Author: George Malik

The Detroit News’s Mike Falkner tells quite the tale in relating a story from Mike Keenan’s memoir/biography this morning:

Unemployed Mike Keenan was sitting at the kitchen table in the Bingham Farms home of Mike and Marian Ilitch, owners of the Detroit Red Wings. 

It was January of 1993 and Keenan was out of work after getting fired by the Chicago Blackhawks, who lost in the 1992 Stanley Cup final against Scotty Bowman’s Pittsburgh Penguins. To avoid being seen at Detroit Metro Airport, Keenan and his agent, Rob Campbell, drove from Toronto to Ilitch’s home, where Marian served tuna sandwiches for lunch.

The Red Wings already had a coach, Bryan Murray, who led the team to a franchise-record 47 wins in 1993, but Detroit had been eliminated in the playoffs for two straight years under Murray, and Mike Ilitch wanted a new coach.

What happened next in two separate meetings between Ilitch and Keenan — the details of which were revealed for the first time in Keenan’s recent book, “Iron Mike: My Life Behind the Bench” — could’ve changed the course of Red Wings history for good, bad, or indifferent.

“After we had started lunch, Mike (Ilitch) asked Rob (Campbell) what it would take to get me here to coach and manage the Red Wings,” Keenan said on The Detroit News/Detroit Red Wings podcast, OctoPulse. “Rob said a $500,000 signing bonus. Mike got up and went to the kitchen sink, had a glass of water and said, ‘Why would I want to do that?’ Rob said, ‘Because if you don’t, somebody else will.’

“I ended up making an agreement with Mike and Marian, and was put on a kind of a hold situation. Mike gave me $150,000, so I wouldn’t go to another team. Basically, he had the right of first refusal. A little while later, he called me and said there was a family dispute, and I said, ‘Mike, I don’t want to get involved in any family disputes. I’m going to send you your money back,’ which I did.”

Continued (paywall)…

The Detroit Red Wings looked to be in serious trouble halfway through the 3rd period against the New York Islanders Monday night, trailing 2-1, but the Red Wings ultimately salvaged a 4-2 victory from the Islanders to sweep the teams’ 3-game season series.

Detroit now sits at 9-10-and-2 heading into Wednesday night’s match-up with the Calgary Flames, who lost a 4-3 decision to Ottawa on Monday.

As far as the game’s narrative is concerned, the Islanders were particularly pissed off at having let a 2-1, 3rd period lead slip away, as they told Newsday’s Andrew Gross…

The Detroit Red Wings hoped to rebound from a difficult Saturday loss to the Boston Bruins as they eyed a sweep of their 3-game season series with the New York Islanders on Monday night.

The 8-8-and-5 Islanders had a record that the 8-10-and-2 Red Wings may very well envy in that it contains more points due to fewer regulation time losses, and the name of the game on Monday night was going to be attempting to earn a regulation time win.

On Monday night, Detroit honestly looked like it was going to lose a sleepy, boring game for so much of the game that it was silly, despite Moritz Seider revoking Anders Lee’s opening tally with a blast of his own, and when Kyle Palmieri scored 7:42 into the 2nd, Detroit seemed doomed to lose another 2-1 game…

But Dylan Larkin and Lucas Raymond scored goals only 2:33 apart halfway through the 3rd, Simon Edvinsson’s empty netter sewed things up, and in between, a fine defensive performance and a tremendous 29-save performance by Alex Lyon salvaged a very necessary 4-2 victory.

Of Red Wings-related note this evening:

1. The Hockey News’s Sam Stockton wrote an excellent article regarding the learning curves which Red Wings forward Marco Kasper and defenseman Albert Johansson face as prospects who are learning the NHL “on the fly”:

As [Red Wings coach Derek] Lalonde explained it Saturday morning, “Today’s NHL…you’re developing on the fly. You get a little extra video, extra reps.”  Friday’s practice had been optional, but Kasper and Johansson both took part, because, in Lalonde’s words, “it was important for those guys to get reps and touches and work on some things in their game, so it’s a little more involved.”

At the heart of the learning process for youngsters like Kasper and Johansson are those extra video sessions with Detroit’s coaching staff.  “It’s just a conversation,” explains Kasper.  “It’s really good to see. It really helps you to understand the game at a high level.”  That idea of “seeing” is a crucial one for a young player getting accustomed to life in the NHL. That the meetings function as a conversation rather than lecture offers a chance to share what you saw in real time and juxtapose it with what a coach saw.  The objective is to demystify the NHL game for two players who can’t lean on experience to understand what they’re seeing each night.

“Every game here is so hard to win, and there is so many good players here,” Johansson tells The Hockey News Sunday afternoon.  “I think my first couple games, I knew it was gonna be a challenge for me. And then I felt like maybe, as the season is going, I think maybe I get a little nervous. You never want to make mistakes, but maybe I was thinking of it a little bit too much, to not make mistakes, and then mistakes come. For me, I’m just trying to work hard every day to get better and play simple hockey that I know I can play: moving pucks and use my feet and skating to be involved.”

Continued;

2. The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan asked Cam Talbot about the chatter suggesting that #39 may end up being picked as one of Canada’s goaltenders for the Four Nations Cup:

Red Wings forward Jonatan Berggren and coach Derek Lalonde spoke with the media earlier today regarding tonight’s Red Wings-Islanders game (7 PM EST on Fanduel Sports Network Detroit/MSG2+/97.1 FM):

The Islanders’ website also posted clips of Bo Horvat, J-G Pageau and coach Patrick Roy.

The Detroit Red Wings wrap up their season series against the New York Islanders this evening (7 PM EST on Fanduel Sports Network Detroit/MSGN2/97.1 FM), having swept the first 2 games of the teams’ series via a 1-0 win on October 22nd and a 2-1 victory on Thursday…

Given the Wings’ performance in the 3rd period of Saturday’s loss to Boston, this is one of those games I’ve had circled on my calendar for a while as a “barometer game.” That’s doubly true given that the Wings look so very fragile right now, and rather desperately need a win to help turn around their listing ship.

This game also has Wild Card implications. The 8-10-and-2 Red Wings and their fan base have been focused upon the team’s standing in the Atlantic Division, but the 8-8-and-5 Islanders are definitely a team that the Wings may compete against for a Wild Card spot, should Detroit break its early-season funk.

Patrick Roy’s Islanders also play a really good speed game, they have strong goaltending, and his Isles play a trapping style that seems to stymie the Wings’ offense and flummox their defense, too, so it’s a bit of a “kryptonite game” whenever Detroit plays the Islanders.

I’m intrigued to see how the Wings perform in games against the Isles tonight and the Devils on Friday afternoon (3 PM EST start on Friday) to see where the Wings stand as far as battling against Eastern Conference competition is concerned.

According to the Islanders website’s Rachel Luscher, the Islanders happen to find themselves in a not-too-dissimilar spot to the Wings right now. Saturday’s win vs. St. Louis snapped a 0-2-and-1 stretch, and the Islanders are in the midst of a 3-game home stand, so they’re trying to make hay while the sun shines:

ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski posted a “NHL Head-Coach Hot Seat Index” this morning, and he believes that Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde and Blackhawks coach Luke Richardson’s “hot seats” are “burning up” at present:

The Red Wings have regressed in the standings after last season’s 91-point campaign. Their offensive output is way down, from 3.35 goals per game last season to 2.53 after 19 games this season. Their 1.52 goals per 60 minutes at 5-on-5 is 31st in the NHL. This isn’t about puck luck: Detroit’s 2.06 expected goals per 60 minutes is last in the league. They’re better in goals against per game season over season, but a lot of that credit should go to goalie Cam Talbot, who is making GM Steve Yzerman look smart.

But the biggest harbinger was the one that haunted Montgomery: Lalonde, in his third season with the Red Wings, does not have a contract beyond 2024-25.

The general speculation is that if the Red Wings don’t make the postseason, Lalonde surely pays for that with his job. But would Yzerman pull the plug in-season, in the hopes of getting Detroit back to the playoffs for the first time since 2016?

There also has been speculation that it might happen, and one rumor that made the rounds in NHL coaching circles this month was that Joel Quenneville might take over the Detroit bench.

“Two weeks ago, I heard Quenneville for Detroit,” a coaching source said.

Continued (paywall) with a few reasons as to why Quenneville, 66, might not want to join the Red Wings–and why the Red Wings might not want to hire him (see his $6 million salary with the Hawks).

In all honesty, I don’t see Quenneville coming to Detroit given that, as Wyshynski points out, he’s the kind of coach that you plug into a team that needs a reset as it attempts to win a Stanley Cup, not a team that is in the middle of a rebuild.

Stranger things have happened, but I don’t see the fit.

As news breaks that the St. Louis Blues have hired ousted Bruins coach Jim Montgomery…

The Detroit Red Wings lost the special teams battle and plain old ran out of gas in the 3rd period of their 2-1 loss to the Boston Bruins on Saturday night.

When you go 0-for-4 on the power play, give up a power play goal against, and are then out-shot 13-4 in the 3rd period, the stats back up the above paragraph’s two assertions pretty bloody well.

But if we are to talk about the very fragile team that is the now 9-10-and-3, which sits 6th in the Atlantic Division at the 20-game mark…

I know that the Wings got out-shot, out-shot-blocked, out-performed in the faceoff circle and had an ugly 26 giveaways (Simon Edvinsson had 6 of those giveaways), so we’re not talking about the Red Wings’ best effort here.

And I’m not here to be a Red Wings apologist.

Last night’s 3rd period was unacceptable, it sullied the team and coaching staff’s full-game performances, and that’s the bottom line.

But I did see signs of progress over the course of the entirety of the game. Let’s enumerate a couple of those positives:

The Detroit Red Wings may have glimpsed their future as they eyed the 9-9-and-3 Boston Bruins on Saturday night. The Bruins fired coach Jim Montgomery on Monday, and are beginning to revise their roster under coach Joe Sacco.

As the Atlantic Division continues to pull away from the Red Wings, there’s definitely urgency for the 8-9-and-2 Red Wings to sort out their difficulties internally, lest they share the Bruins’ fate.

On Saturday night, the Red Wings played a really great 40 minutes of hockey, but they lost their “oomph” in the 3rd, and that was enough to drop a 2-1 decision to the Boston Bruins.

Detroit went 0-for-3 on the PP, which did not help, but Cam Talbot stopped 27 fine saves, Raymond got a goal and Larkin got his 300th assist, and the Wings should not have been out-shot 13-4 in the third period in which they had a power play and a lengthy stretch of 6-on-4 time, in which they hit two crossbars behind Jeremy Swayman.

But there is progress here, and the Islanders await on Monday.

Tony Wolak, Devin Little and I had to “go it alone” without our host, the eloquent Evan Sabourin, but Tony did yeoman’s work and hosted the show this week: