Author: 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!

Red Wings-Maple Leafs Tweetcap: resilient Red Wings rally from 2-0 hole, defeat Toronto 6-3

The Detroit Red Wings looked to bounce back from an embarrassing opening-night loss as Detroit hosted the Toronto Maple Leafs, kicking off a home-and-home series between the teams.

On Saturday night, things did not start well for the Detroit Red Wings. Only 2:27 into the 1st period, Calle Jarnkrok jammed a Nicholas Roy pass into the net behind Cam Talbot, and at 12:29 of the 1st, Roy scored himself on a rush with Rielly and Nylander that had Seider and Chiarot hitting each other in confusion…

But Marco Kasper opened the scoring for Detroit 8:56 into the 2nd, Lucas Raymond scored goal #99 at 14:55, Patrick Kane scored a glorious marker at 18:10…

And while Max Domi made things sweaty and nervous for every Wings fan in LCA at 238 with a 3-3 marker, Raymond would score goal #100 on the power play at 6:45, and Simon Edvinsson and Andrew Copp would score empty-netters to make a 4-3 win look like a rout.

Cam Talbot stopped 20 of 23 shots; Detroit fired 33 on Anthony Stolarz, who stopped 29.

Detroit went 1-for-4 on the PP and killed 2 Toronto power plays.

It was Detroit’s first win of the young season, and the teams will reprise their roles in Toronto at 2 PM EDT on Monday, October 13th.

PREGAME: The Red Wings hit the ice at Little Caesars Arena just before 6:30 PM:

Continue reading Red Wings-Maple Leafs Tweetcap: resilient Red Wings rally from 2-0 hole, defeat Toronto 6-3

Press release: Monday’s Red Wings-Maple Leafs ‘Canadian Thanksgiving’ game will start at 2 PM EDT

Per the Detroit Red Wings:

MONDAY’S RED WINGS – MAPLE LEAFS START TIME CHANGED TO 2 P.M. ET

NEW YORK (Oct. 10, 2025) – The National Hockey League announced today the start time to Monday’s Detroit Red Wings-Toronto Maple Leafs matchup (Game #43), originally scheduled for 4 p.m. ET at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, will now begin at 2 p.m. ET (Prime, TVAS in Canada, FDSNDET in U.S.).

The change is to accommodate Game Two of the American League Championship Series being held at Rogers Centre in Toronto, on Monday.

Following the Maple Leafs game, fans will be able to stay in their seats at Scotiabank Arena to catch all of the ALCS action as the Sportsnet broadcast is aired on the videoboard in-arena. 

It’s about ‘game management’

Here’s an interesting bit of commentary from coach Red Wings Todd McLellan, via MLive’s Ansar Khan, regarding the mistakes that the Wings made last night vs. Montreal–and how the team might fix them:

McLellan cited poor game management, which plagued the team last season and something he stressed coming into training camp. McLellan said his team allowed at least a dozen odd-man rushes. Two directly resulted in goals.

“We took them through game-management moments,” McLellan said. “I think when you’re in it sometimes and you’re playing, you come off, you’re tired, you don’t even realize how often it’s happening and why it’s occurring. You just hear coaches on the bench (yelling) ‘Cover this, do that!’ But when you get to be fresh, sit in a theater room, watch it, it can be pretty humbling when all of a sudden, you’re on the screen, you’re clearly part of this and you know exactly, in that moment, what you did and why you did it and you’re thinking, ‘Man, I wish I wouldn’t have.’ Those are the moments we have to clean up.”

Said Copp: “The mistakes we made were just big mistakes. I think that was the issue in the last preseason game as well (6-5 overtime win over Toronto). So, a lot of stuff to clean up, but those mistakes should be relatively easy to clean up. Can’t ruin our confidence just because of one game. So had a good meeting today, had a practice to hopefully flush those thoughts and then come to the rink tomorrow, excited, ready to go.”

Continued (paywall)

Aggressive vs. careless

The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan filed a practice notebook article in which he finds that Red Wings coach Todd McLellan was particularly displeased by his second look at the Wings’ 5-1 loss to Montreal:

“A lot (of evidence), too much evidence,” said McLellan Friday, after viewing the video and meeting with his team. “They’re all guilty.”

The head-scratching mental mistakes, which often led to outnumbered rushes by the Canadiens early in the game, were too much for the Wings to overcome. They never gave themselves a chance and disappointed a loud crowd at Little Caesars Arena to usher in the Wings’ 100th season.

There was plenty to go over Friday and correct heading into Saturday’s home game against Toronto (7 p.m./FDSN/97.1).

“It’s much easier when you need to fix one player or one line, but this was team-wide,” McLellan said. “We dealt with it (Friday at practice) and we talked about managing the game much better.”

Andrew Copp didn’t disagree with his coach:

The Wings have talked about being more aggressive, playing relentlessly, and that possibly came back to haunt them against Montreal. Aggressive is good, but there needs to be a bit more alertness.

“They’re such big mistakes that led to two-on-ones and three-on-ones,” Copp said. “We’ve preached being aggressive and we ended up careless. We have to be smart with it, but that’s not going to change the way we want to operate, but maybe be a little bit smarter.”

Continued (paywall)

Coach McLellan asks his players whether they’re tired of the team’s struggles

The Free Press’s Helene St. James peels back the curtain a bit to discuss the Red Wings’ tense Friday practice:

The Detroit Red Wings held an up-tempo practice and had a meeting to recalibrate as they seek to move forward from their opening night dud. That they performed so poorly after three weeks of preparation disappointed across the board, led coach Todd McLellan to seek out select players with a question.

“I actually asked a couple, maybe three or four players, Are we tired of this yet?” McLellan said on Friday, Oct. 10. “And they were longtime Red Wings, they didn’t come from other organizations. Just when is enough enough to play sloppy like that?  I wasn’t blaming those players, I wasn’t saying, Hey, it’s your fault.  But it has to have an impact on those guys, they got to be sitting in there going, OK, enough already. If those four start or five start and make a difference, then the rest will follow.”

McLellan didn’t name the players, but the only ones that fit the parameters are Dylan Larkin, Michael Rasmussen, Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond.

Larkin and Seider both gave honest assessments of the 5-1 loss to the Montreal Canadiens the previous night, calling the Wings’ performance chaotic and disappointing. The focus now shifts to the Toronto Maple Leafs, who come to Detroit on Saturday (7 p.m., FanDuel Sports Network Detroit) and host the Wings on Monday.

“We had a meeting today to address some of the mistakes that were made,” Andrew Copp said. “The mistakes we made were  just big mistakes. I think that was the issue and I think that was kind of the issue in the last preseason game as well. So a lot of stuff to clean up but those mistakes should be relatively easy to clean up. It’s game one. It can’t ruin our confidence just because of one game.”

Continued; coach McLellan also added this regarding the Wings’ mistake-prone loss to Montreal:

“It was [fixable], but also, I’ve been through this so many times where you leave and you go, Wow, we really played well and we got it, or you’re driving home and you’re going, I haven’t seen that team in 3½ weeks.” In my mind, it was a carryover from the last exhibition game. So it’s alarming – or, I don’t know if it’s alarming, it’s disappointing. But if we can learn lessons and respond from them – great. If we can’t learn the lesson, then it doesn’t matter what we do.”

van Riemsdyk’s (almost) ready and raring to go

MLive’s Ansar Khan discusses James van Riemsdyk’s imminent Red Wings debut:

“Whether we use him tomorrow or not, that’s still to be determined,” coach Todd McLellan said. “If not, I expect him in Monday (at Toronto). But he’s a hockey player now. He’s back into it. And I think after watching last night, he probably wants to get in there and try to make a difference as well.”

The Red Wings lost 5-1 to the Montreal Canadiens on Thursday. They worked on many of their issues Friday in practice. Van Riemsdyk replaced Elmer Soderblom at left wing on a line centered by Michael Rasmussen, with Mason Appleton on the right side.

“I’m feeling better and better and just about getting back into it now and again, I think just getting the timing down and some of those things, and some extra practice is never a bad thing,” van Riemsdyk said. “So, you just got to stay ready to go.”

The 17-year NHL veteran joined the team on Oct. 1 after tending to a family matter in Minnesota, forcing him to play catch-up.

“There’s that general buildup that you get when you start on Day One,” he said. “You’re kind of jumping on a little bit of a moving train here when you come a little bit later. But I think with my experience and having been through these sort of things before, it’s almost like coming back from an injury in a way where you’re just trying to build yourself back up and make sure you’re ready to go. When you first get back in it’s just about mentally being sharp with your details and things like that. And then it’s like riding a bike, where it becomes more natural the more reps you get.”

Continued (paywall); as Khan notes, the Wings will have to open a roster spot for JvR, most likely by demoting Erik Gustafsson to Grand Rapids.

Framing Friday’s practice on a pessimistic note

Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff reports that the Red Wings went through a tense practice on Friday afternoon, which is no surprise given the way in which they lost 5-1 to the Montreal Canadiens on Thursday.

[Andrew] Copp described McLellan’s message to the team before practice on Friday as “very stern.”

And entirely deserved.

“The mistakes that we made were unacceptable,” Copp said. “And I think everyone in here knows it. And each individual mistake, everyone knows it.”

Watching the video of the game, [coach Todd] McLellan felt like he was viewing a horror flick.

“I was actually shocked when I looked after the game and saw that they had 17 shots on goal and only 12 even strength, because they’ve had at least 12 outnumbered rushes,” McLellan said. “So they didn’t convert on a number of them. But that didn’t diminish the fact that we erred in a lot of those areas. It’s so much easier to fix if it’s one player or maybe one line. This was team-wide.”

Duff is less than convinced that the Red Wings can salvage their season, already…

McLellan described the poor quality of his team’s game management. The fact of the matter is that this team has been lacking in the area of game management skills long before McLellan became coach. That it never seems to improve is an alarming indictment of the player.

“It’s not going to ruin our year because we lost the first game,” Copp said.

It will if they continue to play like they did in that first game.

And that’s a little too much for me. I know that the Red Wings haven’t proved to anyone that they’re anything but the pumpkin as opposed to Cinderella’s carriage, but jeez, it really was one game after a perhaps-too-easy exhibition season. I still believe that this team can improve.