Month: August 2025

Today’s one-year anniversary of the deaths of Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau remained on the minds of the 44 USA Hockey players who took part in Team USA’s Olympic orientation camp at USA Hockey Arena in Plymouth, MI earlier this week.

NHL.com’s Bill Price spoke with many players at the rink regarding the Gaudreaus and the one-year anniversary of their passing, and Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin was blunt:

Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin wore a United States World Championship jersey at the Stadium Series. He was teammates with Johnny at Worlds in 2017 and 2018.

“I just wish them (the Gaudreau family) nothing but the best,” Larkin said. “I know that Friday is going to be hard, and it’s continued to be hard all year.”

Along those lines, however, Larkin and the Red Wings leadership’s decision to wear Gaudreau family jerseys to the Stadium Series last March remains a strong memory for the Columbus Blue Jackets’ family, and Larkin’s friend, Zach Werenski:

When the Blue Jackets played the Detroit Red Wings in the 2025 Navy Federal Credit Union NHL Stadium Series at Ohio Stadium on March 1, each team honored Johnny with their attire upon arrival. The Blue Jackets walked into St. John Arena for a pep rally wearing Johnny’s signature outfit — black Ugg boots, black sweatpants, light blue sweatshirt from Avalon Surf Shop in New Jersey and black AMIRI ballcap with three black stars in the front.

The Red Wings stepped off the bus in jerseys that Johnny and Matthew wore during their hockey careers. For Johnny, they represented Dubuque of the United States Hockey League, Boston College and USA Hockey; for Matthew, Omaha of the USHL and BC. Each had a Gaudreau nameplate and number on the back.

“I think the outpouring of support for the family, for [Gaudreau’s friend Sean Monahan], for our team, for all John’s friends and family, like, it was really incredible to see all the tributes, just the support that we had,” Werenski said. “I felt like, in a weird way, we could kind of feel the support from all teams across the League, all fan bases, just hockey in general.

“He’s a special person and deserves that. I mean, he was Johnny Hockey. I think what he did for the game of hockey, he was on pace to be one of the greatest Americans of all time. He is one of the greatest Americans of all time.”

Continued; may the Gaudreau family find peace, if only eventually. That’s all you can really hope for with grief–a sense of peace and as much closure as you’re going to get (which is never total closure).

It’s going to take time, as Dylan suggests here, and it’s gonna be hard for a while yet. But Johnny and Matthew’s memories are strong, and they always will be strong.

According to the Hockey News’s Jake Tye, EA Sports has revealed its player ratings for NHL 26, and here are some of the Red Wings’ ratings (please take with salt, remember that it’s a video game):

Dylan Larkin (89 Overall – X-Factor Player)

Being slotted alongside elite talents like Tage Thompson, Robert Thomas, and JT Miller is a testament to Larkin’s status as one of the NHL’s premier centres. The only drawback in his player profile is a slightly underwhelming defensive rating.

Recognized as one of the top two-way forwards in the game, Larkin’s all-situations usage, whether it’s even strength, power play, or penalty kill, deserves more than the 88 defensive awareness rating he received. 

Lucas Raymond (89 Overall – X-Factor Player)

Raymond’s back-to-back campaigns near a point-per-game pace have vaulted him into conversations with top-tier wingers like Brady Tkachuk, Jason Robertson, and Jake Guentzel.

Being placed in the same tier as someone like Robertson, who’s eclipsed the 100-point mark, signals EA’s acknowledgment of Raymond’s development and hints at the potential for a true breakout year in 2025–26.

Alex DeBrincat (88 Overall – X-Factor Player)

DeBrincat continues to produce at a steady 65–70 point pace, and his X-Factor status puts him among elite company including Adrian Kempe, Cole Caufield, and Seth Jarvis.

His lethal shot isn’t being overlooked either with his 92 ratings in both wrist- and slap-shot accuracy reflecting just how dangerous “The Cat” remains from the hash marks in.

Continued; I’m not a big gamer, but these ratings might matter quite a bit to you.

According to iDnes.cz’s Petr Bilek, Rytíři Kladno owner and player Jaromir Jagr headed to Riga, Latvia to take in Nikola Jokic’s performance at the “EuroBasket” game between the Czechs and Portugal, on Wednesday.

Jagr was able to squeeze in the game on Wednesday, between two preseason games, via taking his team’s ownership’s private plane to and from Riga, and as Jagr was in Latvia, his friend, Red Wings free agent signing Eduards Tralmaks, made the game arrangements for Jagr and his girlfriend.

Here’s a picture of Jagr enjoying the game from the sidelines:

“Eddie” Tralmaks is 28, and he earned a 1-year, 2-way contract from the Red Wings after the 6’4,” 209-pound winger led the Czech Extraliga in scoring with 23 goals and 28 assists for 51 points in 48 games played.

Tralmaks also posted 3 goals and 4 assists in 7 games played for the Latvian national team during the World Championship.

That, and he’s tight with Jaromir Jagr, so there’s that.

The NHL’s regular season schedule will expand from 82 to 84 games during the 2026-2027 season, and as such, MLive’s Ansar Khan looks back to Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman’s post-free agency press conference to get the GM’s take on the situation:

The NHL’s new Collective Bargaining Agreement that goes into effect in September 2026 features a couple of slight alterations in the schedule. The regular season will increase from 82 games to 84 games and the season will start in September instead of early October.

NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly confirmed the earlier start to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman and Kyle Bukauskas at the NHL/NHL Players’ Association European Player Media Tour last week in Italy.

“It (84-game schedule) should allow us to start the season earlier so we’re not extending the overall schedule,” Daly told Friedman and Bukauskas. “The 2026–27 season may be shorter (in days). We’ll see how that plays out.”

Red Wings general manager Steve Yzerman said last month that an 84-game season “makes perfect sense.”

“I think it’ll give more balance to divisional games,” Yzerman said. “I’m not exactly sure what the matrix is going to be as far as divisional games and whatnot, but it seemed to make sense to us.”

Where GM SY isn’t so sold is upon the concept that teams will play only 4 preseason games instead of 6 to 8:

“I think the four preseason games … it’s a bit of a challenge,” Yzerman said. “You’re always weighing how many games your veteran players need to play. The guys that are really knocking on the door, the guys that you can consider call-ups and then those players that are here trying to push to make the team. It’s going to be hard to get everybody in a reasonable number of games with four. That’s the downside to it, but we’ll manage it.”

The Kronen Zeitung posted a subscriber-only article about Red Wings forward Marco Kasper’s summer in Carinthia, Austria. Only the first three paragraphs are available:

Detroit’s playoff-less streak to be defeated

All of Detroit hopes that Marco Kasper and company will defeat the playoff-less streak in the NHL next season. Currently the ice hockey ace from Klagenfurt is relaxing at home on the beloved Worthersee. Curiously, in Sweden, the hobby golfer is recognized most often.

Summer, sun and turquoise water! Ice hockey star Marco Kasper is still looking to enjoy a few days at home in Klagenfurt on Lake Worthersee. Before he returns to his NHL team the Detroit Red Wings in North America in mid-September. But summertime does not mean spending the rest of the whole day in the deck chair for a player from the best league in the world.

“Of course, I also take timeouts, but I do train for several hours a day. Especially as a young player, this almost has to be–I want to improve myself physically,” says the 21-year-old, whose plans are of course in agreement with Detroit.

That’s as far as the article goes before the paywall hits…But it’s good to know that Kasper’s still balancing his summertime recovery with workouts and, as his Sunshine Hockey League participation indicated, skating on the rink as well.

Per the Detroit Red Wings on Twitter:

New guys, new numbers! pic.twitter.com/JwRS11Ts9w

— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) August 28, 2025

The Score’s John Matisz is ranking NHL teams by “tiers,” from 1-8, and he assesses the Red Wings to be in the 5th tier, which he describes as being in “Standings purgatory,” suggesting that it will take “the stars aligning” for the teams in Tier 5 to make the playoff cut:

Detroit Red Wings

This is a massive season for the Red Wings, who haven’t competed in a playoff game since 2016. Fans have grown impatient with GM Steve Yzerman.

It’s true, the so-called Yzerplan has involved a long list of questionable transactions, especially over the past few years. But June’s acquisition of John Gibson from Anaheim was a win. A Gibson-Cam Talbot tandem should make goaltending a tangible strength for a club that’s banking on sizable jumps from early-20s skaters like Lucas Raymond, Moritz Seider, Marco Kasper, and Simon Edvinsson in order to snatch one of the East wild cards.

Todd McLellan, who’s entering his first full season in Detroit, is a solid coach. Bonus: Yzerman has $12 million in cap space to spend on reinforcements.

Continued; it certainly doesn’t appear that the Red Wings will make any offseason acquisitions, given the high prices for tradable assets, but my hope is that the Wings use that extra cap space over the course of the regular season, leading up to the 2026 trade deadline.

EliteProspects’ Cam Robinson and Ryan Lambert discuss the “stock” of various participants in the 2025 U.S. Olympic orientation camp, which wraps up today in Plymouth, Michigan. They feel that Dylan Larkin is a “probable” candidate…

We also agree that another probable is Dylan Larkin, as well as our first entrant who was snubbed from Four Nations: Tage Thompson. Talk about missing goalscoring in a critical moment, and especially when deferring to some guys who packed very little punch at either end of the ice, makes his omission a mistake the US won’t make twice.

And they offer this “debate” as to whether Alex DeBrincat should have attended the orientation camp:

Debate No. 6: Alex DeBrincat

RL: The only thing I can think here is that they just figured the left wing is so loaded they can’t make space for him. I don’t buy that, and the only thing I can think of here is that he didn’t make the Four Nations team, and didn’t play at the World Championships. If there’s any one player on our snubs list that could play their way onto the Olympic team, I think it’s DeBrincat and I don’t think it’s really all that close. He’s only 25 or so games of shooting 19 percent away from making an emphatic case.

CR: This debate is no debate. DeBrincat should’ve at least earned an invite.

Continued (paywall); Larkin’s versatility will earn him a spot on the team, and DeBrincat can definitely shoot his way onto the team, but Patrick Kane just isn’t mentioned at all, and I’m not certain as to why he’s omitted…

The Grand Rapids Griffins signed Alex Kannok Leipert to an AHL contract on July 10th, and Detroit Hockey Now’s Tim Robinson posted a story about the Thai-born Kannok Leipert‘s unique hockey background:

Kannok Leipert, a defenseman who recently signed with the Grand Rapids Griffins comes to Western Michigan from Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand, where he was born in 2000.  Or, as the crow flies, about 8,500 miles.

His father, Tim, was a Canadian living in Thailand teaching English when he got married, and Alex lived there until moving to Regina, Saskatchewan, when he was five. But the hockey bug had bitten him before that.

”We visited Canada when I was two and a half,” Kannock Leipert said. “We went to a Regina Pats game and I just fell in love with it; I said I wanted to play hockey and that was it,” he told abbotsford.canucks.com. 

Robinson also spoke with Grand Rapids Griffins coach Dan Watson about Kannok Leipert’s hockey chops, as well as his Muay Thai training:

Continue reading Meet Alex Kannok Leipert, a Thai-born Griffin

Bleacher Report’s Lyle Richardson suggests that Lucas Raymond is the Red Wings’ best forward going into the 2025-2026 season, and that Raymond is the 23rd-best forward in the NHL overall:

23. Detroit Red Wings: Lucas Raymond

Chosen fourth overall in the 2020 NHL Draft, Lucas Raymond has steadily worked his way into becoming the best forward on the Detroit Red Wings. While the rebuilding club struggled to end a franchise-worst nine-year playoff drought, the 23-year-old winger tallied a career-best, team-leading 80 points last season.

A talented, smart, swift-skating play-maker, Raymond made significant strides during his previous four NHL seasons, sitting second among Red Wings scorers with 254 total points. That includes a career-best 31 goals in 2023-24 along with last season’s career high in points.

Entering his fifth NHL campaign, Raymond has yet to reach his full potential as a scoring winger. He could reach 90 points, which could help lift the Wings into the playoffs for the first time since 2016.

Continued; Raymond, Dylan Larkin and Alex DeBrincat would all be good choices here…