Red Wings-Penguins prospect tournament wrap-up: Pens’ penalty-kill, Wings’ mistakes mar Detroit’s net-front drive, Rochette’s display of skill

The Detroit Red Wings’ prospects dropped a 4-3 decision to the penalty-killing Pittsburgh Penguins’ prospects on Sunday evening, dropping the Wings’ record to 1-and-1 (Detroit defeated Dallas’ prospects 4-3 in a shootout on Saturday night).

The Red Wings, Penguins, Dallas Stars and Columbus Blue Jackets will take Monday off, and the prospect tournament will conclude with a game between the Wings and Blue Jackets on Tuesday at 2 PM EDT (to be streamed on DetroitRedWings.com).

On Sunday night, the Red Wings opened the scoring only 23 seconds into the 1st period as Theo Rochette raced in and roofed a Carter Bear set-up over Penguins goaltender Xavier Wendt, and after the Penguins quickly tied the game, Jacob Truscott blasted a slapper off Kienan Draper’s pants to make it 2-1, a lead that stood up for the remainder of the 1st period…

But the wheels began to come off the Red Wings’ machine in the 2nd period. First, Tomas Galvas scored to tie the game 2-2 with a highlight reel marker…

And then Brayden Edwards leaned into a power play one-timer that beat Michal Orsulak to give Pittsburgh a 3-2 lead at 12:23 of the 2nd period.

Detroit would tie the game 3-3 on an Adam Levac goal at 14:16, but the game devolved into a series of power plays and penalty-kills for the duration of the 2nd and 3rd periods…

And Kienan Draper would suffer the indignity of wearing goat horns as Pittsburgh’s Jordan Charron sent a centering pass of Draper’s skate and through Orsulak’s legs early in the 3rd, and while the Red Wings received power play after power play, the Penguins ended up killing 7 of 8 Detroit opportunities on the evening.

According to the Hockey News’s Michael Whitaker, Orsulak stopped 29 of 33 shots, while Wendt stopped 22 of 25 for Pittsburgh, whose penalty-kill was clinical in its efficiency.

The fact that the Red Wings were without Nate Danielson (undisclosed) and Anton Johansson (got the night off) didn’t help their cause, but Pittsburgh earned its victory nonetheless.

After the game, Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff noted that a lack of discipline by Jesse Kiiskinen on one of the Wings’ power play situations cost Detroit…

Takeaways

Two of Detroit’s more experienced players, center Nate Danielson and defenseman Anton Johansson, were both healthy scratches for Sunday’s game . . . Myles Brosnan was the only player on the Red Wings defense who was drafted by the club . . . During the first period, forwards Haeden Ellis and Carter Bear found themselves seated next to each other on the Detroit bench. Last spring, Ellis and the Kitchener Rangers beat Bear and the Everett Silvertips in the Memorial Cup final.

Key Moment

With the score tied 3-3 late in the second period, Detroit was about to be afforded a 5-on-3 power play for 1:46. However, Red Wings Jesse Kiiskinen got involved in a post-whistle scuffle and was assessed a minor penalty for roughing, wiping out the two-man advantage.

Key Stat

The Red Wings were 1-for-8 on the power play in the loss.

“Yeah, I mean, we didn’t do very well on them,” coach Dan Watson said. “I think our guys got tired one right after the other. You have two units, you try to switch them up. But I think the execution just overall in our power play wasn’t very good.”

According to MLive’s Ansar Khan, however, coach Watson was pleased with the overall grit displayed by the Red Wings’ repeated drives to the Penguins’ goal crease:

Players like 2025 top pick Carter Bear, 6-6 offseason trade acquisition Sutter Muzzatti and Jesse Kiiskinen were aggressive in driving to the paint, much to the delight of Dan Watson, who’ll be coaching the future Red Wings hopefuls in Grand Rapids.

“That’s the way you score goals now in today’s game is by getting to the net, getting yourself to the net and stopping there,” Watson said. “That’s the biggest thing you see, guys, they say they’re at the net, but they’re off to the side. They’re not taking the goalie’s eyes. If you want to score goals, you have to be ready to take a beating there at times. It’s all part of will. I think it’s a will skill. You have courage to go there, and those guys certainly want to score goals and they’re willing to do that.”

EliteProspects/DLLS Stars/Shap Shots’ Sean Shapiro covered both the Stars and Red Wings’ prospect tournament games on Sunday, so he offered fewer Wings-related observations in his Substack blog entry than usual (though he reported that the prospect tournament will head to Pittsburgh, Columbus, and then Dallas over the next three years, before returning to Detroit in 2030), but Shapiro’s observations are always worth noting:

In the Detroit-Pittsburgh game Theo Rochette continued to make a statement.

The 24-year-old Swiss forward scored 23 seconds into the game and controlled the flow of the game as the Red Wings first-line center with Nate Danielson not playing.

He’s going to have an impact for Grand Rapids this season, and I could see him potentially getting a game or two in the NHL this season.

I’m more curious of why he never had a North American shot before this summer, especially after he was a proven point producer in the QMJHL.

This one is an eyebrow-raiser however…

Detroit goalie Michal Orsulak struggled and continued to cause himself chaos in the crease.

He’s a fine junior goalie, but I’m struggling to see the vision that led to Detroit drafting him in the third round this past spring.

And this is indeed quite the “tease”:

I should have something more tomorrow on the Red Wings GM search and other various news, but have some things to fact check/make calls on. I believe we call that a tease in the industry.

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George Malik

My name is George Malik, and I'm the Malik Report's editor/blogger/poster. I have been blogging about the Red Wings since 2006, and have worked with MLive and Kukla's Korner. Thank you for reading!

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