Author: George Malik

My name is George Malik, and I'm the Malik Report's editor/blogger/poster. I have been blogging about the Red Wings since 2006, and have worked with MLive and Kukla's Korner. Thank you for reading!

THW’s Wolak on McLellan’s Wings

The Hockey Writers’ Tony Wolak offers his assessment as to why the Red Wings fired Derek Lalonde and hired Todd McLellan as the team’s new head coach today:

Back in November, I suggested that the Red Wings consider a coaching change. McLellan was my top choice with this rationale:

“McLellan checks all the boxes – he’s a motivator, creates buy-in with structure, can adapt to personnel, and has loads of experience. In fact, he has coached most of Detroit’s front office. McLellan has also shown the ability to implement a sound defensive strategy and deploy various offensive approaches based on team composition.”

The Red Wings really do need a motivator. It was clear that Lalonde couldn’t push the right buttons to maximize Detroit’s talent. That’s something McLellan has shown the ability to do at his various coaching stops.

Drastic change won’t happen immediately. If anything, McLellan’s fresh perspective alone will help the team. They’ve been stuck in a rut for some time now waiting for the other shoe to drop. And now that change has taken place, they can loosen up a bit and get back to playing quality hockey.

Continued; good stuff from Tony as always…

Niyo: Pressure’s on Yzerman, too

The Detroit News’s John Niyo weighs in regarding the Red Wings’ firing of Derek Lalonde and hiring of Todd McLellan, suggesting that Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman bears some of the blame for the state of the Red Wings:

It’s Steve Yzerman who should be feeling the heat for as long as the Wings — and their fans — are left out in the cold. Because halfway through another lost season at Little Caesars Arena, with a franchise-record postseason drought likely extending to nine years this spring, the so-called “Yzerplan” remains stuck in a rut.

Go ahead and cheer Lalonde’s exit if you want. And cross your fingers that the arrival of McLellan will light a fire under an underachieving group that sits just two points above the cellar in the Eastern Conference. That’s certainly part of Yzerman’s calculation here. But just be honest about what this was and what it really means in the larger picture.

Firing a lame-duck head coach midway through the final year of his contract is hardly an inspiring signal from a general manager in his sixth season in charge. Neither is the fact that this pink slip comes as no surprise to anyone, really, even if it is the first time the Red Wings have made an in-season head coaching change since 1986, the year before Yzerman was awarded the captain’s “C” in Detroit.

…

Yzerman has preached patience since his return as GM in April 2019, promising only that he’d go about rebuilding a winner — and eventually a Cup contender — methodically. And even without any lottery luck, the Wings’ draft-and-development strategy is starting to show dividends: First-round picks Moritz Seider, Lucas Raymond and now Simon Edvinsson are blossoming in Detroit, while the prospect pipeline is promising more. (Defenseman Axel Sandin Pellikka, a 2023 first-rounder, scored a natural hat trick Thursday in Sweden’s opener at the World Junior Championship.) So for all the doom and gloom at the moment, there is still reason to be optimistic about the future.

But many of Yzerman’s other moves have left fans wanting, and wondering, while they wait. And whether it’s the odd trades (Jake Walman) or the free-agent flops (Justin Holl) or any of the other value judgments that seem to be weighing down a roster Lalonde couldn’t wring more out of this fall, the Wings’ GM certainly knows everyone’s patience is running thin here. He has to know he’ll need to make more changes beyond the bench here, too, as the NHL trade market heats up in the days and weeks ahead.

As the Wings’ GM put it last spring,  “We as a management group have to make some good decisions. And we’ll be sitting here next year and say that was a good decision, or we’ll be saying, ‘Steve, what were you thinking?’ You know, that’s the reality of it.”

Continued (paywall)

Bultman: Hiring McLellan is only step one for the Red Wings

The Athletic’s Max Bultman posted a second column regarding the Red Wings’ firing of Derek Lalonde and hiring of Todd McLellan, suggesting that the coaching change cannot be the lone move that the franchise makes:

While swapping Lalonde for McLellan may well give Detroit a spark, as it often does with coaching changes, Yzerman will simultaneously have to look long and hard at his roster and perhaps make a change or two there once the NHL’s trade freeze lifts on Friday.

As close as the Red Wings got to the playoffs last season, that result now looks more like a mirage year than a building-block season. And while Detroit’s farm system still has a few important pieces working their way up the pipeline, glaring long-term questions remain.

The biggest are at forward. Detroit has long been building around top-line center Dylan Larkin, but increasingly, the crawling pace of the rebuild looks like it will mean Larkin, 28, will be into his 30s by the time the team is in serious contention. That’s not the end of the world — Yzerman didn’t win his first Stanley Cup until he was 32, and Larkin should still be a highly effective player for many more years — but it does mean the team will need a robust core of younger players around him.

Detroit has one such young star, Lucas Raymond, tracking toward a potential 80-point season this year at age 22, and another good scoring winger in Alex DeBrincat. From there, though, so much remains to be seen. Recent first-round picks Marco Kasper and Nate Danielson look like playoff-style two-way centermen who will really help the Red Wings, but both have some questions around what their ultimate NHL scoring productivity will be. The team’s 2024 first-round pick, Michael Brandsegg-Nygård, has a big-time shot in a heavy body, but he’s only 19 and has gotten off to a slower-than-hoped offensive start in the SHL.

All of Kasper, Danielson and Brandsegg-Nygård look like they will become good NHL players. But to get to where the Red Wings want to go, they’ll need more star power alongside Raymond and Larkin up front. They surely will have to continue to look for that through the draft, but as they’ve seen, that process will not be quick.

So while Detroit is making changes, is there a young forward it can trade for whose contributions can come sooner? Trevor Zegras in Anaheim or Dylan Cozens in Buffalo would fit the bill as young players who have already proven they can hit 60-point offense in the NHL, but have seen their production dip of late.

Continued (paywall)

Some McLellan gloom and doom

Sports Illustrated’s Jacob Punturi believes that the Red Wings’ hiring of Todd McLellan won’t make an ounce of difference because the Red Wings’ roster is too flawed to salvage:

The current attempt to build the right core is another one of those missteps. They have good players. Captain Dylan Larkin will be a member of the United States roster for the 4 Nations Face-Off and is a talented point producer. Lucas Raymond continues to improve and become the team’s best offensive player. Alex DeBrincat has speed and scoring capabilities. Top defensemen Moritz Seider and Simon Edvinsson give them quality minutes every night.

Beyond them, though, the roster is so far from a playoff one, let alone a championship one. They lack depth across every position and they’ve consistently failed with their analysis of goaltenders. For several seasons now, the organization has been banking on their overflow of young prospects breaking through to the NHL, but it’s still a waiting game.

That won’t help McLellan take this middling team to the postseason. He has some weapons to work with and his arrival is sure to reinvigorate the Red Wings players. It ultimately won’t matter though. It won’t change the outcome this year or next year or even the year after until their NHL lineup improves drastically.

Continued; it’s not that simple. And the Red Wings’ roster is not spectacular, but it’s not quite as lost and gone forever as Punturi suggests…

‘A New Hope’

MLive’s Ansar Khan offers a few thoughts regarding the Red Wings’ hiring of Todd McLellan as the team’s new head coach:

Lalonde’s message clearly had gotten stale in his third season. The team’s performance in the past two games — ugly losses to Montreal (5-1) and St. Louis (4-0), when the team was booed off the ice again – indicated a significant change was needed. The head coach usually is the one who pays the price.

The Kings fired McLellan on Feb. 2 of this year despite a 23-15-10 record. He was a Red Wings assistant coach from 2005-06 to 2007-08, from Yzerman’s last season as a player through his first two years in the front office under former GM Ken Holland.

Teams often experience an immediate bump with a midseason coaching change. A new voice brings new energy and players are eager to impress the new boss. So, expect the Red Wings, who play their next three at home starting with Friday’s game against Toronto (7 p.m., FanDuel Sports Network), to show some spark.

The playoffs, something this franchise hasn’t experienced since 2016, remain a longshot, however. The Red Wings are eight points out of the final wild card spot and having to leapfrog six other clubs makes it even more difficult. They would need to post a .635 points percentage in the final 48 games to match last season’s 91 points – and even that might not be enough to qualify.

Continued (paywall)

A recommendation for McLellan’s pedigree

Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff discusses the Red Wings’ hiring of Todd McLellan as their head coach from a unique perspective:

I’ve been lucky enough to know Todd McLellan for more than 40 years. Back when we first met in 1984, he was a 17-year-old center with the WHL Saskatoon Blades and I was a rookie beat writer on my first daily newspaper job.

What was true about him back then remains true today. McLellan is someone who approaches life with a positive outlook. He sees possibilities and is open to new ways of looking at things, alternative methods to problem solving. He’ll greet every day with a smile on his face and an excitement to stare down the challenges that lay ahead for him.

This is what he’ll be bringing to the Detroit Red Wings.

In other words, his day-to-day approach figures to be significantly different to that of Derek Lalonde’s paint by numbers formula. And that might be just what the doctor ordered for a confused Red Wings club that doesn’t seem to know what their identity as a team is supposed to be.

Another factor to like about McLellan – he’s won at every of his NHL stops and has done so while running his own show and not only as a staff member who is part of another coach’s success story.

Continued

Tweet of note: LeBrun reports that McLellan negotiations were a complicated situation

Per The Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun:

Todd McLellan, brought in to save the day

EliteProspects’ Sean Shapiro suggests that the Red Wings’ hiring of Todd McLellan as the team’s head coach may not be able to truly solve the team’s underlying problems:

While the Red Wings didn’t announce how long [McLellan’s] multi-year deal was, it’s probably something that came up for McLellan in his contract negotiation — he’s gonna need more than one and half seasons to figure this out, and has to hope his GM has learned from past mistakes.

In the short term, McLellan has to find a way for the team’s foundation not to wobble when one important player is unavailable. In the long-term, he has to completely re-code the Red Wings culture to one that picks itself up, which I’m not sure is possible under the current regime.

Think about it this way. When it comes to Yzerman and the Red Wings, everything is still associated with the No. 19 hanging in the rafters, not the body of work he’s done as an executive in Detroit.

Whether you liked Jake Walman or not, and I personally did, one of the main reasons his puzzling trade to the San Jose Sharks was defended by some was because Yzerman made it and there must be a greater plan in place.

By the middle of the 2024-25 season the Red Wings defense is struggling to move the puck and Walman is 12th in the league in points by defenders. Shayne Gostisbehere was also allowed to walk in favor of Erik Gustafsson, Gostisbehere (now in Carolina) is one of the few defenders producing at even a higher level offensively than Walman.

Continued (paywall)