Month: September 2024

TSN 1050’s “First Up” radio show hosts, Carlo Colaiacovo and Aaron Korolnek, interviewed Adler Mannheim coach Dallas Eakins this morning, and coach Eakins hosted Red Wings forward Lucas Raymond and the yet-to-be-re-signed Moritz Seider for part of August.

At the 7:20 mark, Eakins discusses the time which Raymond and Seider spent/spend with the team, stating that Seider is practicing with Adler every day as he waits for his contract to be negotiated, and that Seider is treated like a regular member of the team. It’s just a quick quip, but it’s informative:

The Hockey News’s Connor Eargood discusses three significant “positional battles” which are of note going into training camp, including the tangle of young forwards hoping to make the roster, the goaltending situation, and the battle for time on the Red Wings’ third defensive pairing:

Of the eight defensemen, some are clearly going to be lineup regulars. Moritz Seider, when he signs an extension, will be on the top pairing, likely with Ben Chiarot or perhaps Simon Edvinsson. Outside of those two potential counterparts, it’s likely that power play specialist Erik Gustafsson will be in the lineup to run the man advantage in some capacity.

The final two spots come down to some combination of Olli Maatta, Jeff Petry, Justin Holl and Albert Johansson. The former two were lineup regulars last season, while Holl spent most of the season as a healthy scratch. Johansson cannot be sent down to Grand Rapids without going through waivers, where another team might claim him for free.

Who has the edge for a spot on what will, in all likelihood, be the bottom pairing? That’s one of the questions this training camp will seek to answer. Maatta and Petry appear to be favorites given their regularity in last season’s lineup. Maatta anchored last season’s third pairing, while Petry played most of the season on the second. A demotion out of the lineup would probably take some development — either themselves losing a step with age, or other players like Holl and Johansson proving their claim to those spots.

In the case of Holl, he’s probably this team’s seventh defenseman as it currently stands. He spent more time as a healthy scratch last season than he did in the actual lineup, but Yzerman kept him around for a reason. He’s one of just three right-handed defensemen among the eight projected NHLers, so that’s a bit of an edge.

Finally, Yzerman said Tuesday that while Johansson may be on the final roster due to his waiver eligibility, the defenseman will have to earn his way into actual games. That process commences at training camp, where all eyes will be on him and how he might factor in at the NHL level.

“Watching him in junior, watching him at the pro level in Sweden, and then in the American Hockey League, he’s adjusted at every level,” Yzerman said of Johansson. “So I’m pretty optimistic that he’ll be a good, solid defender for us. And it’s up to him to outplay one of the other guys, or wait until he gets his opportunity and impress well to stay in the lineup.”

Continued; injuries will play into the situation as well.

Injuries are guaranteed given the fact that the Red Wings will play 8 exhibition games over the course of 12 nights. That’s something I really dislike as someone who worries about the team’s players, but the team seems to want to maximize not only its player evaluations, but also its income, so the Wings play the most exhibition games in the league. Most teams play 5-7 exhibition games.

The Free Press’s Helene St. James discusses the Red Wings’ desire to play better defensive hockey this season, starting from the opening of training camp tomorrow in Traverse City:

“We need to be a better defensive hockey club, top to bottom,” [Red Wings GM Steve] Yzerman said. “Our special teams have to be good. Our special teams both improved last season and we scored more goals. We gave up too many to make the playoffs. But you have to be solid in those areas. You can get by maybe not having the best power play, but you better be solid in all the other areas. You can get by not having the best penalty killing unit, but you better be solid in other areas.”

The Wings don’t project to be as big of a scoring threat, not with the off-season departures of David Perron (17 goals), Daniel Sprong and Robby Fabbri (18 goals each), and Shayne Gostisbehere (team-leading 29 power play points). But former 40-goal scorer Vladimir Tarasenko joins the lineup, and Patrick Kane will be in from the start, and Jonatan Berggren is the candidate most likely to audition for Sprong’s old role on the fourth line/power play.

But even if they can make up for the scoring lost, last season showed it’s not enough when the play lacks in their own end.

“The key is ultimately I think for long term success to be a good defensive hockey team,” Yzerman said. “We are going to need to score goals – we’ve lost David Perron, Daniel Sprong and Robby Fabbri, simply couldn’t afford to keep all three of them. We like to think Vlad Tarasenko offsets one of those losses. We think Jonatan Berggren can offset another of those losses. Are those goals made up by potentially one of our young players making the team, or Patrick Kane for an entire season? Improved play from Lucas [Raymond]? Dylan Larkin hopefully healthy for 82 games – what not. Collectively if the goals we lost, if we can make up for them as a group. But being solid in all areas, that makes you a pretty good team.”

Continued (paywall)

The Athletic posted several articles which are Red Wings-related this morning.

1. First, The Athletic surveyed its NHL beat writers to determine the “biggest question” facing each of the NHL’s 32 teams heading into training camps, which begin today and tomorrow across the league.

Max Bultman suggests that the Red Wings need to be concerned about their defensive corps, as opposed their offensive deficit after David Perron, Daniel Sprong and Shayne Gostisbehere left the organization as free agents:

Detroit Red Wings

Is the team’s defense improved? The Red Wings lost a lot of production this offseason, and while they’ll hope to replace that scoring with contributions from Vladimir Tarasenko and via internal improvements, their bigger short-term priority will be defending better as a team. Detroit gave up the league’s ninth most goals per game last season (3.33), and too often gave away easy scoring chances via turnovers and defensive breakdowns. They’ll certainly hope the full-time arrival of Simon Edvinsson can help on the blue line thanks to his length and mobility, but a big part of the equation will need to come from their forwards, who last season tended to be more offensively tilted. Tyler Motte will help there as a matchup forward who can kill penalties, and Christian Fischer will return in a similar role. From there, it’s about getting a little more responsibility out of some of the more skilled forwards, a task which will fall to Derek Lalonde and his staff to execute. — Max Bultman

Continued (paywall); even Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman suggested that the Wings need to focus on the team’s defensive play this upcoming season when the GM spoke with the media on Tuesday.

2. Second, Bultman zooms in perspective-wise while discussing the state of the Wings’ defense and four more questions which the team faces before training camp begins tomorrow. In this case, hope always springs eternal for a player to “earn a spot” on the team, even with its 12 forwards mostly set:

Continue reading Three Athletic things: Regarding the Red Wings’ defense, a forward earning a roster spot and the team’s 3 goaltenders

Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff posted a story this morning which discusses Alexandre Doucet’s desire to parlay a 19-goal, 41-point performance with the ECHL’s Toledo Walleye into a promotion to the AHL’s Grand Rapids Griffins:

[Doucet] believes he’s learned his lessons well and is prepared to make that next step up the hockey ladder.

“I’m working on my strength, getting faster,” the six-foot, 192-pound Doucet said. “I think I’ve got smarter playing the coast last year, so I’m just trying to show that I’ve improved a lot. I don’t want to go back in the coast, so I’ve tried to work hard this summer to prove that I belong in Grand Rapids.”

Griffins coach Dan Watson was behind the bench for those rookie games. He was liking what he was seeing from Doucet.

“What he put in the summertime, I think he’s in better shape,” Watson said. “We know he could score. We know he’s got that energy now. It’s being consistent with it, and I think we saw that consistency. He was able to follow up shift after shift with his skating, with his compete level. What he did with the puck, that’s what we need to see all the time with him, is just that high energy, but at a consistent level.”

COntinued

The Detroit News’s John Niyo reflects upon Lucas Raymond’s 8-year, $64.6 million contract extension this evening, discussing the ways in which “hope becomes expectation” now that Raymond’s probable prime years are in front of him, likely to be played here in Detroit:

Now that it is complete, Raymond is eager to show everyone he’s far from done growing as a player: “I mean, that’s the goal. I’m still 22, so hopefully I have a lot of development to still do.”

The fourth-overall pick in the 2020 NHL draft is coming off a career-best production last season, racking up 31 goals and 71 points while playing all 82 games. That breakthrough was attributed partly to his off-ice work last summer, as the young Swede arrived at training camp having added about 12 pounds of muscle. And that improved strength seemed to carry through his entire game, whether it was winning more puck battles early or finishing chances late.

As impressive as he was in carrying the Red Wings’ offense when Larkin missed time due to injury, he was even more so in that pressure-packed final month when every night felt like a playoff elimination game. There was the hat trick to salvage a point in Pittsburgh. The two late goals against Montreal to keep Detroit’s postseason hopes alive. Another just before the buzzer in Columbus to force OT. In all, Raymond scored 14 goals over the last 18 games, as the Wings ultimately lost a tiebreaker for the final playoff berth in the Eastern Conference.

And while that finishing stretch “really helped his cause” when it came to this new contract — one that’s still under the $8.35 AAV deal Ottawa’s Tim Stutzle signed two years ago, by the way — it was just one of many factors.

“I don’t know that there’s a specific age that a player peaks at, but I think he’s just entering the early stages of his prime,” Yzerman said. “I fully expect him to become a better hockey player for a couple reasons. I think he’s extremely driven, an extremely bright player, and … he’ll just continue to get better over the next few years. On all these long-term deals for younger players, there is a little bit of projection in it. There’s an expectation that the player will take his game to another level — and that’s on both sides. And I’m very confident that Lucas will do that.”

Continued (paywall); now get Seider done, Mr. Yzerman…

DetroitRedWings.com’s Jonathan Mills reports that the Red Wings’ prospects made their traditional Tuesday-after-the-prospect-tournament visit to a local Traverse City school to teach the students about hockey. This time they added a wrinkle in giving Central Grade School’s students a “Little Free Library”:

In the Detroit Red Wings’ latest effort to make a difference off the ice, all 24 members of their 2024 NHL Prospect Games roster stopped by Central Grade School to host a ball hockey clinic on Monday morning.

Smiles were abundant inside the gym, as approximately 40 students learned the basic elements of hockey like stickhandling, passing and shooting at rotating stations that were led by the Red Wings prospects and several Ilitch Sports + Entertainment Community Impact colleagues.

Defenseman Shai Buium said he really enjoyed teaching the game of hockey to the students.

“It’s really cool,” Buium told DetroitRedWings.com. “Growing up in San Diego, I really didn’t get any of this. We didn’t have NHL prospects come and teach us how to play hockey, so it’s pretty special to be able to do this with the kids.”

…

During the interactive visit, forward Nate Danielson helped unveil a Red Wings-themed Little Free Library that was donated to the school by the Detroit Red Wings Foundation through the Red Wings for Reading Program, which is a literary initiative that encourages students in K-5 classrooms across the state of Michigan to spend more time reading.

Danielson then read “Dino-Hockey” – a book by Michigan-based author Lisa Wheeler – to a group of first graders before answering their questions. The fun Q&A session was wide-ranging, with the children asking Danielson what his favorite color is, why he likes playing hockey, if he’s ever done a backflip and more.

Continued

I can only provide a link to this one, but the NHL Network’s Stu Grimson broke down the Lucas Raymond re-signing and discussed the Wings’ need to re-sign Moritz Seider in a 5-minute clip posted on NHL.com.

97.1 the Ticket’s Will Burchfield offers something of a post-script to the Red Wings’ re-signing of Lucas Raymond on Monday night:

Raymond is a rudder for the Red Wings, who are starting to turn the corner. The 22-year-old forward nearly propelled the team into the playoffs last season for the first time in eight years. He put up career best numbers and “down the stretch,” as Steve Yzerman said Tuesday, “took his game to another level.” 14 of his 31 goals came in the final 18 games, and several of them were clutch.

“I think I figured out a lot of things about my game, what makes me good, and how to be able to do that on a consistent basis,” Raymond said.

And what did he figure out?

“Just the way that I perform the best when I play a certain way, my movement on the ice, the physical aspect was for sure one part of it, and my skating,” said Raymond. “That made it a lot easier, and also something to fall back on, when you might not be feeling great, to find your rhythm again. Trying to build off of that.”

…

“I’m not the biggest guy out there, but you get in those situations and get physical, that usually helps you get into the game a little bit easier,” he said. “I felt that was a big thing. Maybe it was a little bit of a conscious (decision) to do it, but I think that came naturally as well.”

The Red Wings have every reason to believe that Raymond’s surge at the end of last season was a sign of things to come. Their commitment to the player only backfires if he regresses. Yzerman is confident that Raymond will reach “another level” yet. His maturation was most evident last season when the Wings lost their captain and No. 1 center Dylan Larkin for several weeks to an injury and Raymond shined without him.

“He’s (been) our best player, I think,” Moritz Seider said at the time. “Even in tough stretches, he finds a way to get on the board, stay in it, play the right way. I think he’s just taken a real big step compared to last year.”

Continued;

The Hockey News’s Adam Proteau makes “five bold predictions” for Atlantic Division teams this evening, and this one seems to be more and more likely to come true as training camps approach:

Prediction: Detroit Red Wings top defenseman Moritz Seider signs a contract extension in the middle of training camp. His deal – which we believe will pay him $8.5 million per season – will ensure he begins the regular season without missing any time.

Per PuckPedia, the Red Wings currently have $8.74 million in salary cap space after signing dynamic young winger Lucas Raymond to an eight-year, $64.6-million contract. 

If Seider – the team’s top defenseman and a cornerstone component of GM Steve Yzerman’s plans – wants to play a full 82-game slate of games, he must settle for about $8.5 million per season.

In fairness, players comparable to Seider – Buffalo’s Owen Power ($8.35 million) – give Yzerman reason to keep Seider’s contract demands reasonable. And if Seider doesn’t feel like he’s being treated properly, he can sign for a short term and try again to hit a bigger jackpot down the line. 

In any case, we expect Seider not to miss any time and contribute right out of the gate for Detroit. Seider is too crucial to fight tooth and nail over financial issues, and both sides must temper their demands to ensure Seider is in the lineup to begin the season. As the Red Wings learned last season, any missed opportunity for one more point in the standings can cost them.

Continued; the one thing that concerned me during Steve Yzerman’s presser was a question about Raymond and Seider’s work visas. It sounded like if Seider signs before September 30th, the end of the fiscal year, there won’t be many problems, but if his visa expires thereafter…

It could get a little tricky.

This is one of those few occasions where I could be making this all up in my head…I’d need a H1B Visa expert to clarify the language.