Author: George Malik

The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn offers his Red Wings season preview this morning, and it’s not all gloom and doom…okay, mostly, it is:

Even after six years at or near the bottom, the Red Wings still find themselves in the exact same spot. The team’s likeliest landing spot is right around the bottom five once again with a near 50-50 shot at being a bottom five team. Being in the bottom third is even more certain at 80 percent, which is roughly the same as the team’s chances of being one of the bottom three teams in the Atlantic. There’s a wide chasm between the top four teams and the bottom three teams, but even fifth in the division looks like a bit of a pipe dream.

The division isn’t the main reason Detroit’s chances are so low — the Red Wings have a poor team — but it does play a role. The next best team, a Pacific-based team, is projected to finish with just one more point but has nearly twice the odds of making the postseason. Either way, Detroit is a long shot.

That’s probably for the best though as this roster isn’t quite ready to take the next step. While the rebuild has been going on for a while, it hasn’t exactly been fruitful in terms of building a future core. Detroit has been consistently bad, but that hasn’t resulted in a top-three pick, which has led to a lower chance of drafting a franchise cornerstone. 

It’s been slow and steady, but for this rebuild to be worthwhile the Red Wings need to find some elite pieces to build around. The current roster isn’t exactly flush with those, although there is one very exciting newcomer that looks ready to check some boxes.

Continued (paywall)

The Detroit Red Wings built upon their first day of training camp as Thursday gave way to Friday’s second set of sessions at Centre ICE Arena.

On a day where everyone was more dialed-in, from the six skaters and goaltender on Team Lindsay to the bigger squads in Teams Howe and Delvecchio, the Red Wings’ coaches put their charges through their paces in sets of battle drills, puck retrievals, dump-and-chase plays and especially power play and penalty-killing situations. The players were skated–hard.

Coaches Doug Houda (defense, penalty-killing) and Alex Tanguay (offense, power play) also worked with split squads during parts of practice, ensuring that players who might not necessarily earn a spot on the PP or PK unit familiarized themselves with the Wings’ systems of play, including the wrinkles that Tanguay is adding to the PP.

New Red Wings goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic spoke with the media today, and the matter-of-fact young man insisted that he’s not going to change much of anything in terms of his puck-stopping tendencies in Detroit, but what he does plan on doing is seizing his opportunity to become the Red Wings’ starting goaltender. The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan has more in his training camp notebook:

Nedeljkovic was coming off a season in which he was a finalist for the Calder Trophy (rookie of the year), with a 15-5-3 record, 1.90 goals-against average and .932 save percentage. He started nine playoff games for Carolina, with a .920 save percentage.

It seemed like Carolina had found its starting goaltender. But Nedeljkovic was a restricted free agent with arbitration rights, and Carolina decided to avert any risk of a salary it didn’t want.

The Wings signed Nedeljkovic to a two-year contract worth $6 million ($3 million cap hit per year).

Now they have a goaltender who could hold the net for a long time.

“It’s a great opportunity,” Nedeljkovic said of his joining the Wings. “When the trade happened you kind of see the writing on the wall and this was an opportunity for me to come in and hopefully play a lot of games, or potentially split 50-50 with Greisser (Thomas Greiss).”

Continued with a bit about Adam Erne and a bit about Filip Zadina…

John Keating of Bally Sports Detroit spoke with Shawn Horcoff regarding all things prospect-related, including Moritz Seider’s status, over the course of a 5-minute conversation:

Updated 2x at 6:56 PM: Red Wings defenseman Moritz Seider spoke in surprisingly hushed tones when he addressed the media today…

But Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff duly notes that it’s officially Seider season, after a long set of social media crushes on the German defender turned Swedish Hockey League superstar, and while Seider is genuinely happy to have finally reached the cusp of making an NHL team’s roster, he’s not letting the memes go to his head:

“I’m super happy right now,” Seider said. “It was a big wait to get here. I’m really proud of myself, making my way up here and now I’m here and I’m really looking forward to it.”

As for all the social media buzz about Seider, touting him as the German Lidstrom, insisting that there will be nothing but blue skies in the Red Wings’ future from the moment he plays his first shift, well, hate to break it to you but your crush – yeah, he hasn’t really noticed you.

“It’s definitely not getting in my head,” Seider said of the social media frenzy surrounding him. “I just want to be around the guys. I want to come to the rink and work hard and so far I’m enjoying that. It’s obviously cool that the fans are really excited. All in all, I think I’m even more excited.”

There probably hasn’t been this much hype about the arrival of a Red Wings prospect since Henrik Zetterberg showed up for the NHL rookie tournament in 2002. And that one turned out okay. That being the case, the Wings are of the belief that the best tack to take with the good ship is to dial back the intensity.

“I’m not going to put an expectation on him,” Wings coach Jeff Blashill said. “I think he’ll get the opportunity to play and play big minutes as he earns them. If he earns more, he’ll get more. If he doesn’t earn more, he won’t get more. So, we’ll see how it goes. He’s definitely a guy who’s got a lot of potential that I think is going to become reality but now he has to go out on a game by game basis and do it.”

Continued; I’m expecting Seider to make the team, and take some lumps early on, but learn from them quickly.

Update: Here’s a little more on Seider from MLive’s Ansar Khan:

These are pretty cool Twitter videos, featuring Alex Nedeljkovic and Filip Hronek and some GoPros:

Goalie cam.

?: @alexned_ pic.twitter.com/Qk8Lb7RSco

— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) September 24, 2021

Fil Hronek. ?#DRWTC pic.twitter.com/kDIbyZD5lV

— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) September 24, 2021

Update: One more:

Love your goalies. #DRWTC pic.twitter.com/ewPCrxkmpb— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) September 24, 2021

Among the Red Wings’ videos from Day 2 of training camp are clips of Alex Nedeljkovic speaking with the media…

Adam Erne doing the same…

Moritz Seider showing his shy side…

And coach Jeff Blashill engaging in his daily presser…

As well as a clip of “Sights and Sounds” from Day 2:

Of Red Wings prospect-related note in Europe today:

In the Swedish Allsvenskan, Filip Larsson served as the back-up as HV71 Jonkoping won 3-2 over AIK Stockholm;

Edit/update: Gustav Berglund also scored a goal in Mora IK’s 4-3 OT loss to Vita Hasten:

#Allsvenskan
– Berglund 1+0, +1, 3 SOG in a 4-3 OT loss
– Larsson backup in a 3-2 win#LGRW https://t.co/3NqjUhEUE3— Red Wings Prospects (@DRWProspects) September 24, 2021

And in the Finnish Liiga, Albin Grewe finished even with 1 shot and a penalty taken in 11:04 played as Ilves Tampere won 6-1 over HPK.

Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill said during his press conference today that Jakub Vrana will be flying into Cherry Capital Airport tonight. Whether he can skate tomorrow remains uncertain.

Coach Blashill expects Jakub Vrana to arrive in Traverse City tonight.— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) September 24, 2021

Per the Red Wings’ YouTube channel:

Take an inside look at Detroit #RedWings Training Camp day 2 with Ken Kal, Daniella Bruce, Art Regner, and Carley Johnson live from Centre Ice Arena in Traverse City.