Author: George Malik

The Red Wing placed a microphone on Marc Staal for the Wings-Flames game:

Of Red Wings-related note from our usual morning columnists in MLive’s Ansar Khan and the Free Press’s Helene St. James:

1. Khan discusses the Wings “scoring dirty goals” against the Chicago Blackhawks on Sunday as part of an “if you missed it” NHL notebook:

“We needed to be harder at the net,” [coach Jeff] Blashill said following the 6-3 victory in Chicago. “I didn’t think overall our complete level was that bad against Calgary (last Thursday), but we were not hard enough at the net for sure. Certainly, (Saturday in Montreal) we didn’t create many chances at all. We needed to make sure we got to the net.

“We stopped at the net [Sunday]. We found ways to score dirty goals. We got to find ways to score dirty in order to be a team that scores enough. It was a good sign for us to make sure we go hard at the net.”

Even rookie Lucas Raymond realizes the importance to get your nose dirty. That’s what he did for the second of his three goals on this night, rushing the net and banging in the rebound of Dylan Larkin’s shot.

“If you want to score goals, you have to get into those areas,” Raymond said. “You can’t just shoot and score fancy goals. You have to get in there and that’s usually where most of the goals are scored as well. I’m trying to get in there more and more.”

Continued;

2. And the Free Press’s Helene St. James discusses Tyler Bertuzzi’s status as the NHL’s only unvaccinated-against-COVID player:

“We believe there is only one active player in the NHL who has not commenced the vaccination process,” deputy commissioner Bill Daly told the Free Press on Monday. In a 32-team league with 23-man rosters, that would make Bertuzzi the only one of 736 players. 

The NHL and Players Association agreed not to have a vaccine mandate, but teams can suspend without pay players who miss team activities because they are unvaccinated. People within the Wings organization say there is no indication Bertuzzi will change his mind. He has referred to his decision as “a life choice.”

The Wings play nine times in Canada, meaning Bertuzzi stands to miss nearly 11% of games. He stayed in Detroit and skated on his own during the Wings’ first foray to Montreal and then met the Wings in Chicago. On the next trip [this weekend], he will miss two games and one practice, and be responsible for meeting the team in Boston. Their longest trip to Canada comes in mid-March, when they will be gone a week while playing at Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver.

There’s no doubting how much it means to the Wings to have him available.

“I think the world of Tyler as a person and as a player,” coach Jeff Blashill said. “He does so many things that are important to win. He’s a hard player. He wins pucks. He’s smart. He’s good defensively. He goes to the net hard and ultimately that was what that was an example of. We’re a better team for sure when Tyler is in the lineup and it was good to have him back.”

I really do wonder whether Bertuzzi would be on Team Canada’s radar for the Olympics if he simply assented to being vaccinated.

He’s not just giving up $450,000 in pay for the sake of not taking a shot; at this point, given his production and intangibles, he’s giving up a shot at playing in the Beijing Olympics (where everyone who attends must be vaccinated against COVID), too, and that’s just disappointing.

Choices have consequences.

Detroit Hockey Now’s Kevin Allen wonders aloud why Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill chose to bench Filip Hronek for this past weekend’s pair of games:

Defenseman Filip Hronek played 25.09 against the Tampa Bay Lightning on opening night. He played 23:23 against the Vancouver Canucks two nights later. In the Red Wings’ third and fourth games this season, he played 23:13 and 20:26, respectively, against the Columbus Blue Jackets and Calgary Flames.

In the Red Wings’ fifth game in Montreal, he played zero minutes. He was a healthy scratch. Coach’s decision. Same story in their sixth game in Chicago Sunday.

“Any message that I share with Fil will be kept between me and the player,”  Detroit coach Jeff Blashill said. “I don’t feel any reason to have public comment or any of that stuff.”

Hronek was leading the team in minutes played when he was benched.  

“Ultimately we have a lot of good players, and too many in terms of a depth situation, to play every night,” Blashill said. “So different guys are going to end up out of the lineup. That’s just a reality of life. ”

Allen continues, and my best guess is that Hronek is being given the, “Put up or shut up” message that Anthony Mantha received last season…

Lucas Raymond had an up-and-down season with Frolunda HC of the SHL last season, struggling with a chronic elbow injury that eventually required surgery.

As such, the Hockey News’s Steven Ellis suggests that Raymond’s explosion upon the NHL scoring scene is a bit of a surprise, and he asked a Swedish hockey scout why Raymond’s development shot upward:

If Raymond wasn’t scoring against men at an inferior level, why is he doing it in the NHL? Hockey development is a crazy thing. The amount a player improves from season to season at a young age, especially as they adjust to the pro game against older, stronger competition, is immense. Raymond proved he could be dominant against his own age group, so the experience against men was a good step forward.

While playing in Detroit’s Traverse City prospect tournament, Raymond impressed with a goal-per-game in three outings. Then, while playing in the top six during the pre-season, Raymond showed he could compete with the best and was often one of the biggest offensive catalysts for a team with few to choose from. So, instead of sending him back home or down to the AHL, Yzerman and Co. felt it was best to keep the young star playing with the big club.

Since then, Raymond has improved his game pace on a near-nightly basis. He’s adjusting quickly and effectively, and the Red Wings are better for it. The Red Wings shipped out usual top-line stalwart Anthony Mantha to Detroit last year, meaning the search for a new top-line forward to go along with Tyler Bertuzzi and Dylan Larkin was needed. Jakub Vrana was supposed to be that guy, but shoulder surgery will keep him out for four months. So Raymond was the first real option to fill the spot, and he hasn’t disappointed.

“This isn’t a surprise,” a Swedish scout said about Raymond’s early season play. “The talent has always been there. He’s putting it together already on a team that doesn’t have much going for it now. Once they’re contenders, he’ll be such an important piece. He’s a human highlight-reel that just didn’t get the opportunities he needed to be more dominant in Sweden.”

Continued; as Ellis notes, Raymond isn’t that big (he’s listed at 5’11,” which is generous) and he isn’t that fast, but his hockey sense and ability to anticipate and react to what’s happening on the ice before the puck hits his stick blade are affording him the ability to make decisions at a lightning-quick pace, making up for any physical concerns.

Moreover, Raymond deserves credit for taking the opportunity afforded him in terms of ice time and running with it. Raymond didn’t get a lot of time with Frolunda last season–no young player gets a lot of ice time in the SHL without producing, which isn’t a surprise–but he’s maximized his opportunities here at the NHL level, and that’s damn impressive.

The Detroit Red Wings’ Twitter account posted a pair of Tweets of note regarding Sunday’s win in Chicago…

Victory Monday! #LGRW pic.twitter.com/eiRRdCThjl

— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) October 25, 2021

The Wings named their “Players of the Week”–the top line…

That first line is ???@Xfinity | #LGRW pic.twitter.com/LIuodccgBO

— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) October 25, 2021

And the Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan penned a Monday notebook discussing Lucas Raymond’s performance yesterday in both perspective of yesterday’s game itself and in a historical sense:

Per TSN, the Red Wings have waived Kyle Criscuolo, most likely for assignment to Grand Rapids:

Elsewhere, forward Kyle Criscuolo has been waived by the Detroit Red Wings.

The 29-year-old Criscuolo spent last season in the Red Wings organization with the Grand Rapids Griffins of the American Hockey League. A native of Southampton, NJ, Criscuolo appeared in nine games for the Buffalo Sabres in 2017-2018.

Long-time Red Wings forward and captain Henrik Zetterberg sat down for a 5-minute interview with the Red Wings’ YouTube channel last week, discussing his own trials and tribulations as a young player, as well as winning the 2008 Stanley Cup:

The Grand Rapids Griffins are holding their “Jake Engel Memorial Dog Game” this Sunday vs. the Chicago Wolves:

Join us this Sunday for our Jake Engel Memorial Dog Game! Dress you and your furry friend in your Halloween costumes and enter in our costume contest! #GoGRG

Tickets >> https://t.co/ohi3tUpmOa pic.twitter.com/mJUBsdaC20— Grand Rapids Griffins (@griffinshockey) October 25, 2021

The Hockey News’s Avry Lewis-McDougall posted “Three Things We Learned” from the past week in the NHL, and item #3 earns a, “Welcome to the party, bud” from Red Wings fans:

The Red Wings rookies came to play 

In Detroit, a pair of rookies have been making headlines in Red Wings colours in the form of Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider. In Detroit’s 6-3 win over Chicago on Sunday, Raymond would become the first teenager to record a hat trick since his GM Steve Yzerman did it twice to kick off his playing career.

Defenseman Moritz Seider is turning heads with five points in five games with the Red Wings and sitting third on team scoring. Seider is also getting attention for the reason why he picked No.53 for his jersey number. 

Red Wings D Moritz Seider said he chose 53 because he had watched Herbie the Lovebug movie the day before he was asked what number he wanted to wear.

— Helene St. James (@HeleneStJames) October 23, 2021

Seider going with Herbie’s number may be one of the most unique stories of a rookie deciding what to wear in the NHL. There is no word yet on if any other players around the league have used a Disney movie to decide what number they should go with.

1. Seider and Raymond are the “real deal,” and that’s refreshing around here in Southeastern Michigan;
2. And Ken Daniels told us that Seider’s grandpa was born in 1953, and when he passed away, Seider chose to stick with #53, so he didn’t just choose to keep his number because of a Disney movie.

I’d rather not milk Lucas Raymond’s hat trick against the Blackhawks last night, but we’ll “go there” one more time, for good reason:

97.1 the Ticket’s Will Burchfield notes that Raymond earned the most credit from coach Jeff Blashill not for scoring three goals in total, but instead, going to the front of the net and ending up face-first on the ice:

Raymond had it all working against Chicago. He scored early in the first when Bertuzzi forced a turnover in the Blackhawks’ zone and found him streaking toward the net; Raymond faked a shot and then slid the puck through the legs of Marc-Andre Fleury. He scored late in the second when he drove the net and knocked home a Larkin rebound — and paid the price by winding up on his stomach. And he scored midway through the third on a power-play one-timer.

It was the second goal, the ugly one, that Blashill may have liked the most.

“Lucas doesn’t shy away from really anything,” Blashill said. “He’s taken some hard hits and things like that and he’s not shy at all. He’s got an edge to him, for sure. And he’s certainly not shy about going to the net. But I also think there’s a habitual art that not only do you go to the net, but you gotta stop at the net. And that’s ultimately what he did.”

As Burchfield notes, Raymond–like Moritz Seider–is a fearless player, and his willingness to take no shit and give no f-you-know-what’s when people try to intimidate him physically may be his best quality:

Raymond’s on the smaller end of the NHL spectrum at 5’10, but he plays much bigger. He doesn’t let his size deter him from getting to the danger areas of the ice. He nearly took a face full of iron when he got knocked down from behind on his second goal and ate a whole bunch of twine instead — a trade he’ll make every time to put the puck in the net.

“If you want to score goals, you have to get into those areas,” he said. “You can’t just shoot and score fancy goals. You have to really get in there. That’s usually where most of the goals are scored, so trying to get in there more and more.