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!

Husso’s healthy again as the Red Wings prepare for a 3-goaltender rotation

MLive’s Ansar Khan discusses the Red Wings’ “three-headed goalie monster” this morning, addressing the probable competition between Ville Husso, Alex Lyon and Cam Talbot this upcoming season. Khan offers the following from coach Derek Lalonde regarding Husso:

[Red Wings GM Steve] Yzerman said last month he preferred not to carry three goalies again but probably has no alternative until Husso’s health is determined one way or another. Two separate lower-body injuries shelved him for all but half a period over the final four months.

Husso said after the season he’s healthy and ready for a full offseason of training. Lalonde confirmed this last week.

“The most important thing with Ville is being healthy, and he feels 100 percent, he feels healthy,” Lalonde said. “It’s too bad last year on the injuries because he had a really good offseason. He came in leaner; probably had his best summer he’s had off the ice. I think it’s something he can build on.

“The good thing about Ville is he’s also excited about the competition. Credit to our management group. With three goalies last year it’s very unique to the league. It’s certainly not ideal in some situations, when you talk about practice time, obviously game time. But it literally saved our season. I think we’re going to start with that same mentality this year.”

Continued (paywall); put bluntly, we’re not going to find out how the Wings’ goaltending stacks up until Husso, Lyon and Talbot battle it out in the preseason and the first ten to fifteen games of the regular season.

Tweet of note: Ryan Gustafsson discusses Red Wings’ offseason moves, ticket sales and promotions

Of Red Wings-related note from Twitter/X: Bally Sports Detroit posted a 3:23 interview with Ryan Gustafsson, Ilitch Sports + Entertainment’s CEO, regarding the Red Wings’ offseason moves, their status as having started single-game ticket sales on Monday, and regarding some of the promotions for this upcoming season’s home games:

A buzzing Berggren

Detroit Hockey Now’s Kevin Allen posted a subscriber-only article in which he discusses the depth players who may be crucial to the Red Wings’ offensive losses over the course of the 2023-2024 offseason (see: David Perron, Daniel Sprong and Shayne Gostisbehere). In Allen’s eyes, Jonatan Berggren, Michael Rasmussen, Joe Veleno and Christian Fischer can all improve in terms of their offensive output this upcoming season.

Here’s what Allen has to say about Jonatan Berggren’s possible contributions:

Left Wing Jonatan Berggren: On paper, Berggren had an exceptional season. He was one of the AHL’s most dynamic scorers, generating 24 goals and 56 points in 53 games for Grand Rapids. The young Swede added five goals and 10 points in nine playoff games.

But the truth is, it was a frustrating season for Berggren. Coach Derek Lalonde didn’t trust Berggren’s play away from the puck. After he was sent down to the AHL, he lived in a hotel, stored his clothes in his car. It wasn’t a perfect situation. The permanent call to the NHL never came.

Now the Red Wings need Berggren to succeed. There is no reason why he shouldn’t. He has played 79 NHL games and scored 17 goals. Given playing time on a scoring line, 25 goals are not an unreasonable expectation, especially if he gets power play time.

Continued (paywall); I’m not counting on 25 goals from Berggren, but I’m hoping that he scores 15 or so this upcoming season.

Given that Rasmussen, Andrew Copp and Christian Fischer were an excellent third line for the Wings last year, I’d like to see what Berggren and Veleno can do together on a de-facto fourth line, probably working with free agent signing Tyler Motte. It won’t be a physically imposing line as nobody’s tall and imposing there, but the trio could easily become far more than a simple “depth line” if Berggren and Veleno even partially fulfill their potential.

A bit about the Red Wings’ decision to leave Axel Sandin Pellikka in Sweden

NHL.com’s Dave Hogg posted a profile of Red Wings prospect Axel Sandin Pellikka this morning, discussing the Red Wings’ decision to leave ASP with Skelleftea AIK of the SHL this upcoming season:

“He’s going to play quite a bit on a good team,” Detroit assistant director of player development Dan Cleary said. “He’s going to run the power play and he’s going to play a lot with the puck. He could come over and play in Grand Rapids, no problem, but Skelleftea is a real good developmental place in a good league and a good city.”

Sandin-Pellikka will also get experience playing with a teammate he hopes he is skating with for years to come: forward Michael Brandsegg-Nygard, who was selected by the Red Wings with the No. 15 pick in the 2024 NHL Draft.

“It will be nice to be home another year, and we’re going to be going for the gold,” Sandin-Pellikka said. “I know the coaches, I know my teammates and we have a good team, so I’ll stay and develop another year.”

Sandin-Pellikka has already shown the offensive skills that led to Detroit choosing him, but he said he needs work on the other end of the ice.

“I’m mostly trying to be better with my defensive game,” he said. “After practice, the coaches back home always make me defend some forwards in the corners. That’s what I’m working on.”

That’s just what the Red Wings want.

“Axel is a very smart player and he moves well, but it is hard for a defenseman to play a lot in Grand Rapids,” Cleary said. “We don’t see the harm of keeping him home. There’s no sense rushing him.”

Continued; ASP would have a hard time earning ice time in Grand Rapids for a couple of reasons.

Despite the fact that he’s a tremendous talent, the AHL’s learning curve isn’t easy, and if the 5’11,” 176-pound Sandin Pellikka got bumped around, he’d have to play some “protected minutes”…

But the main concern would be the fact that the Griffins have both the Red Wings’ top prospects and some AHL veterans battling for 6 regular defensemen’s spots on the roster, and that Detroit’s current roster crunch on the blueline might make it more difficult for ASP to vie for time against players like Antti Tuomisto, William Wallinder, Shai Buium and Eemil Viro, as well as veterans Tory Dello, Josiah Didier and Brogan Rafferty.

Those seven players are all likely to battle for spots on the Griffins’ blueline, and with that kind of roster jam, the Red Wings have no need to hurry Sandin Pellikka over to North America when he’s going to be running Skelleftea AIK’s power play and essentially playing as their #1 defenseman.

Sometimes “baby steps” are the way to go when one has to trust the developmental process.

NHL.com praises Lucas Raymond as an up-and-coming winger

The NHL Network is about to reveal its top 10 players who play on the wing, and they listed 10 players who will have the opportunity to crack their list over the next couple of seasons. Lucas Raymond ranks among their top 10 “young wings”:

Lucas Raymond, Detroit Red Wings

The 22-year-old, the No. 4 pick of the 2020 draft, had 57 points (23 goals, 34 assists) in 82 games in 2021-22. Raymond finished fourth in the voting for the Calder Trophy, which goes to the NHL rookie of the year. After taking a step back in 2022-23, when he had 45 points (17 goals, 28 assists) in 74 games, he leapt forward last season with 72 points (31 goals, 41 assists) in 82 games, leading Detroit in scoring. Much of that was due to natural maturation, physically and mentally. He has the potential to be one of the best wings in the League, and the Red Wings will need him to be as they try to become a consistent playoff contender. — Nicholas J. Cotsonika, columnist

Continued; Raymond put on 11 pounds before last season, so it will be interesting to see whether his body continues to mature in terms of strength.

He’s never going to be a huge player, but, at 5’11” and 188 pounds, it’s more about how well Raymond can absorb and deliver a tight-checking bump-and-grind game than anything else.

He can still win a few more battles for the puck against bigger, stronger players via leverage and experience, and as he continues to grow into his body and grow into the NHL game, he’s only going to get better in tight.

Do the Broberg/Holloway offer sheets matter for Raymond and Seider?

The hockey world is abuzz over the St. Louis Blues’ offer sheets to Philip Broberg and Dylan Holloway today, but given that the Red Wings have $17.65 million in salary cap space (per PuckPedia), it’s incredibly difficult to imagine that Steve Yzerman or the Red Wings’ management team are at all worried about having to match similar offer sheets when it comes to re-signing Jonatan Berggren, Lucas Raymond or Moritz Seider.

Sure, the offer sheets remind us that it’s almost the middle of August, and that the Red Wings need to gain some traction here as training camp is about a month away, but I’m just not in agreement with the Hockey News’s Connor Eargood here:

As a general manager, Yzerman has always proceeded with patience. When other GMs jump, he calculates. When others give their star players extensions well ahead of the offseason, he sweats out his stars to get the best possible deal. He did it with Steven Stamkos in Tampa Bay and Dylan Larkin in Detroit, even when they could’ve become UFAs. He’s doing it with Seider and Raymond, stars who still don’t have extensions deep into August. With nothing forcing Yzerman and other GMs to move quickly, they can take their sweet time.

If teams are willing to sign offer sheets and give up draft picks, then Yzerman will have no choice but to speed up his process to avoid tempting other teams to offer sheet his players. Especially when a number of prospects should mature into NHL-level players these next few seasons, he’ll have to mind how he approaches the RFA contracts.

For a long time, RFA rights have served as a quasi-contract in the way teams view free agents. This empowers Yzerman’s patience. Take a look at Moritz Seider, Lucas Raymond and Jonatan Berggren this offseason. For players of Raymond and Seider’s caliber, the compensation another team would have to give up in return for them is not cheap. It’s hard to fathom any offer sheets for those two not landing above $6.8 million, it’s harder to imagine a team wants to give up their own first, second and third round pick to do that. And don’t even think that Detroit wouldn’t match the offers, either. So, nothing forces Yzerman to move quicker on extensions. He can sweat everyone out deep into the summer.

So what exactly is changing with the Blues’ splash? In a world of offer sheets, compensation costs probably prevent a real blockbuster from affecting negotiations like Seider’s and Raymond’s. But what about players who don’t demand such big contracts? What about the Joe Velenos and Jonatan Berggrens of the future, the players of varying talents who don’t demand huge contracts and who other teams might be willing to give a shot? It’s a whole new ball game.

The Blues’ moves are generally not going to be replicated by other teams’ GM’s–offer sheets are rare for good reason, given that the NHL’s GM’s are generally a staid bunch of folks who don’t take kindly to other teams trying to poach their talent–and while the rest of Eargood’s article is a good read, noting that the Wings will have a gaggle of restricted free agents a year from now…

It’s just not something that Steve Yzerman is going to pay much heed to. It’s not a whole new ball game until offer sheets proliferate, and we’re not at that point in today’s NHL.

Morning Khan: all about Max Plante

Red Wings 2024 draft pick Max Plante isn’t a big player at 5’11” and 176 pounds, but he’s a tenacious little bugger, and he comes from a “hockey family.”

Max’s father, Derek Plante, was an NHL player, and the Hermantown, MN native has two hockey-playing brothers in Zam (who will play alongside Max at the University of Minnesota-Duluth this season) and Victor (who will play for the NTDP’s Under-17 team, and is committed to play for Minnesota-Duluth in the future).

This morning, MLive’s Ansar Khan profiles Plante and his family…

“I’m very lucky and fortunate to be around such great hockey people,” Plante said. “I’d say my dad probably watches more hockey than anyone in the world. Growing up, I’d skate on the outdoor rinks and come home, and my dad would be watching hockey, so there was nothing else on the TV.

“He’s probably taught me pretty much everything I know about hockey. My grandpa (Bruce Plante) is the coach of the high school of where I’m from in Hermantown. Just being around hockey people all the time grew my passion for the game.”

He called it special to play with his brother at Duluth, just eight miles from Hermantown.

“It was a dream of mine to play for the Bulldogs,” Plante said. “I couldn’t see myself in any other jersey.”

And Khan notes that Red Wings assistant GM and director of player development Kris Draper is impressed by Plante’s “hockey sense”:

“Grew up around the game; you could tell that by talking to him,” Kris Draper, Red Wings director of amateur scouting, said. “The hockey sense of where he can play up and down the lineup was something that we kept coming back to, a player that the lines he was on seemed to play well that night.

“He’s smart, he can play on the penalty kill, he can play on the power play. The important thing that we love is he can play with really good hockey players, and he showed that. Talking to a lot of his teammates, they had a lot of positive things to say about the way he played, the way he carried himself.”

Continued; I’m not certain whether Plante will grow into a top-six player–he’s almost a pure passer at this point, and he remains undersized–but he already displays a professional’s hockey mentality, and he’s going to have a couple of years to develop into a bigger, better player at Minnesota-Duluth.

Tweet of note: Detroit Lions post video of Red Wings’ visit to Lions practice

As stated above, the Detroit Lions posted a Tweet about the Red Wings’ visit to Lions practice on Sunday: