Author: George Malik

Detroit Hockey Now’s Kevin Allen got a bit of a scouting report on one Robert Hagg, a 27-year-old defenseman signed by the Red Wings today to assuage for the loss of Mark Pysyk to an Achilles tendon injury:

Over the past couple of weeks media speculation and social media chatter had the Detroit Red Wings being interested in free agent defenseman John Klingberg.

It turned out the Red Wings were interested in a Swedish free agent D man. But it was 6-foot-2, 210-pound Robert Haag, not puck mover Klingberg. Hagg played last season for the Buffalo Sabres and Florida Panthers and is known as a heavy hitter.

“(He’s a) solid defender that should factor in a 3rd pairing for Detroit,” NHL Network analyst Stu Grimson told Detroit Hockey Now. “He’s not shy to get up into the attack; a strong skater with size who “gets” the north American brand of hockey. He will play the body and stick up for a teammate where needed.”

The signing was announced in conjunction with the Red Wings revealing recently-signed defenseman Mark Pysyk will be out four to six months with a torn Achilles tendon.

Continued

Not good news for Mark Pysyk, but this explains why Robert Hagg was signed for depth:

pic.twitter.com/gpxOY4Zam7

— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) July 25, 2022

This is particularly interesting: IceHockeyGifs on YouTube posted a massive 57-minute-long video discussing the moves made by Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman in order to improve the team:

Per the Detroit Red Wings:

UPDATE: The #RedWings today signed defenseman Robert Hagg to a one-year contract with an average annual value of $800,000.

📰 » https://t.co/c70lnkfJmt pic.twitter.com/65zwmV2rAX— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) July 25, 2022

DETROIT SIGNS ROBERT HAGG TO ONE-YEAR CONTRACT

  … Defenseman Split 2021-22 Season Between Florida Panthers and Buffalo Sabres …

DETROIT – The Detroit Red Wings today signed defenseman Robert Hagg to a one-year contract with an average annual value of $800,000.

Hagg, 27, split the 2021-22 season between the Florida Panthers and Buffalo Sabres, recording nine points (1-8-9) and 35 penalty minutes in 64 games. The 6-foot-2, 207-pound blueliner has skated in 300 career NHL games with the Panthers (2021-22), Sabres (2021-22) and Philadelphia Flyers (2016-21), notching 56 points (14-42-56), a plus-four rating and 178 penalty minutes. He also registered three assists in 14 postseason appearances with the Flyers, helping the team reach the second round of the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Additionally, Hagg has compiled 50 points (16-34-50) and 142 penalty minutes in 202 games with the American Hockey League’s Adirondack/Lehigh Valley Phantoms from 2013-17.

Originally selected by the Flyers in the second round (41st overall) of the 2013 NHL Entry Draft, the Uppsala, Sweden, native logged a plus-two rating and four penalty minutes in eight appearances for his country at the 2019 IIHF World Championship. Hagg also competed in three-straight IIHF World Junior Championships from 2013-15, winning back-to-back silver medals in 2013 and 2014. He previously served as an alternate captain for Sweden at the 2013 IIHF World Under-18 Championship, tallying four points (1-3-4), a plus-one rating and 12 penalty minutes in five contests. Hagg represented Sweden at the 2013 Ivan Hlinka Memorial Tournament, logging five points (3-2-5) in four games. He led all defensemen in scoring at the 2012 World Under-17 Hockey Challenge with six points (2-4-6) while adding 16 penalty minutes in six contests, and also skated in four games at the 2011 World Junior A Challenge. Prior to arriving in North America, Hagg played two seasons with MODO Hockey in Sweden’s top professional league, picking up seven points (1-6-7) and 49 penalty minutes in 77 games from 2012-14. 

Hagg, 27, is 6’2″ and 205 pounds.

The Red Wings posted a video of Alex Nedeljkovic flying with the Blue Angels last week…

And this morning, Bally Sports Detroit posted a report regarding Nedeljkovic’s status as a guest of the aerobatic team. BSD’s Natalie Kerwin reports from Willow Run Airport:

Great news for both parties:

UPDATE: The #RedWings and AHL’s Grand Rapids Griffins today announced a five-year extension of their affiliation agreement.

More » https://t.co/bJwCY6r8fS pic.twitter.com/IhSH9taUHg— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) July 25, 2022

Per the Grand Rapids Griffins:

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – The Grand Rapids Griffins and the Detroit Red Wings on Monday announced a five-year extension of their affiliation agreement, ensuring that one of the most fruitful and passion-inducing partnerships in hockey will continue through at least the 2026-27 season.

This 20-year-old affiliation has seen the Griffins win the American Hockey League’s Calder Cup on two occasions (2013 and 2017), making Grand Rapids one of three active AHL franchises to ever claim two cups within a span of five seasons. Coupled with the Red Wings’ Stanley Cup in 2008, the Detroit organization’s three combined AHL and NHL championships over the last two decades tie for third behind Tampa Bay (3 NHL, 1 AHL) and Washington (1 NHL, 3 AHL), and only one other current AHL-NHL pairing (Hershey-Washington) has produced a championship for both teams over that timeframe.

The Griffins-Red Wings partnership comprises one of the longest affiliations between current AHL and NHL franchises, ranking as the sixth-longest tenure. The Providence Bruins and Boston Bruins have the longest active, uninterrupted affiliation at 30 years.

“We are excited that the 20-year relationship between the Griffins and the Red Wings, one of the premier NHL/AHL partnerships, is continuing,” said Scott Gorsline, executive vice president of DP Fox and COO/alternate governor for the Griffins. “Steve Yzerman, Shawn Horcoff and the entire Red Wings organization are great partners, and we look forward to exciting and competitive hockey in Detroit and Grand Rapids over the next five years.”

The Griffins have sent 112 players to Hockeytown since the affiliation’s inception in 2002. The names of nine former Griffins were engraved on the Stanley Cup following Detroit’s 2008 title, and 76 Grand Rapids alumni played for the Red Wings over the final 13 seasons of their remarkable 25-year playoff streak that ended in 2016.

Most recently, 19 of the 38 players who appeared in at least one game for Detroit in 2021-22 also spent time with the Griffins during their careers. Ten of them were recalled from Grand Rapids last season, including Chase Pearson, who made his NHL debut on March 24. Last month, Moritz Seider became the first Grand Rapids alum to win the NHL’s Calder Memorial Trophy, awarded to the player selected as the most proficient in his first year of competition.

“Grand Rapids continues to be a model franchise both on and off the ice and we’re excited to continue our partnership,” said Red Wings Executive Vice President and General Manager Steve Yzerman. “The winning culture established by the Griffins is extremely beneficial for the development of our young players and the fans in Grand Rapids do a tremendous job creating an exciting atmosphere to support the growth of our players.”

The Griffins (Macgregor Kilpatrick Trophy) and Red Wings (Presidents’ Trophy) won their respective regular-season titles in 2005-06, becoming the first of only two sets of affiliates (Hershey-Washington in 2009-10) in at least the last 37 years to claim their leagues’ best records in the same season.

In all, the 20-year relationship between Michigan’s premier hockey teams has brought two cups, one regular-season championship, five conference finals appearances, 11 playoff berths (in 18 postseasons, including a franchise-record seven straight from 2013 through 2019), and four division titles to Grand Rapids, along with one cup, another trip to the final, three regular-season championships, three conference final appearances, 13 playoff berths, and seven division crowns to Detroit.

The Athletic’s Max Bultman spoke with former Arizona Coyotes coach Rick Tocchet and former Arizona Coyotes forward Conor Garland (now a 52-point-scorer with the Vancouver Canucks) regarding the work of former Arizona Coyotes assistant/Tuscon Roadrunners coach Jay Varady.

The Red Wings hired Varady to be one of Derek Lalonde’s assistants behind the Red Wings’ bench this upcoming season, and Bultman discusses Varady’s hands-on approach this morning:

Detroit had only carried two on-bench assistant coaches since 2020, when Adam Nightingale left the Red Wings for the U.S. NTDP and was not replaced, but now is going back to a deeper bench under first-year coach Derek Lalonde. After hiring associate coach Bob Boughner and goaltending coach Alex Westlund during the NHL Draft, Varady is the latest piece of a staff that Lalonde envisions as a collaborative unit, sharing special teams assignments between them to get more eyes and minds on each task.

And certainly, one of the biggest areas of emphasis for Detroit will be improving a penalty kill that last season ranked as the worst in the league.

Tocchet’s staff was similarly collaboratively-driven, but Varady was relied upon there to helm a unit that had been a top-five PK in the NHL under Tocchet — but had also just lost their three most-trusted forwards (based on time-on-ice) from that unit: Derek Stepan, Brad Richardson and Michael Grabner. And as Tocchet recalls, replacing them got off to a rocky start.

But Varady and fellow assistant coach Cory Stillman helped the Coyotes right the ship, and by year’s end, buoyed the PK back to being a fringe-top-10 unit again.

“Jay did a hell of a job,” Tocchet said last week. “He didn’t waver. Sometimes, when things don’t go your way, you panic a little bit. He didn’t panic.”

Continued (paywall)

iSport.cz’s Miroslav Horak spoke with former Red Wings forward Jiri Hudler regarding the current-day team’s rebuilding effort, but most of the article is stuck behind a paywall. Here’s a rough translation of the introduction to the article, from Czech to English:

Czech Detroit: Yzerman knows what he’s doing, says Jiri Hudler. Will they contend for the Stanley Cup?

He experienced the sweet end of an amazing Red Wings era at the dawn of the summer of 2008. Jiri Hudler lifted the Stanley Cup above his head, fought in the finals a year later. And a gradual fall followed, the departures of first-class icons. Today, hockey in Detroit is as part of a pack of NHL teams working on roster reconstruction. It’s been too long for some. Will the team with a four-Czech enclave restore the once-famous Hockeytown to the next level? “Stevie Yzerman knows what he’s doing,” Hudler says of his former teammate and current team GM.

With several domestic ambassadors, things are building up for Detroit. Filip Hronek is already among the stable players on the team, and he spearheads the defense. Jakub Vrana is considered to be the team’s central sniper, who’s expected to score 30 or more goals over the course of a full season. There’s great potential hidden in Filip Zadina, who hasn’t been re-signed yet. And to all of this comes a fresh purchase in the form of Dominik Kubalik, a capable forward who intends to fight for a return to better numbers. Detroit will attempt to make the playoffs, where it hasn’t been for six consecutive seasons.

What does a former Stanley Cup champion who spent his glory days with the team think about the current Red Wings?

“With the departures of Datsyuk and Zetterberg, Detroit began a new era. I don’t want to say that they declined, but there was a big, fundamental change that began. Stevie Yzerman returned from Tampa, and in my eyes, he’s a definite guarantee that things will rise again in Detroit. Gradually, but 100%”

Up to the very top of the league?

“I’m not saying that the era of Yzerman, Shanahan, Larionov, Datsyuk, Zetterberg and others will return. But I think we will see where the organization will go by comparing it to the one Yzerman led in Tampa. He was the one who built the current Lightning, which has won the Stanley Cup twice in the last three years, and this year only fell in the Stanley Cup Final against the absolutely great Colorado Avalanche. Perhaps up to 90% of it was the work of Stevie, who was behind the assembly of the winning line-up. He made a lot of good moves with the Lightning, and I believe that something similar is in the works in Detroit. He’s made good purchases in the last couple of days.”

The article continues behind the paywall, promising the following…

What is Steve Yzerman’s magic? And is he inclined to pick Czech hockey players? What does he see in players that others don’t? How did the crisis of the city affect Detroit? And what does it look like there now? And what does Hudler say about the Palace in New Jersey?

What is the magic of Yzerman? And is he inclined towards Czech hockey? What do they see in players that others don’t? How did the crisis of the city affect Detroit? And what does it look like there now? And what does Hudler say about the Palace in New Jersey?

Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff reflects upon the points made by one Dominik Kubalik during his introductory press conference, discussing Kubalik’s game and his status as a sniper trying to re-set his career after struggling in his 2nd and 3rd NHL campaigns:

From his point of view, Kubalik, 26, looks upon every hockey season as another chance to do something special.

“I kind of feel every season is a new start,” Kubalik said. “You can get better, you can learn something. There is always something you can get better. Even from my first season, I knew that if I want to stay and I’m going to produce the same way I did, I need to do some things better. I think I was trying to make those steps for me, especially defensively.”

He followed that 30-goal [rookie] campaign in Chicago with seasons of 17 and 15 goals. Kubalik felt even though his production was dipping, his overall game was growing.

“From year one to year three I think I got better,” he said. “For me it’s usually not usually the points, I think sometimes it’s better when you grow as a man, a human being. I think every season I made a step forward. From being a rookie, maybe a little older rookie, but still a rookie, learning things, stuff around the league. Right now I feel more confident about it and know what to expect. There is always something and right now I can see a clean table, fresh start, fresh mind. For sure it’s going to be helpful to me.”

Continued

The Athletic’s Scott Wheeler posted his list of the Top 50 NHL Prospects under 23 years of age, discussing his top 50 skaters this morning. Only one Red Wings prospect cracked his list, one Simon Edvinsson:

14. Simon Edvinsson, LHD, 19 (Detroit Red Wings — No. 6, 2021): Things went really well for Edvinsson this year. He played big minutes on a European giant in his first full season at the SHL level, he looked like a force in the short-lived world juniors, and the areas of his game that needed (and still need) some cleaning up got it for the most part.

His ceiling is extremely high and backed by a unique set of traits and skills for a 6-foot-5 player (let alone defenceman). These include his uncharacteristically soft hands and control of the puck, his fearlessness with and without it, and his strong foundational knowledge of how to use his towering frame to defend in a variety of ways (with an active stick, with step-up physicality when opportunities present themselves, on box-outs, etc.).

If he can develop his shot (one of those areas that still needs work), continue to smooth out his game, and make better choices (which he did this year), the potential is there in spades. It was also nice to see him make more play-ending passes and create a ton of chances (he should actually have a couple more goals under his belt) to add to his already-dominant transition game as a confident carrier and transporter.

I hate this cliche but you really can’t teach hands like his at that size. He tries things, he usually pulls them off, and he’s more comfortable handling the puck under pressure than just about any teenage defenceman I’ve scouted (regardless of size). He has also found greater control of his gangly frame (he’s a good skater and always has been but his stride can splay from the knees) and takes up a lot of space defensively. He’s going to be a very good — and different — player if he can maintain his take-charge mentality on both sides of the puck and put it all together at the NHL level.

Wheeler continues (paywall).

Edvinsson’s listed at 6’5″ on some pages and 6’6″ on others, and I’ll definitely agree that he’s got some work to do to “smooth” some rough edges out of his game, especially as he adjusts to the North American rink, but he’s got a borderline arrogance about him that really stands out when he’s carrying the puck, and he’s an excellent skater with size and strength in spades.