Among the Hockey News’s Connor Eargood’s “5 takeaways” from Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman’s press conference with the media today:
Traverse City Future is “Up in the Air”
At one time, as many as eight teams played in the Red Wings-hosted NHL Prospects Tournament in Traverse City. But if you watched it over the weekend, you probably noticed that there are only two now — Detroit and the Dallas Stars. The future of the tournament — if you can still call it that — is uncertain.
“The tournament obviously appears to have run its course,” Yzerman said. “A lot of that, over the last three or four years, we’ve gone from eight (teams) down to two for different reasons. Teams wanted to do different things. Some didn’t want to play four games. Some wanted to save the expense and not have to travel to Traverse City. They’re able to do different things.”
What does the path forward look like? Yzerman said there might be interest in a third game, and he and Nill talked about adding a third team to the mix. He also said that a future game in Dallas might be on the radar, too. All this is to say, there are a lot of ideas for how to approach the future of a dying tournament, but the exact steps aren’t defined. As far as a timeline goes, Yzerman said he will reevaluate the situation after training camp.
Continued; at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Red Wings move the tournament to Little Caesars Arena’s BELFOR Training Center.
