead of the offseason, he sweats out his stars to get the best possible deal. He did it with Steven Stamkos in Tampa Bay and Dylan Larkin in Detroit, even when they could’ve become UFAs. He’s doing it with Seider and Raymond, stars who still don’t have extensions deep into August. With nothing forcing Yzerman and other GMs to move quickly, they can take their sweet time.

If teams are willing to sign offer sheets and give up draft picks, then Yzerman will have no choice but to speed up his process to avoid tempting other teams to offer sheet his players. Especially when a number of prospects should mature into NHL-level players these next few seasons, he’ll have to mind how he approaches the RFA contracts.

For a long time, RFA rights have served as a quasi-contract in the way teams view free agents. This empowers Yzerman’s patience. Take a look at Moritz Seider, Lucas Raymond and Jonatan Berggren this offseason. For players of Raymond and Seider’s caliber, the compensation another team would have to give up in return for them is not cheap. It’s hard to fathom any offer sheets for those two not landing above $6.8 million, it’s harder to imagine a team wants to give up their own first, second and third round pick to do that. And don’t even think that Detroit wouldn’t match the offers, either. So, nothing forces Yzerman to move quicker on extensions. He can sweat everyone out deep into the summer.

So what exactly is changing with the Blues’ splash? In a world of offer sheets, compensation costs probably prevent a real blockbuster from affecting negotiations like Seider’s and Raymond’s. But what about players who don’t demand such big contracts? What about the Joe Velenos and Jonatan Berggrens of the future, the players of varying talents who don’t demand huge contracts and who other teams might be willing to give a shot? It’s a whole new ball game.

The Blues’ moves are generally not going to be replicated by other teams’ GM’s–offer sheets are rare for good reason, given that the NHL’s GM’s are generally a staid bunch of folks who don’t take kindly to other teams trying to poach their talent–and while the rest of Eargood’s article is a good read, noting that the Wings will have a gaggle of restricted free agents a year from now…

It’s just not something that Steve Yzerman is going to pay much heed to. It’s not a whole new ball game until offer sheets proliferate, and we’re not at that point in today’s NHL.

Morning Khan: all about Max Plante

Red Wings 2024 draft pick Max Plante isn’t a big player at 5’11” and 176 pounds, but he’s a tenacious little bugger, and he comes from a “hockey family.”

Max’s father, Derek Plante, was an NHL player, and the Hermantown, MN native has two hockey-playing brothers in Zam (who will play alongside Max at the University of Minnesota-Duluth this season) and Victor (who will play for the NTDP’s Under-17 team, and is committed to play for Minnesota-Duluth in the future).

This morning, MLive’s Ansar Khan profiles Plante and his family…

“I’m very lucky and fortunate to be around such great hockey people,” Plante said. “I’d say my dad probably watches more hockey than anyone in the world. Growing up, I’d skate on the outdoor rinks and come home, and my dad would be watching hockey, so there was nothing else on the TV.

“He’s probably taught me pretty much everything I know about hockey. My grandpa (Bruce Plante) is the coach of the high school of where I’m from in Hermantown. Just being around hockey people all the time grew my passion for the game.”

He called it special to play with his brother at Duluth, just eight miles from Hermantown.

“It was a dream of mine to play for the Bulldogs,” Plante said. “I couldn’t see myself in any other jersey.”

And Khan notes that Red Wings assistant GM and director of player development Kris Draper is impressed by Plante’s “hockey sense”:

“Grew up around the game; you could tell that by talking to him,” Kris Draper, Red Wings director of amateur scouting, said. “The hockey sense of where he can play up and down the lineup was something that we kept coming back to, a player that the lines he was on seemed to play well that night.

“He’s smart, he can play on the penalty kill, he can play on the power play. The important thing that we love is he can play with really good hockey players, and he showed that. Talking to a lot of his teammates, they had a lot of positive things to say about the way he played, the way he carried himself.”

Continued; I’m not certain whether Plante will grow into a top-six player–he’s almost a pure passer at this point, and he remains undersized–but he already displays a professional’s hockey mentality, and he’s going to have a couple of years to develop into a bigger, better player at Minnesota-Duluth.

Tweet of note: Detroit Lions post video of Red Wings’ visit to Lions practice

As stated above, the Detroit Lions posted a Tweet about the Red Wings’ visit to Lions practice on Sunday:

Pondering Jack Campbell’s role in the Detroit/Grand Rapids organization

The Hockey News’s Jason Chen posted an article which addresses a topic that I’ll admit I’ve been thinking about as well. He ponders whether the Red Wings’ fourth goaltender, Jack Campbell, might see some NHL playing time this upcoming season:

Campbell will likely back up Cossa, who was their top goalie in the AHL but not quite ready yet for a promotion [in Grand Rapids]. At some point, though, the Wings will have to decide who they want to call up. If Cossa is playing well and the Griffins are on a roll, Campbell might get the call. 

Perhaps a change of scenery and a reset is what Campbell needs. The Oilers stint was disastrous, but he’s shown that he has the chops to play at this level, even for brief stretches. 

It’s unlikely we’ll see Campbell much in 2024-25, barring some kind of miraculous, Masterton-type comeback. If the Wings play to their full potential and they are a competitive playoff team, is Campbell a streaming option?

Streaming goalies can be a risky proposition akin to catching a falling knife, like with Coyotes goalies last season when it was either a ton of saves or a ton of goals allowed, with very little in between. The same goes for streaming highly-touted young goalies, such as the Flames’ Dustin Wolf and the Wild’s Jesper Wallstedt, which yielded some (literally) wild results. 

Continued; even with the Red Wings work their three-goaltender rotation all season long, we’ll probably see Campbell called up a handful of times.

At this point, Campbell needs to reestablish himself as a reliable starter at the AHL level, even if that’s in a 1B role behind Sebastian Cossa, but I’m sure that the 32-year-old wants to parlay this upcoming season into an NHL job somewhere.

Actual praise for the Wings’ potential

DobberHockey’s Flip Livingstone discusses “the top-10 bubble playoff teams that could make noise next season,” and he’s actually complimentary toward the Red Wings:

6) Detroit Red Wings

If someone from the four-headed “monster” of goaltenders is able to step up and grab the reins between the pipes in D-Town next season, the Red Wings have enough weapons up front and on the blue line to be a playoff team. The real question is, which one of Ville Husso, Alex Lyon, Jack Campbell, and the supposed top option, Cam Talbot emerge as the guy? At this point in the offseason it’s any hockey pundit’s guess, but given the two-year deal handed to Talbot and his solid numbers last year for the L.A. Kings (27-20-6 record, three shutouts, 2.50 goals-against average, and .913 save percentage), no one will be shocked if it ends up being the 37-year-old vet. Mo Seider, Lucas Raymond, Dylan Larkin, and Alex DeBrincat will all be names off of fantasy draft boards by the sixth-or-seventh rounds, make sure to get a piece of the Wings’ rise before this team is a perennial threat.

Continued; I forgot what praising the Red Wings’ long-term outlook sounded like.

DetroitRedWings.com profiles Red Savage

DetroitRedWings.com’s Jonathan Mills posted a profile of Red Wings prospect and Michigan State University senior forward Red Savage, who’s a tenacious checker and excellent all-round forward. Savage told Mills that he transferred to MSU from Miami of Ohio to challenge himself to become a better player:

“I think it helped me individually as well, playing with elite players and having that security on your back knowing that even if you don’t play your best, the team will still pick you up and force you into games,” Savage said last month at the Red Wings’ 2024 Development Camp. “It was a lot of fun. I think my game especially improved a lot throughout the year.”

Savage set NCAA career-highs in goals (10), assists (17) and points (27) in 38 games last season, helping the Spartans earn their first-ever Big Ten title.

“It’s definitely a really big change up for me, going from Miami to Michigan State,” Savage said. “It was a lot of fun playing for a super successful team under coach (Adam) Nightingale and the number of great teammates that we had throughout the whole ride.”

Savage said navigating the NCAA transfer portal was also a growth experience because the process involved a lot of self-reflection.

“(The transfer portal) is pretty much free agency,” Savage said. “You go in with different ideas of where you want to go or where might fit your needs the best. I had a group of five or six teams I know I wanted to talk to. It was important to get to know every coach, go over every different option and lay everything out to go over the pros and cons for each team.”

Continued; Savage definitely has the same professional mindset as his father, long-time NHL’er Brian Savage, and while he projects as a fourth-line center, he’s going to be hell on earth to play against.