Month: September 2025

Thread post: Tweets from the 2nd day of Red Wings training camp

Updated at 2:16 PM: The Detroit Red Wings will hit the ice at Centre ICE Arena in Traverse City for their second day of training camp this Friday morning. Here are various Tweets from today’s practices and scrimmages, as well as the usual social media “stuff.”

This post will be updated throughout the day.

10:07 AM: First, the Red Wings’ social media team asked several players about their summers…

Continue reading Thread post: Tweets from the 2nd day of Red Wings training camp

Disappointment is a waste of time

Bleacher Report’s Lyle Richardson discusses “6 NHL Teams That Will Likely Disappoint During [the] 2025-2026 Season,” and the Red Wings are on his list.

Detroit Red Wings

Over the past two seasons, the Detroit Red Wings were expected to emerge from years of rebuilding into a playoff team. Young players like Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond blossomed into stars, and they added veteran talent like Patrick Kane and Alex DeBrincat.

During those seasons, the Wings would enter March holding a playoff berth, only to stumble and fall out of contention down the stretch. Looking at their current roster entering this season, it could be another disappointing campaign in Motown.

The Red Wings added veteran goaltender John Gibson from the Anaheim Ducks, but his injury history is a cause for concern. Other offseason additions (James van Riemsdyk, Mason Appleton, Ian Mitchell, and Jacob Bernard-Docker) provide depth, but not the kind that suggests this club is a contender.

Assuming Gibson and aging netminder Cam Talbot remain healthy, their blue-line depth beyond Seider and the promising Simon Edvinsson is questionable. It could prove to be their Achilles heel as they try to end nine years of postseason futility.

Continued; the Wings are going to have to prove their critics wrong with on-ice performance, plain and simple.

It’s slow progress, but it’s progress nonetheless

Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff revisits Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman’s comments made during his pre-training camp press conference this morning.

Duff notes that Yzerman’s plans to build a perennial contending team continue to develop, despite fans’ impatience with the so-called “Yzerplan”:

“I see progress in the organization,” Yzerman said. “I look at the young players coming into the organization, and I look at the young players playing on the Detroit Red Wings today. As we continue to build a young core that is here for a long time, I’m hopeful that we will eventually compete on a regular basis to make the playoffs. So that’s what we’re trying to do.”

We get it. That’s not what you want to hear. You want proclamations, you want guarantees that after nine years in the wilderness, the playoffs and the Red Wings are about to become reacquainted. Believe it or not, Yzerman gets that, too.

“We’re not completely tone deaf,” Yzerman said. “I understand the frustration or maybe the lack of … I don’t want to say patience, because I think everybody’s been pretty patient. But the sense of urgency within the fan base, I understand it.”

At the same time, what he is seeking to achieve probably isn’t on the same timeframe as what you want to see, which is playoff hockey as soon as possible.

“I look at it differently than you look at it,” Yzerman said, essentially speaking to Red Wings fans. “You just want us to make the playoffs, which is fine. I’m not going to argue with you about that. We’re trying to build a team that competes for a Stanley Cup and can win a Stanley Cup. So, how many years is it supposed to take? I don’t know? Is it four? Is it five? Is it 10?”

Continued; Duff also suggests what I have regarding Yzerman’s status as not being on the “hot seat” under the Red Wings’ ownership.

Patrick Kane discusses his Olympic aspirations

ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski spoke with NHL players who were not included on Team USA’s Four Nations tournament team this past season, but were invited to Team USA’s Olympic orientation camp in August. One Patrick Kane still harbors Olympic aspirations:

Patrick Kane has had [an Olympic] opportunity twice, winning silver in 2010 and losing bronze in 2014 for the Americans. The 36-year-old winger’s absence from Team USA’s 4 Nations roster wasn’t a surprise, as Kane himself admitted his play last season didn’t warrant a selection. However, his presence at the U.S. Olympic orientation camp in August was a surprise to some, although not to Kane.

“They told my agent there’s the potential of maybe making the team. That I was under consideration. So when you hear that, it’s not really that big of a surprise that you’re there,” he said.

Kane said the real surprise was that his Detroit Red Wings teammate Alex DeBrincat wasn’t invited to camp after not making the 4 Nations cut either.

“I think both of us have some motivation to get off to good starts this year,” he said.

Kane remembers back in 2010 when he was a 21-year-old star on the U.S. Olympic team, surrounded by veteran national team members such as Chris Drury, Jamie Langenbrunner and Brian Rafalski. Now, he would be that elder statesman should he make the cut for 2026. But like every other NHL player that hasn’t formally been named to an Olympic roster, Kane knows he must earn it.

“I want to get to a point where obviously you put yourself in consideration for the team just on your play, right? Not for your name or what you’ve done in the past,” Kane said. “That’s the goal going into this year.”

Continued

Coach McLellan frames training camp as a learning experience

DetroitRedWings.com’s Jonathan Mills filed a late-evening article which summarizes Red Wings coach Todd McLellan’s philosophy regarding opening his first full season as head coach via a high-intensity note:

“We talked about camp, how important it was for our group,” McLellan said. “I talked to them about the excitement around the team. When I talk to players in the summer, and certainly here through [the media], everybody’s happy to have a camp with the new coaching staff and we’ll see where it goes. That’s all fine and dandy, but if we don’t take any advantage of it, then shame on us. There are some areas of the game we have to get better at, and we talked about that. Then there’s what’s between the ears sometimes. We have to get better in that area. Addressed it right away on Day 1, and we’re going to push them to improve.”

McLellan demonstrated his ability to get his message across quickly after being hired last December, which the Red Wings embraced on their way to winning seven of their first eight games and 15 of 21 contests ahead of the 2025 4 Nations Face-Off break. In total, Detroit went 26-18-4 (56 points) with McLellan behind the bench in the 2024-25 season, equivalent to a 96-point pace over a full 82-game campaign.

“I think anytime a new coach comes in, regardless of having the time with the group last year, I think you do have their attention right off the bat,” McLellan said. “The jury will be out Day 3, 4, 5, when it becomes work. Right now, they’re real excited and they should be. I thought the effort was really good. The attention to detail was there. Little ragged with passing, but it’s early in the season. And then the scrimmage was really competitive. I think we got a lot out of the day, at least what we targeted. We’re going to work every day and build our game.”

Continued

Why bring back the scrimmages?

MLive’s Ansar Khan affords Red Wings coach Todd McLellan the column space to explain why the team has brought back daily training camp scrimmages after a 9-year absence, even though the players can accumulate wear and tear over the course of the 3 days’ worth of high-intensity intra-squad battles:

“We always kind of wanted to get to it right in camp,” he said. “Maybe I’m selfish, but I’m thinking if I got to go in and play Chicago on Tuesday and I haven’t scrimmaged or been involved in any type of ful- ice, five-on-five action where there’s some actual contact and some competitiveness. I don’t think I’’m ready to play that game. And we’re also evaluating them and how they can play. Everybody here will get at least one scrimmage as long as health allows. Exhibition game No. 1, now they played against real competitive players. They should be ready to go.”

Line combinations are fluid, McLellan said. Elmer Soderblom skated on the wing on the top line with Dylan Larkin and Lucas Raymond on Day One.

“I mentioned to Elmer today if I’m coming to camp and the coach dropped me in there, I’m not giving that spot back one bit,” McLellan said. “So, we’ll give him a chance, and we’ll work different people through there.”

…

McLellan stressed three things he’s looking for at camp.

“Individuals have to find their game quickly,” he said. “So individually, you have to feel good. You have to find your legs and your pace and your tempo and your skillset. And then secondly, they have to find that in a group environment. So, we’re also working on our systems and our structure. And I told them yesterday they’re as fit as they’re going to be all year, they’re as healthy as they’re going to be all year. But they’re as bad as they’re going to be all year with game situations, game management, remembering how we do certain things because they’ve been playing summer, and you hear us talk about summer habits, turning away from the puck, not stopping on loose stuff, trying stuff that really doesn’t exist in our game. And there’s nothing wrong with that in the summer, but it doesn’t work now. And then the team has to come together. Nobody knows, including Steve (general manager Yzerman) and I, who’s going to be on the opening roster. That’s why we have camp.”

Continued (paywall)