The Red Wings have waived 5 players and cut their preseason roster down to 28 players, yielding a 23-man roster for the team.
The team both demoted Marco Kasper to Grand Rapids, and they sent Michael Brandsegg-Nygard to the place he wanted to play, Skelleftea AIK of the SHL, instead of assigning the 19-year-old to Grand Rapids.
Pro try-out Austin Watson remains on that 28-man roster, and Shai Buium and Tim Gettinger are injured and not on the roster presently.
Here’s what the roster looks like now. Assuming that all the Wings’ waiver wire players clear or are picked up by other teams (that is always a possibility), the team will be down to 23 players and cap compliant when the team has to submit its opening-night roster by tomorrow at 5 PM EDT.
Here’s the roster, with the waiver claims on board:
I can’t say that I’m thrilled that Kasper is not going to be the Wings’ 13th forward, but I understand why the Red Wings decided to give him more playing time in Grand Rapids instead…
And Brandsegg-Nygard is a power forward, so I felt that keeping him in North America might refine his north-south game, but he’s also all of 19 as of yesterday, so he deserves to have a say in what his comfort level is and where he wants to play this season.
The Wings will also need to sign a goaltender to help Sebastian Cossa in Grand Rapids, so don’t be surprised if, sometime this week, the team signs a goaltender for AHL purposes. Michael Hutchinson was on a PTO with New Jersey, and he didn’t make the team, so the Wings may go back to the well.
What does the team’s lineup look like now?
At forward: DeBrincat-Larkin-Raymond
Tarasenko-Compher-Kane
Rasmussen-Copp-Fischer
Berggren-Veleno-Motte
Watson?
On defense: Chiarot-Seider
Edvinsson-Maatta
Gustafsson-Petry
Johansson
In goal: Husso, Talbot, Lyon
We’ll see if the roster looks this way on Thursday.
Remember that, as coach Lalonde himself said, the Wings will probably need at least 15 forwards, 10 defensemen and a bare minimum of 3 goaltenders to get through the grind of the regular season. So we will probably see players like Kasper, Mazur, Danielson, Wallinder, and Cossa at some point this year.
As the Hockey News’s Sam Stockton notes:
However, as coach Derek Lalonde pointed out yesterday, the idea of the “opening night roster” can be a false signifier of importance.
“Grand Rapids is two hours away. We’ll have played 33 players by Christmas,” Lalonde contended. “Maybe it’s a little old school. Maybe that’s where it was 20, 25 years ago: you made the team on Day One. In reality, we’re probably going to have 15 forwards and 10 D that are gonna play for us and make our team, so it’ll be very interesting how it plays out in the next couple weeks.”
