Month: November 2024

Tweet of note: Thousand-game man

From hockey historian Mike Commito:

Update: Also…

Press release: Griffins ‘on a roll’

The Grand Rapids Griffins play games on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and ahead of a busy weekend, the Griffins have filed their weekly press release. Here are some highlights thereof:

Keep The Good Times Rolling: With a 12-4-1-0 record and 25 points through 17 games, the Griffins have tied the second-best start in franchise history, with their best coming in 2005-06 with 27 points and a 13-3-0-1 mark. The Griffins rank first in the Central Division, second in the Western Conference and tied for fourth in the AHL. In 29 seasons, this was the fourth Griffins team to win at least 10 of its first 14 games, and the first since 2009-10. The Griffins have won with defense, as they have allowed two goals or less in 11 of the 17 contests and have scored an average of 3.06 goals per game (T15th).

Let’s Show Some Love to the Defense: The Griffins rank first in the AHL with just 2.18 goals allowed per game, as the 37 goals surrendered rank second in the AHL. For comparison, Grand Rapids ceded 52 goals in the opening 17 games last year and 69 in 2022-23. Dating back to last season, Grand Rapids has allowed just 18 goals in its last 11 regular-season games at Van Andel Arena (1.64 GA per game). 

Busy Bodies: The Griffins will play back-to-back three games in three days during the next two weeks. Grand Rapids will start with Milwaukee, Chicago and Cleveland from Friday to Sunday this week. The Griffins went 3-0-0-0 in their first 3-in-3 from Oct. 25-27, defeating Springfield and Lehigh Valley (twice). This marked the first time since April 5-7, 2002 that Grand Rapids went undefeated while playing three games in three days. 

One, Two Punch: Sebastian Cossa, the 15th overall pick by the Detroit Red Wings in 2021, is off to a strong start through the opening 12 games of his season, showing a 7-4-1 mark with one shutout, a 2.08 goals-against average, and a .931 save percentage. The 21-year-old ranks among the league leaders in minutes played (692:11, 3rd), shutouts (T5th), GAA (T6th), wins (T3rd), and save percentage (5th). Ville Husso has also gotten off to a fast start with the Griffins, as he has a 4-0-0 ledger with one shutout to go along with a 1.58 goals-against average and a .944 save percentage in five appearances. Through six career games with Grand Rapids, Husso has a 5-0-0 record with two shutouts, a 1.29 goals-against average and a .953 save percentage. Jack Campbell joined the goaltending room last week when he was assigned by the Red Wings. Campbell, the 11th overall pick by Dallas in 2010, has appeared in 438 games since 2011-12 and possesses a 229-141-47 ledger with 32 shutouts to go along with a 2.67 goals-against average. Last season, the 32-year-old showed an 18-13-1 record, a 2.63 goals-against average and a .918 save percentage in 33 games with the Bakersfield Condors. 

Continued

A bit of praise for Simon Edvinsson’s development

It’s kind of difficult to share this one with you, but EP Rinkside’s David St-Louis has posted a “Film Room” article regarding one Simon Edvinsson, and here’s a bit of a preview:

“In a way, Edvinsson’s development plan is basically the inverse of Moritz Seider’s,” wrote Elite Prospects director of North American Scouting Mitch Brown in 2021. “For Seider, the Wings had to develop the puck skills, awareness of space and options, and the confidence to make plays. He had the rest. Edvinsson is the opposite. But the two towering defencemen also mirror each other. Seider improved through experimentation in a game setting, learning what worked and what didn’t. That process turned him into one of the best bets of recent drafts. Simon Edvinsson has yet to arrive. When he does, he could become a bonafide top-pairing defenceman for years to come.”

Three years later, Edvinsson has retained the same identity. Still willing to take offensive chances, he activates deep into the play and looks for passing lanes through opponents, but he has learned to tone down the risk in his decisions.

The positives of his game now far outweigh the negatives.

The only word that comes to mind when watching him evolve in the NHL is unfair. No one should possess this much skill and range.

Continued (paywall); EP Rinkside is an expensive option, but it’s worth the $ in my opinion.

A fair ‘C+’ for the Red Wings’ first quarter

ESPN’s Ryan S. Clark and Kristen Shilton posted a set of “Quarter Mark” grades for each and every one of the NHL’s 32 teams. You would assume correctly that the Red Wings earn a middling mark in the Insider-only article:

Detroit Red Wings

Preseason over/under: 90.5
Current points pace: 78.1

What’s gone right? The Red Wings have benefited from an (unexpected?) youth movement headlined by Marco Kasper, Simon Edvinsson and a (suddenly!) striking Jonatan Berggren. The 20-year-old Kasper has been so reliable as a physical force up front that coach Derek Lalonde recently promoted him to play on a line with Patrick Kane and Alex DeBrincat. And the 21-year-old Edvinsson had been terrific patrolling Detroit’s blue line before suffering a lower-body injury. The Red Wings have also received solid goaltending from offseason signee Cam Talbot (.921 SV%, 2.62 GAA) and their power play is excellent, sitting just outside the top 5 at 28.1%. Detroit is good in one-goal games, too, posting a 4-1-2 record in those outings this season.

What’s gone wrong? Detroit has been so strong on the man advantage its nearly overshadowed how poor their 5-on-5 scoring is. The Red Wings are 31st in even-strength goals — only Nashville is worse. Detroit’s inability to generate offense has robbed them of too many wins already this season. The Red Wings’ penalty kill is a league-worst now (66.7%), which is another constant hurdle holding them back. And, as has been the case for several years, Detroit simply can’t deliver a full-team by-in on defense — they’re giving up the fourth-most shots on net (31.9 per game, fifth-most in the league), and allowing 3.15 goals against per game.

Grade: C+. Detroit is running out of excuses. The Red Wings have been maturing throughout this extended rebuild and yet the purported progress simply isn’t showing. And it feels like Lalonde is increasingly closer to paying the price with his job. The Red Wings are by all accounts a quiet group, and it could be the lack of vocal veteran leadership keeping them in a rut. Captain Dylan Larkin must be the change there, and veterans like Kane, Vladimir Tarasenko and J.T. Compher can help too (some added offense from those three wouldn’t hurt, either). The Red Wings have been shuffling the deck up front lately and maybe that’ll help jumpstart Detroit in the next quarter of this season.


Continued (paywall); A “C+” seems a little generous to me, but I wouldn’t give them a much lower grade despite the team’s systemic difficulties.

Aside from giving up fewer goals against and shot attempts against, I’d love to see the Wings crank up their secondary scoring, and Tarasenko at least is warming up (and it turned out that Patrick Kane’s slow-down was injury-related), but the Wings are far too regularly a one-(line)-and-done team…

And that concerns me as much as any of the other deficiencies the team must rectify in order to succeed over the course of the second 20 games of the season.

A quick AP Red Wings-Flames preview

The morning after the Detroit Red Wings defeated the New York Islanders 4-2, and the Calgary Flames dropped a 4-3 decision to the Ottawa Senators, the Associated Press has posted a short preview of tomorrow night’s game between the Wings and Flames:

BOTTOM LINE: The Calgary Flames will look to stop their four-game road slide in a matchup against the Detroit Red Wings.

Detroit has a 4-5-1 record at home and a 9-10-2 record overall. The Red Wings have a -12 scoring differential, with 53 total goals scored and 65 conceded.

Calgary has a 12-7-3 record overall and a 3-4-3 record in road games. The Flames are 4-7-1 in games they serve more penalty minutes than their opponents. The teams meet Wednesday for the first time this season.

TOP PERFORMERS: Lucas Raymond has scored five goals with 15 assists for the Red Wings. Albert Johansson has over the last 10 games.

Nazem Kadri has scored five goals with seven assists for the Flames. Matthew Coronato has over the last 10 games.

LAST 10 GAMES: Red Wings: 4-5-1, averaging 2.4 goals, 3.8 assists, 2.5 penalties and five penalty minutes while giving up 2.6 goals per game.

Flames: 6-2-2, averaging 2.4 goals, 3.6 assists, 3.7 penalties and 8.2 penalty minutes while giving up 2.2 goals per game.

Legitimate concerns about the Wings’ defense and penalty-killing

The Athletic’s Shayna Goldman posted a “Concern-O-Meter” which discusses several topics this morning, and she offers due concern regarding the Red Wings’ terrible penalty-kill (and shaky defensive play overall). Here’s part of her set of comments about the Wings’ “D” and PK unit:

The Red Wings’ defense and penalty kill

Concern-o-meter: 9/10

After the Red Wings traded Jake Walman, it seemed like another shoe would drop. There had to be a splash waiting in the wings to solidify this roster. Instead, the team made a few low-key signings like Tyler Motte, Erik Gustafsson, Vladimir Tarasenko and Cam Talbot. But none of them moved the needle. Detroit isn’t much better defensively, and none of these players bring enough offense to offset that.

And now the team is dealing with the consequences.

Detroit’s five-on-five defense has completely tanked over the last stretch of play despite matchups against the Ducks, Penguins, Sharks, Islanders and Bruins, who have all struggled. And the team isn’t generating nearly enough offensively to make up for it.

But the most glaring flaw of this team is its short-handed play. And it isn’t anything new. Detroit allowed one of the highest rates of shots and expected goals against on the penalty kill last season, its goaltenders just made more timely saves to keep the team afloat.

This year, the Red Wings are even worse while short-handed. They’re bleeding shots and quality chances, conceding 10.8 expected goals against per 60. Only the Ducks give up more on the penalty kill. But no one allows a higher rate of goals against. Detroit’s 13.4 goals against per 60 is the worst mark of the analytics era right now.

Continued (paywall); I’m not going to deny that the Red Wings’ penalty-kill has been awful, and I’m of the mind that Detroit desperately needs to add a shut-down defenseman to help Moritz Seider and Simon Edvinsson out via trade.

I also know that one player isn’t going to get the entire job done, and that the Red Wings need both a better commitment from each and every one of their skaters to stop parting like the Red Sea when they face opponents’ forechecking or “speed games”…

And, as Goodman says, there are legitimate concerns about the way that Bob Boughner’s coaching is partially at fault here. I hate to bag on coaches, but Wings’ penalty-killing is just so damn awful that it has to be mentioned that Boughner’s in charge of that PK unit.

Things can still improve here, especially if the players buy into playing better defense, and the coaching staff incorporates some tweaks into their defensive and penalty-killing systems of play. But, “It ain’t good enough” right now, and for the Red Wings to even marginally succeed this season, they’ve absolutely got to rectify these two problem areas.

On ‘Iron Mike’ and the Wings

The Detroit News’s Mike Falkner tells quite the tale in relating a story from Mike Keenan’s memoir/biography this morning:

Unemployed Mike Keenan was sitting at the kitchen table in the Bingham Farms home of Mike and Marian Ilitch, owners of the Detroit Red Wings. 

It was January of 1993 and Keenan was out of work after getting fired by the Chicago Blackhawks, who lost in the 1992 Stanley Cup final against Scotty Bowman’s Pittsburgh Penguins. To avoid being seen at Detroit Metro Airport, Keenan and his agent, Rob Campbell, drove from Toronto to Ilitch’s home, where Marian served tuna sandwiches for lunch.

The Red Wings already had a coach, Bryan Murray, who led the team to a franchise-record 47 wins in 1993, but Detroit had been eliminated in the playoffs for two straight years under Murray, and Mike Ilitch wanted a new coach.

What happened next in two separate meetings between Ilitch and Keenan — the details of which were revealed for the first time in Keenan’s recent book, “Iron Mike: My Life Behind the Bench” — could’ve changed the course of Red Wings history for good, bad, or indifferent.

“After we had started lunch, Mike (Ilitch) asked Rob (Campbell) what it would take to get me here to coach and manage the Red Wings,” Keenan said on The Detroit News/Detroit Red Wings podcast, OctoPulse. “Rob said a $500,000 signing bonus. Mike got up and went to the kitchen sink, had a glass of water and said, ‘Why would I want to do that?’ Rob said, ‘Because if you don’t, somebody else will.’

“I ended up making an agreement with Mike and Marian, and was put on a kind of a hold situation. Mike gave me $150,000, so I wouldn’t go to another team. Basically, he had the right of first refusal. A little while later, he called me and said there was a family dispute, and I said, ‘Mike, I don’t want to get involved in any family disputes. I’m going to send you your money back,’ which I did.”

Continued (paywall)…

Red Wings-Islanders wrap-up: 3rd period rally affords Wings a ‘fun plane ride’ back to Detroit

The Detroit Red Wings looked to be in serious trouble halfway through the 3rd period against the New York Islanders Monday night, trailing 2-1, but the Red Wings ultimately salvaged a 4-2 victory from the Islanders to sweep the teams’ 3-game season series.

Detroit now sits at 9-10-and-2 heading into Wednesday night’s match-up with the Calgary Flames, who lost a 4-3 decision to Ottawa on Monday.

As far as the game’s narrative is concerned, the Islanders were particularly pissed off at having let a 2-1, 3rd period lead slip away, as they told Newsday’s Andrew Gross…

Continue reading Red Wings-Islanders wrap-up: 3rd period rally affords Wings a ‘fun plane ride’ back to Detroit

Red Wings-Islanders quick take: Wings salvage treasure from a trash heap

The Detroit Red Wings hoped to rebound from a difficult Saturday loss to the Boston Bruins as they eyed a sweep of their 3-game season series with the New York Islanders on Monday night.

The 8-8-and-5 Islanders had a record that the 8-10-and-2 Red Wings may very well envy in that it contains more points due to fewer regulation time losses, and the name of the game on Monday night was going to be attempting to earn a regulation time win.

On Monday night, Detroit honestly looked like it was going to lose a sleepy, boring game for so much of the game that it was silly, despite Moritz Seider revoking Anders Lee’s opening tally with a blast of his own, and when Kyle Palmieri scored 7:42 into the 2nd, Detroit seemed doomed to lose another 2-1 game…

But Dylan Larkin and Lucas Raymond scored goals only 2:33 apart halfway through the 3rd, Simon Edvinsson’s empty netter sewed things up, and in between, a fine defensive performance and a tremendous 29-save performance by Alex Lyon salvaged a very necessary 4-2 victory.

Continue reading Red Wings-Islanders quick take: Wings salvage treasure from a trash heap