Author: George Malik

ESPN’s Ryan S. Clark and Kristen Shilton issue draft/free agency/summertime trade grades for every one of the NHL’s 32 teams this morning (via a subscriber-only article). They are not bullish on the Red Wings’ moves:

Detroit Red Wings

Key players added: F Vladimir Tarasenko, G Jack Campbell, G Cam Talbot
Key players lost: F David Perron, D Jake Walman, G James Reimer
Remaining cap space: $19.92 million

Coach status: Derek Lalonde is going into his third season with Detroit — and his seat is undeniably warm. When GM Steve Yzerman tapped Lalonde for his first NHL head coaching job, it was with the idea that he could help Detroit break through its defensive issues and become a playoff-caliber team.

Despite Lalonde’s best efforts, the Red Wings haven’t turned the corner on that side of the puck — something Yzerman made clear when he said Detroit basically lacked the basic fundamentals of defending. Lalonde must be feeling the heat now as Yzerman has made it clear the status quo — no playoff appearances since 2016 — won’t be accepted from here.

Overall grade: C+. If Yzerman can be critical of how the Red Wings are performing on the ice, it’s worth discussing how they’ve been constructed, too. Yzerman didn’t go all-in anywhere to make Detroit demonstrably better. His notable moves were re-signing Patrick Kane to a one-year contract and adding free agent Tarasenko on two-year pact. Veterans with Stanley Cup-winning experience are generally good to have, but how much of a difference will they make overall?

Granted, Yzerman has RFAs Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider to sign, and that requires cap space. But he is counting on the Red Wings’ internal growth to carry the day here, and how beneficial that strategy is will become clear in due time. Until then it doesn’t appear Detroit is much improved — or all that different — from what Lalonde was working with last season. Hence why the coach and his staff will be tasked with getting Detroit to lose its Achilles heel as an under-performing defensive team.

Continued (paywall); I honestly get kind of pissed off when pundits play the “blame the coach” or “blame the GM” game. Don’t get me wrong, accountability is a good thing, but building a team is a team effort…

And the Red Wings are just at the point where they’ve developed a strong system of prospects, free agents are coming to Detroit because it’s Detroit, and the team is taking those first tentative steps toward making the playoffs on a consistent basis.

The rebuild isn’t over by any stretch of the imagination, and while you, me and Steve Yzerman want more progress by now, things are taking the long route. That’s not a good thing or a bad thing–that’s just the reality of the situation.

The Free Press’s Helene St. James welcomes us to Thursday with a subscriber-only column which discusses Nate Danielson’s immense level of self-belief. As St. James points out, Danielson really rocketed up the scoring charts when he was traded from the Wheat Kings to Portland of the WHL this past season, posting 41 points over the course of just 28 games played:

“Every year you just try and improve,” Danielson said. “I think my overall game has improved since last time I was here. And just overall as a person and player, I’ve improved with all the new experiences I’ve had.I try to work on everything — my skating, my shot, stick handling. I don’t know if there’s any one thing I feel I’m that much better at.”

Danielson had a good camp and exhibition season last fall, but there never was much question he’d go back for another year of junior hockey. Again, it was valuable experience.

“I thought I got more comfortable as camp went on,” Danielson said. “That gave me confidence, definitely, and gives me confidence going into this year, too, knowing that I can have success and play at this level.”

Danielson, 2022 first-round pick Marco Kasper and 2021 third-round pick Carter Mazur are all coming off good seasons and project to challenge for jobs in Detroit. Kasper and Mazur both have more pro experience, having played a full season in the AHL, but Danielson shouldn’t be overlooked. Maybe he doesn’t make the team out of camp, but he looks and sounds like a guy determined to be atop the depth chart in the minors.

“I believe in myself,” Danielson said, “and I believe I can make it.”

Continued (paywall); Danielson is only 20, and he’ll attempt to break into pro hockey with the Grand Rapids Griffins this upcoming season, but he’s got a level of self-confidence that’s almost cocky, and that’s good for a professional athlete to have.

I’ve been gone for a long time, and to help me reacquaint myself with you, the important people in my blogging life, I want to do a mailbag feature.

So comment below (I promise I’ll double check the comment queue so that your comment gets posted), send me a Tweet/X post, send me an email, ask me about the Red Wings, the offseason additions, prospect stuff, ask me about recovery from hip replacement surgery if you need to.

Just ask some questions, because it’s the second week of July, and it’s time to stir the pot and find a way to talk hockey during a lull in the 24/7/365 news cycle.

The Athletic issues “way too early” 2024-2025 season predictions this morning, and they do so by sharing a poll of their NHL writing staff, all 49 of ’em.

The Red Wings don’t get much of a mention until Shayna Goldman, Sean Gentille and Jesse Granger are asked which coach will be fired first: in The Athletic’s staff poll, 31.3% of the respondents said it will be Wings coach Derek Lalonde:

Gentille: I’m not sure the Red Wings got any better this offseason, and expectations are still high. Derek Lalonde is a good coach, but it’s easy to see him as a scapegoat.

Granger: It’s hard to argue with that explanation for Lalonde. I personally wonder how things go in Philadelphia if the Flyers don’t exceed expectations the way they did for most of last season.

Goldman: Lalonde definitely makes sense, but I actually went with Jim Montgomery here if the Bruins don’t look like a team ready to go on a deep run.

Continued (paywall); Gentille also complains when he finds that the Wings earn the last playoff spot in the East in the poll, but that’s it for the Wings.

As far as Lalonde is concerned, I don’t know whether he’s going to get the Wings back into the playoffs, but he’s the coach, and I believe that he’ll do a competent job this upcoming season.

The Red Wings’ GM may be overly patient and thoroughly methodical, but he’s not dumb–if the team struggles this season, Steve Yzerman won’t hesitate to make changes on the roster, both on and behind the bench.

And as far as the rest is concerned, the Wings are not going to have a lot of believers this upcoming season, just like last year, and they’ll have to prove people wrong. Again.

Strange things happen in the KHL all the time, and this morning, Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff tries to make sense of Dmitri Buchelnikov’s situation.

Buchelnikov was recently traded from the mighty SKA St. Petersburg club to Vityaz Moscow Region, but the player Buchelnikov was traded for, former Red Wing Dmytro Timashov, was traded as well, with Timashov being sent to what is essentially SKA’s farm team in HC Sochi.

What does all of this have to do with Buchelnikov? It’s a strange turn of events for a player who bounced between St. Petersburg in Russia’s west and Vladivostok in the far, far east (think north of Japan) last season. That moving around wasn’t great for his stats in Buchelnikov’s first full season in the KHL, but he managed to post 29 points in 53 games.

Blah blah blah, get to the point, George? Well, Duff explains that Buchelnikov getting sent to Vityaz was a bit weird given his one-time status as a rising star with SKA, and he notes that the Red Wings have to simply cross their fingers that the young man who stands at 5’10” and 170 pounds wants to come over to North America so that he can be assessed properly:

Buchelnikov was a 13-goal scorer in the KHL last season with Admiral, a team he was sent to on loan by SKA St. Petersburg. Does he have NHL potential? The fact of the matter is that at this stage of his development, no one can say for sure.

The Red Wings brass can’t get into Russia to see Buchelnikov play in person. And since Russia is under ban from international competition, there’s no chance to measure him against his peers on the international stage.

So what can the Red Wings do to determine how Buchelnikov is progressing until his contract with Vityaz is up in 2025? Get first-hand reports from their Russian scout, and watch as many games as necessary on streaming services:

WWMT’s Nate Brown reports that Red Wings assistant GM and director of amateur scouting Kris Draper was in Grand Rapids to take part in his other favorite sport on Wednesday:

Day Two of the 2024 Beer City Open brought with it a few differences: matches played inside due to poor weather, and the beginning of Major League Pickleball sanctioned matches as the professionals began their fun.

Day Two also brought with it tournament Number Two for the “One Dollar Man”, Kris Draper.

Draper, the longtime Detroit Red Wing who won four Stanley Cups with the organization, competed in the 2023 Open as an amateur and finds himself back in Grand Rapids for the second straight year.

As someone who played the sport of hockey at the highest level imaginable, though, watching other professionals at the top of their craft only brings out the fan in Draper that much more.

“I love watching the best of the best. Last year was great getting to watch all the pros play,” said Draper. “This year with MLP here, it’s pretty neat just to watch the way these guys warm up. The way they hit the ball, it’s just a different sound. It’s just fun to watch how they move, how they play, how they are. It motivates you to continue to get better.”

Continued with a non-embeddable video…

Per the Grand Rapids Griffins on Twitter:

Starting off the season seeking revenge against Milwaukee 🔥💪 #GoGRG | See you soon @mkeadmirals 😉 pic.twitter.com/K0bBDR1KGm

— x – Grand Rapids Griffins (@griffinshockey) July 10, 2024

This afternoon, Detroit Hockey Now’s Kevin Allen has posted a subscriber-only article which discusses five points of emphasis for the Red Wings to make the playoffs in the upcoming 2024-2025 season. Here’s his most important point:

Tighten Defensive Coverage: Last season, 17 NHL teams gave 252 or fewer goals over 82 games. They all had a 3.02 team GAA or better.  Thirteen of those teams qualified for the playofs. The Red Wings have a good understanding of what they can do this season to improve their playoff chances.

Getting in the top half of the GAA seems like a “must” for this team. The team’s overall defensive coverage has to improve or they will miss the playoffs for a ninth consecutive season.

It feels as if they made some strides in defensive coverage last season, but numbers say it was negligible. They gave up 275 goals in Derek Lalonde’s first season and 273 last season. Their 11-point improvement resulted primarly from offensive improvement (particularly on the power play).

To make the playoffs, must set their sights on reducing goals against to 250. That will require a restructuring of how the team plays.

Continued (paywall); the Red Wings do indeed need to stem the flow of goals against, and as Allen suggests in his article, that will take improving the team’s level of goaltending, becoming a better road team, “pushing back” physically, and, of course, not allowing the team’s own goal-scoring to decline to the point that it’s a liability.

This is a bit gossipy, and a stark contrast from the serious nature of the last entry. It’s not intentional.

So: the Hockey News’s Caleb Kearney reports that new Red Wings goaltender Jack Campbell is spending hockey’s wedding season in Mexico:

Recent Detroit Red Wings addition Jack Campbell is getting married this week. His fiancee, Ashley Sonnenberg, took to her Instagram stories to share a few pictures.

As it’s not much in the way of news, I’ll let you read the rest on your own. Congrats to the happy couple.

TSN’s Rick Westhead broke this story a couple of hours ago, and while it’s not necessarily Red Wings-related from an on-ice perspective, it does tell the story of the death of former Red Wing and Nashville Predators forward Greg Johnson from CTE.

This does discuss suicide, so be warned:

Former National Hockey League player Greg Johnson, who played 14 seasons in the league, has been posthumously diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, the brain-withering disease linked to repetitive brain trauma in contact sports. 

Johnson’s family and the Concussion Legacy Foundation disclosed the news Wednesday in a joint statement, five years after his death by suicide.

Johnson’s daughter, Carson, used the moment to confront the NHL about its views on CTE. To date, the league has refused to acknowledge a link between repeated brain trauma and the disease.

“I had no idea what CTE even stood for when my dad took his life,” Carson said in a statement released by the Boston-based Concussion Legacy Foundation. “Now understanding that the hits he endured throughout his hockey career damaged his brain, I want all athletes to understand the risks and I want the NHL to start acknowledging it exists and do more to protect its players so other daughters don’t have to lose their fathers.”

Johnson, who was born in Thunder Bay, Ont., was 48 when he died on July 7, 2019, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Rochester, Mich.

Dr. Ann McKee, director of the Boston University CTE Center, diagnosed Johnson with CTE, but was unable to definitively stage it due to the manner of death.

“This diagnosis took my breath away,” Kristin, Johnson’s wife of 22 years, said in a statement. “Greg’s death shattered our world, and we never once thought this disease was something he struggled with. He experienced very few symptoms that we knew of, but he spoke of his concussions often. I remember the exact moment he told me his heart condition forcing him to retire was a blessing because he couldn’t take another hit. He knew his hockey career had a profound impact on his brain.”

Continued; this is obviously awful news…

And if you ever feel like you’re struggling mentally, there is always help via the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.