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!

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:

Pondering Jack Campbell’s role in the Detroit/Grand Rapids organization

The Hockey News’s Jason Chen posted an article which addresses a topic that I’ll admit I’ve been thinking about as well. He ponders whether the Red Wings’ fourth goaltender, Jack Campbell, might see some NHL playing time this upcoming season:

Campbell will likely back up Cossa, who was their top goalie in the AHL but not quite ready yet for a promotion [in Grand Rapids]. At some point, though, the Wings will have to decide who they want to call up. If Cossa is playing well and the Griffins are on a roll, Campbell might get the call. 

Perhaps a change of scenery and a reset is what Campbell needs. The Oilers stint was disastrous, but he’s shown that he has the chops to play at this level, even for brief stretches. 

It’s unlikely we’ll see Campbell much in 2024-25, barring some kind of miraculous, Masterton-type comeback. If the Wings play to their full potential and they are a competitive playoff team, is Campbell a streaming option?

Streaming goalies can be a risky proposition akin to catching a falling knife, like with Coyotes goalies last season when it was either a ton of saves or a ton of goals allowed, with very little in between. The same goes for streaming highly-touted young goalies, such as the Flames’ Dustin Wolf and the Wild’s Jesper Wallstedt, which yielded some (literally) wild results. 

Continued; even with the Red Wings work their three-goaltender rotation all season long, we’ll probably see Campbell called up a handful of times.

At this point, Campbell needs to reestablish himself as a reliable starter at the AHL level, even if that’s in a 1B role behind Sebastian Cossa, but I’m sure that the 32-year-old wants to parlay this upcoming season into an NHL job somewhere.

Actual praise for the Wings’ potential

DobberHockey’s Flip Livingstone discusses “the top-10 bubble playoff teams that could make noise next season,” and he’s actually complimentary toward the Red Wings:

6) Detroit Red Wings

If someone from the four-headed “monster” of goaltenders is able to step up and grab the reins between the pipes in D-Town next season, the Red Wings have enough weapons up front and on the blue line to be a playoff team. The real question is, which one of Ville Husso, Alex Lyon, Jack Campbell, and the supposed top option, Cam Talbot emerge as the guy? At this point in the offseason it’s any hockey pundit’s guess, but given the two-year deal handed to Talbot and his solid numbers last year for the L.A. Kings (27-20-6 record, three shutouts, 2.50 goals-against average, and .913 save percentage), no one will be shocked if it ends up being the 37-year-old vet. Mo Seider, Lucas Raymond, Dylan Larkin, and Alex DeBrincat will all be names off of fantasy draft boards by the sixth-or-seventh rounds, make sure to get a piece of the Wings’ rise before this team is a perennial threat.

Continued; I forgot what praising the Red Wings’ long-term outlook sounded like.

DetroitRedWings.com profiles Red Savage

DetroitRedWings.com’s Jonathan Mills posted a profile of Red Wings prospect and Michigan State University senior forward Red Savage, who’s a tenacious checker and excellent all-round forward. Savage told Mills that he transferred to MSU from Miami of Ohio to challenge himself to become a better player:

“I think it helped me individually as well, playing with elite players and having that security on your back knowing that even if you don’t play your best, the team will still pick you up and force you into games,” Savage said last month at the Red Wings’ 2024 Development Camp. “It was a lot of fun. I think my game especially improved a lot throughout the year.”

Savage set NCAA career-highs in goals (10), assists (17) and points (27) in 38 games last season, helping the Spartans earn their first-ever Big Ten title.

“It’s definitely a really big change up for me, going from Miami to Michigan State,” Savage said. “It was a lot of fun playing for a super successful team under coach (Adam) Nightingale and the number of great teammates that we had throughout the whole ride.”

Savage said navigating the NCAA transfer portal was also a growth experience because the process involved a lot of self-reflection.

“(The transfer portal) is pretty much free agency,” Savage said. “You go in with different ideas of where you want to go or where might fit your needs the best. I had a group of five or six teams I know I wanted to talk to. It was important to get to know every coach, go over every different option and lay everything out to go over the pros and cons for each team.”

Continued; Savage definitely has the same professional mindset as his father, long-time NHL’er Brian Savage, and while he projects as a fourth-line center, he’s going to be hell on earth to play against.

Roughly translated: Jonatan Berggren behind the paywall, and a bit about Marty Howe

Of Red Wings-related note from Sweden this morning:

  1. There’s a subscriber-only article on HockeyNews.se in which Uffe Bodin speaks with Jonatan Berggren regarding his status as having yet to reach a contract agreement with the Red Wings. Only the first paragraph of the article is available..

Tough for Berggren: “I shouldn’t lie about it”

Jonatan Berggren, 24, had to take a step back in the Detroit Red Wings’ [organization] and became the scoring king on the farm team in Grand Rapids.

“It was a half-baked season, I’m not going to lie about that,” says Berggren to HockeyNews.se.

The former Skelleftea forward is now without an NHL contract, though negotiations are ongoing.

2. And I don’t really want to translate this one unless there’s a demand for it: Hockeysverige.se’s Ronnie Ronnqvist posted an “Old School Hockey” article about Marty Howe, conducting an interview which Google Translate does a good job of sorting out. Some of Marty’s stories are about his father, but most of them are about his own career and post-career happenings.

Let me know if you’re interested in me posting it.

Update: IceHockeyG on Twitter posted some quotes from the Berggren article:

Continue reading Roughly translated: Jonatan Berggren behind the paywall, and a bit about Marty Howe

Three more articles regarding coach Lalonde’s remarks on forward, needs on defense and situation in goal

This morning brings three more articles which focus on Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde’s remarks during last week’s “Summer Hockey in the D” event.

Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff kicks things off with a discussion regarding the Red Wings’ forward lineup…

“I think we did a good job of addressing some holes,” Lalonde said of the club’s offseason moves. “It feels like guys are maybe slotted going into the year a little bit.”

Let’s face it, in recent seasons it’s sometimes been the case that the Red Wings have found themselves trying to fit square pegs into round holes. And it wasn’t all that long ago when the team was desperately seeking to take chicken you-know-what and turn it into chicken salad.

This team, Lalonde feels, offers more variety up and down the lineup. Players will be fitting into roles that they are generally filling as NHL players. They won’t be asking someone to do something for which they simply don’t possess the skill level to do so.

“Early on it just feels like with the signings – Patty (Kane) coming back, (Vladimir) Tarasenko (signed) as a free agent, Tyler Motte (signed) as a free agent, getting Christian Fischer back – I think guys are slotted a little bit more proper and maybe more of an ideal top-six, bottom-six situation,” Lalonde said.

MLive’s Ansar Khan posted a subscriber-only story which discusses the Red Wings’ team defense and defensive corps, suggesting that the Red Wings cannot finish 24th in the league in goals-against this upcoming season:

“I just feel that the teams in the end, it all looks the same,” Lalonde said. “They put a premium on keeping the puck out of the net. It’ll be a goal of ours and we’re going to need it from everyone. I just think even the natural DNA of our players, we want to score goals. We need those goals, but I think it’s very important if you’re going to get there in the end where we want to be, we got to keep it out of the net.”

The Red Wings once again figure to start the season with eight defensemen, including young Simon Edvinsson and Albert Johansson, who are pretty much assured of roster spots barring unforeseen circumstances, and veteran Erik Gustafsson.

The unit will play a key role in helping improve the GAA.

“I think we got really fortunate last year in staying healthy on the back end,” Lalonde said. “But we’ll need that depth. I think all eight are very capable. I’m very excited about Simon. I think his play towards the end of last year was exciting. But I’m very excited about Albert, too. I was able to see him towards the end of the year and into the playoffs (in Grand Rapids). I think he’s ready for the National Hockey League. He’ll have to show us that in camp.”

And The Hockey News’s Connor Eargood discusses the Red Wings’ three-headed goaltending monster:

“Healthy competition” for the starting job will cause [the Red Wings’ pecking] order to fluctuate. With three goaltenders who can start, this should give the Red Wings options to choose from if all goes according to plan. It might also bring out better performances from the goaltenders as they compete. At least, that’s how Talbot is looking at it.

“Internal competition always makes everybody better,” Talbot said July 3, days after signing his two-year contract with the Red Wings. “I think that bringing in the guys they brought in just drives everybody that much more and that’s a good thing for everybody.”

Just like the best laid plans oft go awry, a three-goalie system can quickly turn into a two-headed tandem, which could make some of Lalonde’s decisions for him. That’s what happened last season, when Husso’s continued health struggles limited Lalonde to just Lyon and James Reimer for most of 2023-24, and Lyon put together an impressive 16-4-2 run starting in January that entrenched him as the No. 1. These factors simplify the decisions a little bit, but in an ideal world the Red Wings want a healthy stable to choose from. The ability to pick the wrong goaltender is a privilege, even if it’s an albatross all the same.

“I think a pretty good job last year by our management group having three goalies,” Lalonde said. “Very unique. It worked for us last year, and I think we’ll go into the season with that mentality and kind of let it play out.”