Author: George Malik

MLive’s Ansar Khan posted an article which discusses the Red Wings’ soaring power play:

The Red Wings haven’t scored on the power play in nine consecutive games since 2015 (Feb. 26-March 15). They haven’t finished a season ranked as high as second in the league since 2014-15. They are converting at 28.6 percent. Only Winnipeg has been more productive at 32.3 percent.

They’re using the same power-play personnel, and the same assistant coach (Alex Tanguay) remains in charge. So, what’s been the reason for the bump since Todd McLellan took over as head coach?

“It feels confident,” McLellan said. “It’s not the same look, all the time the pieces are interchangeable. It makes it hard to prepare to defend it. Sometimes you get just stationary and then you can anticipate what might be coming.”

Players are rotating to different spots more, using more motion. Their entries have been cleaner, they’re getting more zone time and McLellan has stressed a shot mentality, not only on the power play, but at even strength as well.

Lucas Raymond has become sort of the quarterback from the left flank and leads the team with 22 power-play points (four goals, 18 assists). He’s well on pace to pass last season’s leader in power-play points, Shayne Gostisbehere (29 points), who signed with Carolina.

Continued (paywall)

The Free Press’s Helene St. James posted an article which discusses the Red Wings’ defense’s offensive “pop” since Todd McLellan took over behind the Wings’ bench, as evidenced by Erik Gustafsson’s play:

Among the keys to the Detroit Red Wings’ resurgence is how much more their defensemen have been engaged in the offense.

Nobody on the back end epitomizes this more than Erik Gustafsson, who has taken strides towards looking more like the guy the Wings thought they were getting when they signed him in the offseason with every game since Todd McLellan was named coach on Dec. 26.

Gustafsson is coming off his first multipoint performance of the season as the Wings take a seven-game winning streak up against the San Jose Sharks on Tuesday at Little Caesars Arena.

“I didn’t know Gus coming in,” McLellan said. “I wasn’t sure how he would react to what we wanted to do. But he’s been outstanding. The knock on him will always be, can he defend? He’s doing an outstanding job of that. He’s bought into taking care of that first, and when you do that, it opens up the other end, as well.”

Gustafsson was at five points — all assists — and a minus-11 rating in 26 games at Christmas, having struggled to establish himself as a regular. It was not what was envisioned when he was signed for two years at $2 million per season in July to ameliorate the loss of Shayne Gostisbehere, the offensive defenseman and power-play specialist who bolted for the Carolina Hurricanes.

In the eight games since Christmas, however, Gustafsson, a 32-year-old journeyman on his eighth NHL team, has two goals, four assists and a plus-3 rating.

Continued (paywall)

Michigan Public’s Kalloi Bhatt and April Van Buren posted April Behr’s interview with the Free Press’s Helene St. James from “Stateside” this morning, with the following summary:

The past few seasons have been frustrating for Detroit Red Wings fan, to say the least.

On paper, things were looking up. Steve Yzerman, an NFL Hall of Fame center with plenty of championship experience, has served as the general manager since 2019. But despite a roster of talented players, things hadn’t seemed to click for the Detroit team.

But now, a coaching swap seems to be injecting new life into the team and its chances at the playoffs. Departing coach Derek Lalonde’s position was filled in December by Todd McClelland. Suddenly, there’s new energy at Little Caesars Arena.

According to Helene St. James, who reports on the Wings for the Detroit Free Press, Yzerman felt he had to make a coaching change after last year’s game against the St. Louis Blues.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like that because usually the game before any holiday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, you know, I mean, players just have to show up and the crowd is already so into it,” St. James said. “And for the Wings to get booed off home ice right before the Christmas break, it was just unprecedented.”

The Buffalo News’s Mike Harrington posted this in his “look around the East” at the 2024-2025 season’s halfway point, and I am not going to admit that I laughed out loud at the trade he proffers, but I will admit that I guffawed.

The Dylan Cozens situation: The Sabres aren’t shopping a player who’s currently their No. 1 center and it seems crazy they would trade him, given Tage Thompson’s lingering injury. But Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported on his podcast that Cozens is a Detroit target and that Buffalo assistant general manager Jason Karmanos has been spotted on the scouting list at Red Wings games. This corner can take that point event further by noting that Detroit pro scout Chris Yzerman (yes, Steve’s brother) has been at recent Sabres games.

But unless the Sabres are getting their hands on young stars like Detroit defenseman Moritz Seider or winger Lucas Raymond – which seems impossible – what are they doing answering the Wings’ calls on Cozens? And don’t the Wings’ sudden winning ways under new coach Todd McLellan cool the need for a big move?

Continued; Seider and Raymond are foundational pieces of the Red Wings’ roster and are untouchable players. There’s no way that the Red Wings would trade one of them for a point-per-every-other-game center who translated one really good season into a $7.1 million-per-season contract.

Hell, there’s no way that Seider or Raymond are moving, period. The Red Wings didn’t make two $8-plus million investments on each player to trade them.

The Red Wings have a bunch of tertiary prospects who might be moveable. Their primary players are not going to be swapped for a reclamation project like Cozens.

The 19-18-and-4 Detroit Red Wings place their 6-game winning streak on the line when they host the Seattle Kraken today at 3 PM EST (on FanDuel SportsNet Detroit/KHN/KONG/NHL Network/Sportsnet/97.1 FM).

While the Kraken possess an 18-22-and-3 record, the team still believes that it can make a run for a Western Conference playoff spot; the Red Wings can say the same, as they find themselves in a dogfight for playoff positioning in the Eastern Conference’s Atlantic Division.

The Kraken snapped a 4-game losing streak with a 6-2 victory over the Buffalo Sabres on Saturday afternoon, and Field Level Media describes the Kraken’s victory thusly:

The Kraken will be playing the second game of a back-to-back. They snapped a four-game losing streak with a win at Buffalo, 6-2, on Saturday. Seattle trailed 2-0 after the first, tied it in the second and scored four times in the third.

Kaapo Kakko had a pair of third-period goals. He scored one goal in his first nine games with the Kraken after being traded by the New York Rangers.

“(Coach Dan Bylsma) obviously made it pretty clear that (our first period) wasn’t good enough, which I think everybody could agree with,” said forward Oliver Bjorkstrand, who also scored. “We had to find another step in our game. I think we responded well. And we have to play hockey like that more often. So tomorrow, we have to find a way to start that way…get a lead and build off of that instead of coming from behind.”

Seattle is still four games under .500 and trying to claw back into the playoff picture. The game on Sunday will be the middle contest of a five-game road trip.

“It’s playoff hockey for us right now; we’re trying to win as many games, collect as many points as we can,” said center Chandler Stephenson, who recorded two assists on Saturday. “It doesn’t really matter who we’re playing. We’re just trying to keep distractions away and just trying to focus on us.”

SeattleKraken.com’s Allison Lukan posted a game preview from the Kraken’s perspective this morning…

The Red Wings have already played 41 of their 82 games, and the second half of the season begins today against the Seattle Kraken (3 PM EST start on FanDuel SportsNet Detroit/KHN/KONG/NHL Network/Sportsnet/97.1 FM).

As such, the Free Press’s Helene St. James and MLive’s Ansar Khan have both issued first-half-of-the-season grades for the Red Wings’ players. St. James offers blunt assessments…

Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff took note of Patrick Kane’s tremendous increase in point production under new Red Wings coach Todd McLellan, and Kane told Duff that the Wings are playing a different style of hockey under the guidance of their new coach:

“I mean, just the part of our game that’s kind of always on the hunt, always playing more towards the other team’s net instead of like sitting back a little bit has been a welcome change for, for my game,” Kane acknowledged. “And not only my game, but the team in general. So try to keep pushing forward and like I said, keep playing aggressive. I think that’s a big part of our reason for success right now.”

The Red Wings will be going for their season-high seventh straight victory Sunday afternoon against the Seattle Kraken. Kane senses that there’s been a complete makeover of the Red Wings psyche.

“I know we’ve only been seven games under Todd, but it’s pretty remarkable how vibes can change within a few weeks,” Kane said. “Obviously we were pretty down going into Christmas and ever since then I think the vibes have been pretty high and we’ve been feeling good about our team.

“And it feels like going into every game where we have a chance to win or that we feel like we should win. So in a good spot right now.”

Continued; Kane isn’t wrong. The Red Wings were taught to play a more defensive game under coach Lalonde, trying to win low-scoring, tightly-contested games. Coach McLellan has allowed what is a more freewheeling team to play to its strengths instead of imposing a suffocating blanket upon the Red Wings’ style of play.

HockeyNews.se’s Henrik Sjoberg was in Detroit to witness Albert Johansson’s first NHL goal on Friday night, and on Saturday, he posted an article and accompanying video regarding Johansson’s rookie season:

Swede’s dream night: New life in the United States

Yesterday, Albert Johansson wrote a new chapter in his hockey career

The 24-year-old can now call himself a goal-scorer in the world’s best league

“It’s a boost for my self-confidence. A good start to 2025,” The former Farjestads BK defenseman told HockeyNews.se.

24-year-old Albert Johansson has played 2 seasons in the AHL with games in Grand Rapids.

But this winter he’s been playing all season with the Red Wings, and last night he scored in his 20th game of the season–his first goal in a Detroit jersey.

“It’s fun of course. The first goal is always the first goal. It will be remembered, so it’s a small boost for my self-confidence. It was a good night yesterday,” he told HockeyNews.se after Saturday’s practice in Detroit.

My apologies, but I was indisposed for a couple of hours. Here are a belated set of Saturday notebooks, ahead of Sunday’s 3 PM match-up against the Seattle Kraken. Seattle won 6-2 over the Buffalo Sabres earlier on Saturday, rallying from a 2-0 deficit by scoring 6 straight goals.

Anyway, to the notebooks!

1. The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan reports that the Red Wings are well aware of their tenuous status as in the Atlantic Division/Wild Card playoff race, and as such, the team’s 6-game winning streak can only mean the start of something more:

“We’re one game over .500, have a negative goal differential of minus-16 goals. If that is the map to complacency, shame on us,” said coach Todd McLellan, when asked if the Wings have to guard against complacency given this current win streak. “We’ve worked to feel good. Do we want to give that back? I don’t know the group well enough to say we have it under control.

“We’re not going to win the next 41 games. That’s very unrealistic. If a loss does come, and it’s an honest loss, we have to move on from it. But if it’s a complacency loss or give yourself permission to be crappy on a certain day, and the group can do that too, we’ll deal with it.”

The Wings are 6-1-0 under McLellan, who took over for Derek Lalonde on Dec. 26. After an ugly loss against Toronto to open McLellan’s tenure, the Wings have won six consecutive games and changed the trajectory of their season.

Suddenly the playoffs are a possibility. They’re better offensively than they were at any point this season under Lalonde. But, simply, the mood around the locker room is livelier with the winning and optimism.

“We know we had the potential in this group and we’re starting to realize some of it,” defenseman Justin Holl said. “We can’t get complacent, like we’re the greatest team in the world. We just have to continue to play every night and keep this thing rolling as long as possible.”

McLellan and assistant coach Trent Yawney have largely made small tweaks into schemes Wings players have accepted and thrived in. But it appears, mainly, a new voice has done wonders for a group that was sinking in the standings.

“Every time you get change, whether it’s a new coach or trade or whatever, there’s some sort of energy that is injected,” Holl said. “We managed to take that energy and translate it into some wins. Those wins make you feel good about yourselves and there are better vibes around the locker room.”

2. MLive’s Ansar Khan wrote a notebook article which discusses the Red Wings’ suddenly prodigious power play:

The Detroit Red Wings held practice on Saturday afternoon at Little Caesars Arena’s BELFOR Training Center, and after practice ended, coach Todd McLellan stated that Alex Lyon is making progress in his recovery from injury, but Jeff Petry has yet to skate. MLive’s Ansar Khan and DetroitRedWings.com’s Daniella Bruce also reported that Ville Husso may start tomorrow.

The Red Wings will play the Seattle Kraken on Sunday afternoon (3 PM EST start on FanDuel SportsNet Detroit/KHN/KONG/NHL Network/Sportsnet/97.1 FM), and Seattle is in Buffalo, battling the Sabres today, so Detroit will have to pounce upon the mighty Kraken if they are to build upon their 6-game winning streak.

The Red Wings posted a clip of Justin Holl, Patrick Kane and coach McLellan speaking with the media:

Eyes on Seattle. pic.twitter.com/ZVrUyGVVwr

— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) January 11, 2025