Author: George Malik

Red Wings prospect and University of North Dakota forward Dylan James was drafted by Detroit in 2023.

The 6,’ 190-pound left wing has very slowly ascended North Dakota’s depth chart over the course of his first 3 seasons at UND, and he’s entering a pivotal senior season as he aims to increase his production and earn a professional contract with the Red Wings organization.

Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff posted a profile of James, noting that Red Wings assistant director of player development Dan Cleary is a fan of the 21-year-old James:

James has grown into a checking, defensive dynamo at North Dakota. He was a nominee for the NCHC defensive forward of the year award.

“Dylan skates great,” Detroit director of player development Dan Cleary said. “He’s excellent. And a tremendous penalty killer. He’s got good anticipation.”

The offense began to emerge more often for James last season. He counted 14 goals. James enjoyed a three-point game against St. Cloud and a four-point performance vs Colorado College.

“Yeah, Dylan had a good season last year,” Cleary said.

James will also be having another season at North Dakota. He’ll be back there in the fall for his senior campaign, playing for new coach Dane Jackson.

“I think with the new coach, he’s going to take a much larger role, leadership-wise,” Cleary said. “He’s pretty hard on himself, to be honest. He’s a tough critic on himself, but he’s a good player.”

Continued; James is something of a mystery to me as a 40th overall draft pick who’s transitioned from a scorer in the USHL to a defensive gem at the NCAA level.

I thought that the Wings would sign Red Savage to an NHL deal, and they’re much more likely to sign Savage to an AHL deal before his rights expire on August 15th, and James is a player in the same mold, though he’s got better hands.

It’s only mid-July, but NHL.com is already examining the respective offseason statuses of their 32 NHL teams, and today, NHL.com’s Dave Hogg examines the state of the Red Wings. Here’s his take on the Wings’ top prospects…

On the cusp

Nate Danielson, F: Detroit’s first-round pick (No. 9) in the 2023 NHL Draft, Danielson got off to a slow start in his first full AHL season. He finished with 39 points (12 goals, 27 assists) in 71 games with Grand Rapids, and had a goal in three playoff games. He’s expected to start the season in the AHL, but he could be one of the first forwards recalled. … Axel Sandin-Pellikka, D: Another first-round pick (No. 17) from 2023, Sandin-Pellikka turned 20 in March, but he has already played 107 games in the Swedish Hockey League, the highest professional league in the country, and has 52 points (24 goals, 28 assists). He helped Skelleftea AIK to a championship in 2024 and needs more experience on North American ice, but Sandin-Pellikka is considered Detroit’s best defenseman prospect. … Carter Mazur, F: A third-round pick (No. 70) in the 2021 NHL Draft, the Red Wings thought Mazur was ready for the NHL last season. Unfortunately, his March 6 debut ended after two shifts when he dislocated his elbow. He’s healthy again and will compete for a spot in the bottom six.

As well as what unresolved business the Red Wings have to do:

What they still need

A first-line forward. Van Riemsdyk isn’t at the level the Red Wings need to play alongside Dylan Larkin and Lucas Raymond on the top line. They could move Marco Kasper back to that spot, but that would mean needing a second-line center to play between Patrick Kane and Alex DeBrincat On defense, Detroit would like to find someone more experienced to play alongside Simon Edvinsson on the second pair. Albert Johansson was impressive as a rookie, but playing there could be asking too much.

Continued; at this point, I’d take a top-six forward and a top-four defenseman, but the relative scarcity of those players on the trade market means that their asking prices are high, and I am expecting that it’s going to take until this upcoming season’s trade deadline to truly rectify the Wings’ two positional deficiencies.

For what it’s worth, the NHL’s 2025-2026 regular season schedule is coming out today at 1 PM EDT, too, so we’ll find out sooner than later (though probably not today) when that trade deadline is scheduled to take place.

Updated at 9:59 AM: As noted on Tuesday, Lucas Raymond was omitted from NHL.com’s Mike G. Morreale’s list of the Top 10 forwards under 25 in the NHL, despite having posted 254 points in 320 NHL games. The Red Wings offered a Twitter retort to said omission:

Nobody puts Razor in corner #NHLYoungStarsWeek pic.twitter.com/xyRvIUVJOs

— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) July 15, 2025

Well, NHL.com’s summertime lists of the best young players under 25 continues with their Top 10 Defensemen today, and it should come as no surprise that Red Wings defenseman Simon Edvinsson cracked the estimable Mr. Morreale’s latest list:

8. Simon Edvinsson, Detroit Red Wings

The 22-year-old (6-6, 209) recorded 31 points (seven goals, 24 assists) in 78 games in 2024-25, his first full season in the NHL. Selected No. 6 in the 2021 NHL Draft, Edvinsson ranked second last season among Detroit defensemen in blocked shots (144) and was third in hits (86) while averaging 21:07 of ice time. He possesses a solid combination of size, skating and puck-handling skills, and stands out for his ability on transition. He’ll look to establish himself as a top-pairing defenseman this season.

Continued; it’s good to see Edvinsson crack the Top 10 list despite having only 103 games of NHL experience to his credit.

Update: Oh yeah, this guy, too. But third?

3. Moritz Seider, Detroit Red Wings

The native of Zell, Germany was an absolute workhorse on defense in 2024-25, averaging 25:04 of ice time in his fourth season. The 24-year-old has continued to elevate his level of play, becoming more confident not only in transition but his ability as a two-way force. He’s become more physically engaged; ranking third in blocked shots (744) and eighth in hits (781) among NHL defensemen since entering the League in 2021-22, when he was awarded the Calder Trophy. Seider, who hasn’t missed a game in four NHL seasons (328 games), had 46 points (eight goals, 38 assists) and was fifth in hits (212) and seventh in blocked shots (181) among defensemen in 82 games in 2024-25.

I’m just guessing that we won’t quite see Sebastian Cossa or Trey Augustine on the list of the Top 10 NHL Goaltenders under 25, however.

The summer signing season is upon us, at least for 1st round draft picks taken in the 2025 NHL Draft in Los Angeles this past June…

But we haven’t seen the Red Wings sign 13th overall pick Carter Bear, who’s returning to the WHL’s Everett Silvertips this upcoming season.

Why?

FWIW with all the NHL 1st round draft picks signing…

I have a feeling that the Red Wings will *not* sign Carter Bear to an entry-level contract (ELC) this summer, so that he can keep his NCAA options open.

Bear wants to head back to Everett of the WHL this upcoming season,…

— George Malik (@georgemalik) July 15, 2025

Put simply, as long as Bear remains unsigned, the 18-year-old remains an “amateur player,” and if he wants to head to an NCAA Division 1 school after this season in Everett, his options remain open. If Bear signs with the Red Wings, that option closes as he becomes a professional player in the eyes of the NCAA.

At this point, it’s more important for Bear to have options educationally speaking and hockey-wise as opposed to giving the Red Wings total control over Bear’s future.

I’m sure that Bear would like to earn a signing bonus right now, but it just feels like it’s a better option to remain college-eligible.

The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan spotlights Red Wings prospect goaltender and Moncton Wildcats back-stopper Rudy Guimond today. Kulfan notes that Guimond went 16-and-0 with Moncton during the regular season, and 8-and-1 in the QMJHL playoffs:

The way Guimond played, his contribution to a winning program, made him an intriguing prospect going forward, and only deepens the goaltending depth in the organization (along with Sebastian Cossa, Trey Augustine, Michal Postava and Carter Gylander). At this point, Guimond doesn’t give much thought to where he stands in the organizational depth chart, nor does he need to. It’s about concentrating on what he can do at Moncton to duplicate his personal and team success.

“I kind of just focus on me and focus on winning the President’s Cup (for winning the Quebec League) and hopefully, the Memorial Cup (for Canadian juniors),” Guimond said.

Guimond credited his success to the powerful lineup in front of him at Moncton.

“It was really amazing, but it was a testament to the group in front of me,” Guimond said. “With the (defense) corps, almost every guy was either drafted or signed (to a pro contract). I just had to do my job. It’s a testament to how well we played defensively and our system that made me successful.”

…

The decision to return to Moncton was endorsed by Dan Cleary, the Wings’ director of player development, who is impressed with MacDougall’s program.

“Pretty incredible statistics when you think about it,” said Cleary of Guimond’s season. “I’m very close with Gardiner MacDougall and those guys in Moncton. They did a tremendous job, and their goalie coach (Antoine Samuel) did a great job, obviously. Rudy got into an environment where he fit comfortably and they embraced and helped him, and the team really shined. It’s a testament to Rudy and the people in Moncton. They really saw something and he played very well for them and they are extremely pleased.”

Continued with an explanation as to why Guimond got into goaltending–it has to do with the Red Wings…

The Hockey News’s Tony Ferrari spotlights the Detroit Red Wings’ prospect pipeline today, and he’s mostly complimentary toward the Wings’ prospect pool. Mostly:

The Red Wings are stuck in the mushy middle. They’ve been good enough to be in the playoff race for a few years now. By the time the races near the end, they’ve fallen off. Even a couple of seasons back, when they missed the post-season in their final game, they had a chance to take a stranglehold on the final playoff spot but toiled away.

The constant middling results, as well as arguably the worst luck in NHL draft lottery history, landed the Wings with a prospect pool that’s full of good but not great players.  These prospects will build out the middle six of their roster, but they don’t have many potential elite impact players right now. 

Carter Bear, their most recent first-round pick, might have the highest realistic upside of any forward in the system, and he seems destined to be a very capable second-line winger who can score, hit and do just about everything a coach wants from a player. 

Michael Brandsegg-Nygard has the most realistic shot of challenging Bear for the highest upside in the group. He plays a similar brand of hockey with a sound two-way game, physical maturity, excellent board play and a great shot. 

Brandsegg-Nygard just does it all with a more refined package of tools. He doesn’t have as high a motor as Bear, but it’s still high-end, and he plays such a tactical brand of hockey. Brandsegg-Nygard might be the best hope to fill the Wings’ hole on the top line alongside Lucas Raymond and Dylan Larkin, but that’s a lot to ask of a player coming to North America for the first time this upcoming season.

Carter Mazur can play up and down the lineup. He likely fits better in the bottom six, but he could be a serviceable fill-in higher in the lineup. He had a rough season riddled with injuries, including an upper-body injury that ended his year just two shifts into his NHL debut. That said, Mazur has a sneaky possibility of playing in the NHL this year. He brings a high motor, a very good shot and some interesting hard skills.. 

Continued at length with an examination of the Wings’ defensive and goaltending corps, the 2025 draft class, and more…

It’s been a time. Over the past two-and-a-half weeks, I’ve done my best to return to the blog after a depression-related hiatus.

I worked very hard to battle through that stupid depressive episode via therapy, psychiatry and a medication change, and I’m starting to feel like myself again.

So I chose to come back for what is, quite honestly, the busiest time of the year in terms of NHL news, the period between the NHL Draft and about the middle of July (where we’ve arrived today).

I hope that you’ve enjoyed the return to coverage, and now that things are slowing down a little bit (though the NHL’s 2025-2026 schedule will be released at 1 PM EDT tomorrow), I will try to dip back into the writing business.

All of that being said, not having the blog to raise a couple hundred bucks a month has been a real drain on our finances.

The blog is definitely a labor of love that goes alongside my caregiving job, and Aunt Annie is incredibly supportive of the endeavor, but we “break even” financially by making a couple hundred bucks a month from our small but generous audience, and we haven’t had that secondary funding source for a good three-and-a-half months now.

So I’m going to start fundraising again, not because I want to, but because I have to in order to survive financially. This month, I’m hoping to raise about $200 to just survive in terms of paying my bills, hockey expenses included; next month, the server bill from Bluehost and Jetpack come due, and I’ll try to raise twice the usual amount when I’m a little more reestablished. I don’t know whether that’s realistic, because I understand how small this blog really is, but I can hope.

Anyway, we’re a blog without advertisements or paywalls, so I have no choice but to ask for your support. Here’s my request/sales pitch:

I generally don’t trust summertime rumors unless the trial balloons being floated as to whether a player might be on the market come from reputable sources.

It’s one thing if somebody proposes a trade on CapFriendly or PuckPedia and some outlet picks it up and treats it like Gospel truth (there are several websites that are milking clicks by doing this); it’s another if an actual NHL media person suggests that a player might be on the trade market.

In the case of 32-year-old defenseman Dougie Hamilton, the trade rumors regarding the big man (6’6,” 229 pounds) with the equally gigantic salary cap hit of $9 million for the next three years, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Several plain old fans have wondered aloud whether the Devils, who have a PuckPedia-estimated $6.9 million in cap space, will clear cap room to re-sign restricted free agent Luke Hughes via trading Hamilton, but several well-qualified media representatives from the New York and New Jersey areas think that the team might move Hamilton to re-sign Hughes, too.

The Devils had to pay a massive $10,550,000 bonus to Hamilton on July 1st, so he’s only going to make $1,000,000 in actual money this upcoming season, and that makes him that much more of an appealing trade candidate.

As such, Bleacher Report’s Adam Gretz suggests that 5 teams represent good “fits” for Hamilton, including the Detroit Red Wings:

Detroit Red Wings

The Detroit Red Wings playoff drought is approaching a full decade, and they are now six years into it under general manager Steve Yzerman. Pressure should be building. The incentive to win now should be there. If it is, they have a strange way of going about dealing with it because they have done very little this offseason outside of bringing in James van Riemsdyk and trading for John Gibson.

As good as some of their younger core players are, that’s not going to be enough to make up the difference in the Eastern Conference playoff race.

They need more help offensively and defensively, and Hamilton could help satisfy both needs. They also have more than $12 million in salary cap space remaining and could fit in Hamilton’s remaining contract without having to do much else or get too creative.

Yzerman talked about now getting a chance to sign any of the top free agents because a lot of them re-signed in their current spots, or went elsewhere before they could talk to any of them. He can’t give up on improving the team after that and needs to get aggressive in the trade market.

Hamilton would be a perfect player to go after if the Devils are seriously willing to listen or shop him.

Continued; according to PuckPedia, Hamilton has both a no-movement clause and a no-trade clause with a 10-team no-trade list this summer, so he’d have to sign off on any trade personally to waive his NMC, and Detroit might be on his no-trade list, so he might have to waive that as well…

But there’s a real fit here in terms of the Wings’ need for a big defenseman to take pressure off Moritz Seider and the Devils’ need to clear cap space for Luke Hughes, so this is a trade rumor that “has legs.”

The Athletic’s Max Bultman filed a notebook feature this morning, and here’s one of his Q and A answers:

With the cap expected to positively explode over the next 2-plus years, is this year’s free agency a portent of things to come? The Haves resign their players and roll it back, while the Have Nots (our Wings) are only able to sign scraps? How does this affect Steve Yzerman’s plan of building through the draft? — Jeffrey W.

It sure looks that way to me.

Right now, there are 13 teams with at least $10 million in unused cap space, according to PuckPedia. And it’s not just rebuilders who are looking to stay cost-effective in their lean years. There are playoff teams and playoff hopefuls in that group — even the reigning Presidents’ Trophy winners, the Jets.

In other words, thanks to the rising cap, most teams will have the space to keep their stars when their current deals expire. That doesn’t mean some players won’t shake loose for other reasons (like Marner leaving Toronto), but even then, the most desirable markets now have the space to snap up those players, too. So I certainly wouldn’t count on getting a star in free agency.

That does make the Red Wings’ commitment to building through the draft more important. They look like they’ll be a deep team in the near future, though, and the rising cap should at least allow them to keep that depth together.

The issue, though, is that the Red Wings still need to find a way to add some star power, and free agency looks less and less like a viable avenue to doing so. That means they’ll likely either need the draft-and-develop approach to produce a star who outperforms expectations or use their prospect capital to trade for one.

The Red Wings’ farm system is good and should have enough to help make this a playoff team soon. To be a true contender, though, they’re going to need more than just time.

Continued at length (paywall); you would think that, as the salary cap’s upper limit crosses $100 million, Detroit would become one of the “haves,” but it doesn’t appear that way, at least not with the Wings being a middle-of-the-pack team.

As Bultman says later in his mailbag, the Red Wings aren’t an unattractive place to play in terms of their intangibles, which include the facilities at Little Caesars Arena, the history of the franchise, the Metro Detroit area and more, but people want to win, and Detroit hasn’t won in a bit now.

The Detroit Red Wings have yet to address their needs for a top-six forward and/or a top-four defenseman over the course of the last 15 days’ worth of free agency, and it’s assumed by Red Wings partisans that the Wings will at least make one trade this summer, if not two, to shore up their roster.

That being said, the Wings’ offseason has been a bit underwhelming, and it is no surprise that Bleacher Report’s Joe Yerdon suggests that the Wings’ 2025-2026 season will be worst than its 2024-2025 campaign:

Detroit Red Wings

Last season: 86 points (39-35-8)

Picking any teams outside of the top three or four in the Atlantic Division to say they’ll be better or worse is like playing with fire. So many things could break right or wrong for all of them and those occurrences will have a domino effect on everyone else in the race. But when you look at what the Detroit Red Wings have cooking for next year compared to last year, it’s a little uncomfortable.

Their biggest move was, ideally, shoring up their goaltending by adding John Gibson in a trade with Anaheim. Gibson’s ability is great, but if he’s unable to stay healthy, the Wings will be right back to where they’ve been before.

Detroit’s biggest additions up front were 36-year-old James van Riemsdyk and bottom six forward Mason Appleton. Re-signing Patrick Kane was virtually automatic all things considered. On defense they got depth help with Jacob Bernard-Docker and Ian Mitchell.

The Wings needed answers in a few areas and got their biggest one, goaltending, addressed…only with a player whose injury history will have everyone on pins and needles hoping he avoids any further issues.

If Gibson stays healthy and plays like we’ve seen in the past, we’ll look really dumb for saying the Red Wings will have a worse record than last season. But if he’s average and the depth issues that seem apparent for the rest of the team come true, we’ll probably be correct in our analysis even though we won’t be terribly happy about it.

Continued; I believe that the Red Wings’ youngsters will “take a step” forward this upcoming season, and that the veterans will play well, too…

But my bottom line is that the Wings really do need another goal-scoring top-six forward, and they need a top-four defenseman to alleviate some of the pressure on Moritz Seider to serve as both the Wings’ offensive catalyst and resident shut-down defender.

Those needs should be addressed via a trade or two, and I’m expecting at least one of those needs to be addressed by the season opener in October.