Author: George Malik

The Free Press’s Helene St. James wrote two articles this morning, with the first previewing the Red Wings’ season to come…

The franchise’s past is still hard to avoid. Banners celebrating the Wings’ 11 Stanley Cup championships — the most for a U.S. franchise, and third in NHL history — hang over the practice facility, and pictures of the “hockey gods” that used to wear the Winged Wheel — Yzerman, Nicklas Lidstrom, Gordie Howe, to name three of the greatest — grace the locker room and hallways. The franchise has endured slumps before: When Mike and Marian Ilitch bought the club in 1982, the Wings had missed the playoffs 14 times in 16 years; when the Wings won the Cup in 1997, it ended a 42-year drought; when Yzerman hoisted the Cup for the first time, it had been 14 years since he was drafted.

The Wings’ average age is 26.86, seventh-youngest in the NHL. The arrival of players such as Seider and Raymond is good for the franchise’s future, but Yzerman knows it takes patience. The Wings had the greatest draft in NHL history in 1989 when they selected Lidstrom, Sergei Fedorov and Vladimir Konstantinov, and it still took eight years before the team won the Cup.

What matters now is that the Wings improve from last season.

“It’s important that some of these young guys are moving in,” Yzerman said. “Does that translate into more wins than the previous year? I’m not sure. These young guys have to move in and kind of take over the role, but there’s generally a bit of a process to move younger players in.”

Continued (paywall); St. James also wrote an article regarding Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond stepping forward as contributors to the Wings’ cause:

MLive’s Ansar Khan discusses Dylan Larkin’s desire to rebound from a difficult 2020-2021 season this morning:

“I’d love to have a bounce-back year,” Larkin said. “With that, I think it’s going to be great having Bert back. I want to continue to be better on the power play, better on the penalty kill, if there’s a role there, face-offs, just a better all-around game. Not trying to do too much … but really help this team win hockey games.”

Jeff Blashill, entering his seventh season as head coach, said he doesn’t judge Larkin’s performance by statistics.

“Certainly, production matters … but I don’t go on a night by night basis or in a 10-game segment and say, ‘Your points are low, so you’re not playing well,’ ” Blashill said. “I judge him on a lot more things than that, even things like scoring chances.

“I think when Dylan’s at his best he’s skating, No. 1. Everybody knows how much he’s on the ice because of how much he’s skating, he’s attacking the game, he’s winning puck battles with his body. He’s coming back and doing a good job defensively, able to play against anybody he faces, including the best players in the world. I would add one more element, that he along with a whole bunch of guys have to be better on the power play.”

Continued (with a bit of a Wings season preview)

The Detroit Red Wings open their 2021-2022 season against the Tampa Bay Lightning tonight (7:30 PM EDT on Bally Sports Detroit/Bally Sports Sun/97.1 FM), and the Red Wings will have their hands full with Tampa Bay.

The Bolts had a 5-2-and-1 record against the Red Wings last season, and they’re in a particularly bad mood after coming off a 6-2 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins on their Stanley Cup banner-raising opening night.

The Bolts are relatively healthy, with the exception of Zach Bogosian, who didn’t practice on Wednesday, and Field Level Media set up tonight’s game with the following:

The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan posted an article which discusses Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin’s comments regarding the season to come. Larkin expressed optimism regarding the Wings’ 2021-2022 campaign on Tuesday, saying that it’s time for the Wings’ players to step up in a big way:

Maybe the most distinguishable difference from the past few seasons is there’s simply more NHL talent throughout the lineup. The Wings’ roster is deeper.

“It is,” said Larkin, who will begin his seventh NHL season Thursday when the Wings host the Lightning. “It’s younger. We had guys fighting for roles, guys battling all camp for that, and it was good and competitive. Some new guys came in and really wanted jobs. You could see (with the practices). Guys showed up in shape and ready to play. It was a good camp. (Now) we’re through it and we’re focused on Tampa.”

What Larkin, 25, sees with this particular group is an opportunity to reverse the negative vibe that comes with missing the playoffs the last five seasons, the losing records and the negative perception of the team around the NHL.

Larkin feels it’s definitely time to “write our own history.”

“We need to go out there and execute and prove why we, as a group, don’t want to be continuing the trend that’s been going on here,” Larkin said. “We’ve talked about it, talked about we’re our own team and we’ll write our own history.

“There’s so much history with this team, and you can look at it as pressure but things haven’t been going well, so we’re really going to start something now. Start with a push for the playoffs and playing meaningful games and playing the right way, with everyone contributing. When you get everyone contributing it’s fun and you win hockey games. And we begin to write history of our own.”

Continued (paywall);

Update: Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff also took note of Larkin’s remarks:

Larkin grew up watching the Red Wings dominate the NHL, winning four Stanley Cups between 1997-2008.

“There’s so much history with this team,” Larkin said. “You can look at that as pressure but things haven’t been going well. We’re gonna focus on trying to start something right now. Start something with a push for the playoffs, and playing meaningful games and playing the right way and the power play, penalty kill and special teams.

“We need everyone contributing and then it’s fun. You win hockey games and then we can start to write history on our own.”

No, the Red Wings can’t change history but they can change the narrative.

It all starts in Game 1 against the Tampa Bay Lightning.

ABC 10 UP’s David Cesefske produced a very solid Red Wings season preview, summarizing the storylines heading into tomorrow’s home opener vs. Tampa Bay:

The Detroit News’s Bob Wojnowski penned a lengthy, subscriber-only missive discussing the Red Wings’ embracing their youth movement as the 2021-2022 season begins:

The games should be more meaningful individually, with a mix of first-time guys, middle-time guys and a few old-time guys. If Greiss isn’t strong enough to be the primary starter in net, Nedeljkovic will get his shot, and he was outstanding as a rookie with Carolina.

If Filip Zadina or Tyler Bertuzzi can’t recapture their scoring prowess, guys like Suter, Robby Fabbri, Sam Gagner and Adam Erne will get more chances. The big leap should take place on defense, where Seider will log plenty of minutes, along with veteran acquisition Nick Leddy and holdover Danny DeKeyser. Another rookie, Gustav Lindstrom, 22, will get a shot, and we haven’t even mentioned oft-overlooked Filip Hronek, 23, who actually led the Wings in points last season (26).

Not saying much, I know. But it says something about the direction.

“We have a lot of new faces, and I don’t think there’s any doubt we have an opportunity to have a real good (defense) corps,” Blashill said. “How good are we up front? Can we score a lot more? I think we’re heading in the right direction, but how much better will we be? How quickly? I can’t answer that. Up to the development of the players.”

I can’t answer either, or even guess. But at some point, the progress has to be more than incremental. With Chris Ilitch’s other team, fans’ patience is gradually being rewarded. The Tigers took a leap this season and will unwrap Riley Greene and Spencer Torkelson at some point. The Wings are unwrapping Raymond and Seider, who are mature beyond their years and skilled beyond normalcy.

“The objective is to improve our team, and I look at it as, OK, are some of our younger players ready to play?” Yzerman said before training camp. “In some cases we are counting on them. In some cases, they’re going to have to show us they can do it. As for (statistics), it’s all kind of an educated guess really. I think we’re going to score more goals, I think our power play’s going to be a little bit better.”

Continued (paywall)

The Detroit News’s Tony Paul confirmed that Bally Sports Detroit has signed an extension to continue broadcasting Red Wings and Tigers games:

The Ilitches might be cutting the cord on the idea of starting their own Regional Sports Network.

The Ilitch-owned Detroit Tigers and Red Wings have re-upped on a multi-year agreement with Bally Sports Detroit to continue broadcasting the team’s games, Olympia Entertainment confirmed Wednesday.

“We are pleased, as momentum builds for the Tigers and Red Wings, that our long-time broadcast partners at Bally Sports Detroit will continue to produce exciting game broadcasts, unique insider access for our fans, and inspiring stories about the impactful work our athletes are doing in the community throughout Detroit and the state of Michigan,” Olympia Entertainment said in a statement to The Detroit News.

The length and financial terms of the agreement were not released.

The Tigers’ financial benefit had been estimated to be worth more than $50 million a year under the old TV deal. Market trends would indicate a new deal would be more lucrative. The Kansas City Royals reportedly re-upped with Sinclair Broadcasting, which owns the Bally Sports-branded RSNs, for $52 million a year. Detroit is the nation’s 14th-largest market, Kansas City is 32nd.

The Red Wings’ annual payout is much less than the Tigers’.

Continued

Of Twitter-related Red Wings note this evening:

1. Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman sat down with Bally Sports Detroit’s John Keating for an interview airing during tomorrow’s Red Wings Live, and BSD posted a teaser tonight…

Steve Yzerman shares his thoughts on all of the new faces on the roster this season. ?@DetroitRedWings | #LGRW pic.twitter.com/qg6DdmDUB0

— Bally Sports Detroit (@BallySportsDET) October 13, 2021

2. And the Red Wings are hyping Opening Night:

24 hours. pic.twitter.com/NJRTwCZXBI

— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) October 13, 2021

This interview appeared on WXYZ earlier this evening:

The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan posted a set of pictures and capsule bios introducing the 2021-2022 Detroit Red Wings:

Alex Nedeljkovic

►Age: 25

►Height: 6-0

►Weight: 189

►Stats: 15-5-3, 1.90 GAA, .932 SV%

►Analysis: Had an outstanding rookie season in Carolina, but Hurricanes were comfortable trading him away. Is Nedeljkovic the Wings’ goaltender of the future?

…

Nick Leddy

►Age: 30

►Height: 6-0

►Weight: 207

►Stats: (New York Islanders) 56 games, 2 goals, 29 assists, 31 pts.

►Analysis: Showed in preseason the ability to run a power play and skate the puck out of trouble. Could be a valuable top-four, veteran presence.

Continued (paywall)