The Athletic’s Max Bultman spoke with Red Wings defenseman Moritz Seider as Seider sat down with Bultman for an interview recently. Seider discussed the tumult surrounding the Red Wings as delicately as possible, emphasizing that it wasn’t easy to determine what went on while Seider spent his summer in Germany…
“It was hard,” Seider said last week, sitting outside a coffee shop in Detroit’s northern suburbs. “Especially like not being here and hearing all this noise.”
He leaned on phone calls to try and stay in the loop — first with Yzerman, when he was still in charge, and eventually with assistant general manager Shawn Horcoff, who was named Detroit’s interim GM on Tuesday. Seider picked their brains as he tried to separate fact from rumor on the internet.
“I think that was the hardest part for me,” he said. “That’s why maybe I stayed even home a little longer than usual, to try to escape that whole thing — because you will get confronted with it now that you’re here.”
And Seider discussed his hopes for this upcoming season…
There is no envying Detroit’s position right now, but Seider still looks at the picture, doubts and all, and sees opportunity.
“That’s been my theme for my whole career,” Seider said. “I mean, I’ve been a bit of a surprise for a lot of people. So, that was the perfect challenge for me to kind of have them second-guessing about (me), and I feel like we could write our own story this year. … If we can come together as a team and really emphasize that togetherness, I think there will be a lot of possibilities for success in this locker room. I feel like we just can’t waste this year.”
As well as Seider’s thoughts on taking a leadership role in the organization:
With the captaincy now vacant, more of that type of responsibility is likely coming his way, along with all kinds of attention. It is notable, though, that when Seider, who served as an alternate captain for the first time last season, was asked what he’s learned about his own leadership style, his first thought was that “it has to be shared” — and not just by the top players, such as himself, DeBrincat and Lucas Raymond.
“I feel like sometimes the most vocal guys are the guys who aren’t, like, in the first two lines,” he said. “And that’s even good. If you do your work over and over again, I feel like you earn the right to say something, and it doesn’t matter to who it is. And I feel like that’s maybe something we can change or emphasize even more is that everybody needs to be in this conversation. … I think if we do that, we’ll kind of already (have taken) a step before the season (has) even started.”
Continued (paywall)
