Author: George Malik

The Oakland Press’s Pat Caputo penned a column in which he suggests that the Detroit Red Wings’ 2019-2020 season may not produce as much hand-wringing or frustration as many pundits–and the Hockey News’s annual yearbook, specifically–have suggested:

[Dylan] Larkin is the leader of a group of five, solid young players, who should be coming into their own collectively this season, along with forwards Tyler Bertuzzi, Andreas Athanasiou, Anthony Mantha and Filip Hronek. It is not out of the realm of possibility first-round draft picks Filip Zadina and defenseman Dennis Cholowski join this group in ’19-20. Former Michigan State standout Taro Hirose also showed promise, and is advanced.

Year-to-year improvement from Hronek and Cholowski on defense is especially imperative. The Red Wings’ puck possession stats have been a disaster, primarily because of a lack of puck-moving skill during an era of the NHL’s forechecking being particularly fierce.

No one is expecting a Vezina Trophy, but the goaltending with veterans Jimmy Howard and Jonathan Bernier should be respectable.

Yzerman inherited a lot of dead-weight, overvalued contracts from Ken Holland. Anything the Red Wings get from Mike Green, Trevor Daley, Justin Abdelkader, Jonathan Ericsson or Darren Helm would be unexpected at this stage.

But defenseman Danny DeKeyser does have some room to grow, Luke Glendening is good in his specific role and Frans Nielsen probably has more left in the tank than the other overpriced vets Ken Holland strapped onto the franchise.

Continued

The Sporting News’s Steve Kournianos ranked the NHL’s prospect pipelines, suggesting that the Red Wings’ farm system is in 10th place among the NHL’s 31 teams:

10. Detroit Red Wings

Steve Yzerman’s tenure as Detroit’s general manager’s got off to a questionable start when he bypassed conventional draft wisdom and took two-way defenseman Moritz Seider with the sixth overall pick. The move certainly will be monitored for several years, but what shouldn’t be lost in the post-draft hysteria is that Yzerman had already inherited an excellent group of young talent and had the flexibility to roll the dice.

Goal-scoring winger Filip Zadina and center Joe Veleno – the last two first-round picks made by predecessor Ken Holland – are among the elite of the elite. Zadina is the odds-on favorite to beat out his peers for a roster spot and Veleno is the primary target to center Team Canada’s top line at the under-20 world juniors. To no one’s surprise, the majority of the organization’s other notable neophytes are Swedes, with goalie Filip Larsson coming off another stellar campaign in which he posted a .932 save percentage and 1.95 goals-against average as a freshman for Denver. Detroit also owns a pair of confident three-zone puck movers in Gustav Lindstrom and Albert Johansson and won a key free-agent derby by luring former Western Michigan defenseman Oliwer Kaski away from Finland, where he was the top-scoring blueliner in the SM-Liiga. Left winger Robert Mastrosimone, a Boston University recruit who was of the more underrated players from this year’s draft class, has a bit of Gustav Nyquist in him and should be considered having first-round value in a second-round pick.

Continued

New Red Wings defenseman Patrik Nemeth engaged in a lengthy conversation with HockeyNews.se’s Mattias Ek, and here’s a rough translation of the Swedish interview:

Meeting crucial for NHL Swede’s team decision: “They want to change things”

Stockholm. After making the playoffs for 25 consecutive years, and winning four Stanley Cup titles during that time, the Detroit Red Wings have missed the playoffs for three consecutive years.

For new defenseman Patrik Nemeth, a meeting with new general manager Steve Yzerman became crucial to his decision to sign with the NHL team in the middle of its transformation.

“As soon as the new GM or new coach comes in, there is a new focus. They want to see some other things, maybe, change some things,” Nemeth tells HockeyNews.se.

Of Red Wings-related note this morning:

1. WDIV’s Jason Colthorp, David Bartkowiak Jr. and Derek Hutchinson have created a bracketed set of the most despised athletes in Detroit sports, and their list of Red Wings nemeses include eight hated players, including a Wings alumnus:

2. DetroitRedWings.com’s Arthur J. Regner examines Frans Nielsen’s 2018-2019 season “By the Numbers” this morning…

100 – On Jan. 18 in Calgary, Nielsen notched his 100th career point as a Red Wing when he drew the second assist on Mike Green‘s goal at 4:16 of the third period in Detroit’s 6-4 loss to the Flames. Thomas Vanek picked up the primary assist.

200 – Nielsen reached another Red Wings milestone on Jan. 11 when he played his 200th game as a Wing against the Winnipeg Jets in Winnipeg. In Detroit’s 4-2 loss, he had an assist on Dennis Cholowski’s power-play goal at of 6:50 of the third period. In 230 games with Detroit, Nielsen has 109 points (43-66-109) is minus-25, has been assessed 46 penalty minutes with an average ice time of 16:33 per game. His face-off percentage is 49.9 percent and he has notched seven game-winning goals.

3. And Bob Duff penned a list of the Red Wings’ “most important players” for Featurd, and he chooses Andreas Athanasiou, Filip Hronek and Jimmy Howard as the Wings’ most pivotal players at forward, defense and in goal.

ESPN has posted 31 sets of “All-Decade Teams” representing the best that each and every one of the NHL’s franchises has to offer, and here’s who they picked to represent the Red Wings from 2010-2019:

C: Henrik Zetterberg (154 G, 401 A, 0.85 PPG)
LW: Justin Abdelkader (106 G, 143 A, 0.36 PPG)
RW: Johan Franzen (104 G, 123 A, 0.73 PPG)
D: Nicklas Lidstrom (36 G, 109 A, 0.62 PPG)
D: Niklas Kronwall (67 G, 243 A, 0.45 PPG)
G: Jimmy Howard (243-168-68, .914 SV%, 2.54 GAA)

Coach: Mike Babcock (245-170-67)

The past decade has consisted of two starkly different eras for the Red Wings. It began after a Stanley Cup Final loss to Pittsburgh in 2009, in the midst of a playoff streak that would last 25 seasons. Gaze upon the talent on that roster: Lidstrom, Pavel Datsyuk, Zetterberg, Marian Hossa, Franzen, Brian Rafalski, Tomas Holmstrom, Chris Osgood and so on. That was 10 years ago. It might as well feel like 90, with how the team has fared since.

As for the team selected above — look, Justin Abdelkader isn’t everyone’s bucket of octopi. You could easily make the case for Tomas Tatar here considering he had better numbers and is a better player. But outside of Kronwall’s 693 games, no one played more than Abdelkader’s 686 for the Red Wings in the decade. If you’re looking to define the past decade for the Red Wings, Justin Abdelkader is part of that definition (for better or worse).

Continued

MLive’s Ansar Khan examines Tyler Bertuzzi’s 2018-2019 season stats and 2019-2020 season outlook this morning:

2019-20 outlook: Bertuzzi’s first full NHL season was a tremendous success. He showed he can be an offensive threat in addition to providing grit, physicality and abrasiveness. He has a knack for being around the puck and he goes to the hard areas, in the corners and in front of the net, making him an ideal complement on the top line with Dylan Larkin and Anthony Mantha.

Bertuzzi has strong hockey sense, the ability to get his stick on pucks on the forecheck and force turnovers. He gets the puck on the net and doesn’t need a high volume of shots to score goals.

A second straight healthy off-season, following two injury-plagued summers, should enable Bertuzzi to gain strength and perhaps get a little quicker.

Continued

The Hockey News’s Sam McCaig penned a list of 8 NHL rookies who fantasy hockey poolies might want to take with their final pick in their team drafts, and the shine hasn’t come off Filip Zadina’s potential quite yet:

Filip Zadina, Detroit Red Wings
A big, scoring winger with the confidence to match, Zadina is another young player who started slowly last season. But it might have been a good thing. He was able to develop his game in the AHL rather than being thrown into the NHL fire. The Wings won’t rush him, but they could definitely use more scoring punch and he’s the most lethal weapon in the franchise’s prospect cupboard.
Best-case point prediction: 40-50 points

Per the Athletic’s Max Bultman…

Kris Draper, has indeed been promoted to the Red Wings’ director of Amateur Scouting. Ryan Rezmierski, formerly of Nashville, and Jesse Wallin, formerly of St. Louis, are the new Chief Scouts.

— Max Bultman (@m_bultman) August 16, 2019

Looks like former Harvard asst. Rob Rassey and former Saskatoon Blades Asst. Bryce Thoma have been added as amateur scouts as well, per the team’s website.

— Max Bultman (@m_bultman) August 16, 2019

Former #Canes video coach LJ Scarpace is now with the Red Wings as well. Former University of Michigan Director of Player Development.

— Max Bultman (@m_bultman) August 16, 2019

Yes, and Shawn Horcoff has added assistant director of player personnel to his director of player development title. https://t.co/CQDFzwRixM

— Max Bultman (@m_bultman) August 16, 2019

Dan Cleary also gets a promotion from player development assistant to assistant director of player development.

— Max Bultman (@m_bultman) August 16, 2019

You can see the changes to the team’s website here.

Update: Per Michigan Hockey’s Michael Caples:

The Detroit Red Wings have added another Michigan name to the team’s management staff.

Livonia native Phil Osaer is joining Steve Yzerman’s growing team in Detroit, per an update on the Red Wings’ staff webpage.

Osaer will be the team’s head of goaltending scouting and development, having a hand both in selecting the Wings’ netminders of the future and guiding them once they’re part of the organizational depth chart.

The former Ferris State goaltender worked as a goaltending scout for Yzerman in Tampa Bay during the 2018-19 season.

Update #2: Also from Caples:

Adam Nightingale has gotten a promotion with the Detroit Red Wings, and it’s a big one.

The Cheboygan native is now an assistant coach for the Original Six franchise according to the Red Wings’ official site, moving up from the team’s video coach.

Nightingale, 39, has spent the last two seasons with the Wings under head coach Jeff Blashill, after working one season as the video coach for the Buffalo Sabres.

Here’s even more, from the Detroit News:

The Red Wings also hired two amateur chief scouts, Ryan Rezmierski and Jesse Wallin, and two additional scouts, Bryce Thoma and Rob Rassey.

Rezmierski (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan) was a scout for the past eight years with the Nashville Predators and a former director of player personnel with USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program.

Wallin, a first-round draft pick by the Red Wings in 1996, was a scout with the Stanley Cup champion Blues for the past six years and a former head coach of the Red Deer Rebels of the Western Hockey League for five years.

DetroitHockey.net’s Clark Rasmussen summarizes the changes, although it should be noted that Brian Mahoney-Wilson is no longer listed as a goaltending coach:

This is, I believe, a full recap of all of the changes the Wings just made to the staff page on their website. Some were already known, some are frivolous. I left out the changes to some of their doctors’ names. pic.twitter.com/mcp61FLYFe— DetroitHockey.Net (@detroithockey96) August 16, 2019

The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan spoke with Evgeny Svechnikov at this week’s Power Edge Pro camp in Plymouth. Just as Svechnikov told The Athletic’s Max Bultman that he’s attempting to push the reset button after suffering a season-ending ACL injury last season, Svechnikov tells Kulfan that he’s going to do his best to make a name for himself this fall:

“Every year you would have asked me since I was 19 it’s been a big year,” said Svechnikov this week, after completing a workout at the Power Edge Pro Camp at USA Hockey Arena. “This year is no different. But especially coming back from an injury.”

It’s coming back from that injury, having gone through the long, tedious rehabilitation, that’s pushing and motivating Svechnikov.

Hearing the doubters say that maybe Svechnkov will not be able to come all the way back, maybe will not ever be the same player again – that’s what stirring him.

“I just want to go out there and show my name,” Svechnikov said. “I’m Evgeny Svechnikov, I was drafted for a reason and I’m here for a reason. I want to be part of the future, and I want to do that for myself and the fans and for everybody.

“I’m looking forward to doing it.”

Kulfan continues…

From Michigan Hockey:

The third annual Play With Purpose Charity Game takes place TONIGHT at 7 p.m. inside @USAHockeyArena in Plymouth.

Check out the rosters and find out more info about the event here: https://t.co/rR4Y8nkJgn pic.twitter.com/SvPKGRAGb9— MiHockey (@MiHockeyNow) August 16, 2019