Fox Sports Detroit’s “The 313” spoke with Red Wings play-by-play announcer Ken Daniels regarding both Henrik Zetterberg’s decision to stop playing:
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Red Wings post highlights from the Red vs. White game
The Red Wings posted a Twitter clip highlighting the goals scored during the Red vs. White game, which Team Red won 4-2:
Yesterday’s highlights ?#DRWTC #LGRW
?: Helm (2), Svechnikov, @c_ehn, @AndreasA86, @filip_zadina pic.twitter.com/cxKqAp2Ied
— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) September 17, 2018
Update: Here’s the YouTube version:
Khan discusses the Bertuzzi-Larkin-Mantha line
MLive’s Ansar Khan penned an article discussing what very well may be the Red Wings’ top line in Tyler Bertuzzi, Dylan Larkin and Anthony Mantha:
“You have three real good players,” Blashill said. “Bert is an F-1 (leader) on the forecheck, he’s a net-front guy. That allows the other two – not that they’re not hard on the forecheck – to use their skill. … I think putting them together can make a real good line.”
Larkin led the Red Wings with 63 points and assumes top-line duty now that Henrik Zetterberg is done playing. The 6-foot-5, 225-pound Mantha led the team with 24 goals. Bertuzzi picked up seven goals and 24 points in 48 games as a rookie.
“If you’re going to play with Larks, you don’t want to be behind him all night, so you got to play at a high pace,” Blashill said. “I also hope the three of them can become a real good O-zone line. They’ve been a good rush group, but they need to be a good O-zone group, so we can spend less time defending and more time in the opposite end. I think they have it in them, it’s just learning how to protect the puck, use cutbacks, use each other and spread the zone, so hopefully they can have good chemistry.”
Mantha didn’t take off-season boxing lessons like he had planned, after a setback in training (he tweaked his knee, an MRI showed it’s fine). He instead focused on skating – including power skating – and stick-handling drills.
“(Larkin) brings a lot of speed, and sometimes it opens up scoring opportunities,” Mantha said. “I think it brings me to push myself and try to follow him as fast as I can.”
Mantha added, “I had a goal last year to score 30, obviously I didn’t reach it, so I think it’s the same goal this year. I want to be a big body in front of that net and get those extra goals that last year didn’t come.”
Henrik Zetterberg appears on the Jamie and Stoney Show
According to 97.1 the Ticket’s Will Burtchfield, Henrik Zetterberg appeared on the “Jamie and Stoney Show” this morning, and Zetterberg suggested that his team will have to guard against something he deemed a “new normal”:
“Not playing playoff hockey sucks. That’s why we play hockey, you want to be there in the playoffs. Not being there the last two years has been hard, especially on the guys that are used to going to the playoffs. We don’t want it to become a new normal here. The normal here is making the playoffs, so it’s been hard,” Zetterberg told the Jamie and Stoney Show on 97.1 The Ticket.
Zetterberg, who turns 38 next month, did everything he could over the last few years to stem the tide. He gutted through 82 games for three straight seasons despite chronic back pain, and most nights was the team’s best player.
Why did he continue to suit up, even when it was hard at times to get out of bed in the morning?
“Well,” he said, “that’s what we hockey players do, I guess. You want to be out there for the guys. We went through some tough stretches the last few years, and I didn’t want to be on the outside not helping them.”
Burtchfield continues, and you can listen to the interview here:
Audio from the fourth day of Red Wings training camp ’18: Nyquist, Nielsen, Howard, Abdelkader and Blashill
Of note from this morning and early afternoon’s media availabilities at Red Wings training camp:
Gustav Nyquist spoke with the media for an extended period of time, discussing his take on Henrik Zetterberg’s departure, his hopes of stepping up in Z’s absence and the particularly competitive nature of this training camp:
Frans Nielsen spoke about the possibility that he may step up in terms of both leadership and point production given that Nielsen is finally feeling “at home” on a Red Wings team that will play absent his friend…
Jimmy Howard mentioned wearing a smaller chest protector per NHL rules as he addressed the tenor of camp and his desire to create a positive atmosphere with Jonathan Bernier as the goaltenders support one another throughout the season, and he reflected on Zetterberg’s absence, the potential displayed by Michael Rasmussen and Filip Zadina, and more:
Justin Abdelkader discussed being a new father as much as anything, and he spoke about training camp and the exhibition season to come as someone who was just getting into the swing of things–necessarily so, said Abdelkader, who felt that it was going to be important to get his legs under him, vicious skating test included:
Finally, coach Jeff Blashill spoke with the media for 9 minutes, addressing his “60 Minutes of Hell” slogan for the team, the emphasis on competition for jobs and playing hard all the time as the practice teams have been whittled down to “red,” “white” and “non-game-day” players; the coach was asked about the elements that Nyquist, Nielsen, Abdelkader and Howard bring to the team, sharing his belief that he hopes to split the goaltender’s duties 50-30 game-wise:
Update: Among the Wings’ videos and Twitter clips come this YouTube video of Frans Nielsen…
Via KK: Sidney Crosby pays tribute to a rival in Henrik Zetterberg
Via Kukla’s Korner, Sidney Crosby spoke with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Jason Mackey regarding the end of Henrik Zetterberg’s playing career:
Crosby and Zetterberg did battle on the ice many times, never more heated than in the 2008 and 2009 Cup finals, but Crosby always had a healthy respect for the Red Wings captain and shared his thoughts Sunday on Zetterberg walking away from the NHL.
“It’s too bad,” Crosby said after Day 3 of Penguins training camp at the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex. “He’s a great player. He’s been good for a really long time. You think of the Red Wings, he’s a guy who comes to mind. [Nicklas] Lidstrom, [Pavel] Datsyuk, Zetterberg, all those guys who played for so long together.
“[Zetterberg] had an amazing career. He was a tough guy to go against every single night. You knew what you were going to get from him. Just a great competitor.”
Zetterberg will turn 38 on Oct. 19. He had been Detroit’s captain since 2012-13, ranking fifth in the Original Six franchise’s record books for goals (337), assists (623) and points (960).
ESPN’s Peters discusses the Red Wings’ ‘prospect pipeline’
ESPN’s Chris Peters ranked each and every one of the NHL’s 31 teams’ “prospect pipelines” as part of an Insider story…
Top prospect: Filip Zadina, RW
A strong 2018 draft that saw Zadina, Joseph Veleno and Jonatan Berggren fall into Detroit’s lap bolstered a prospect core that has taken dramatic steps forward in recent years. Michael Rasmussen is another forward the club can be excited about, while defenseman Filip Hronek may be ready to take the next step. This system is starting to look more like that of a team committed to rebuilding.
And here’s what Peters said about the Wings’ prospects in his Atlantic Division prospect round-up:
Continue reading ESPN’s Peters discusses the Red Wings’ ‘prospect pipeline’
Morning news: On Zadina’s Red vs. White Game performance and the exhibition schedule to come
Of Red Wings-related note this morning:
- The Traverse City Record-Eagle’s James Cook wrote a recap of the Red vs. White Game:
Filip Zadina called it “one of the best days of my life.” The Detroit Red Wings hope it’s just the beginning.
Zadina, the sixth overall pick in this summer’s NHL Entry Draft, scored the second period’s only goal to help the much younger Team Red beat the veteran Team White in Sunday’s Red & White Game at Centre Ice Arena in Traverse City.
The 18-year-old Czech played on a line with Thomas Vanek and Andreas Athanasiou that produced the last two Red goals.
“It was such an awesome day for me,” Zadina said. “I was a little nervous before the game, because they are huge players. … It was one of the best days of my life.”
Athanasiou, Vanek, Luke Glendening and goalie Jimmy Howard were the only full-time NHL players on Red, while White was heavily populated by the bulk of Detroit’s 2017-18 NHL club.
Darren Helm, who scored White’s only two goals, came away impressed with the first-round pick.
“He skates really well and handles the puck even better,” Helm said. “That’s a pretty nice combination. It’d be nice to see him get things going. I think he’s going to be a player to watch in the future.”
2. And WDIV’s David Bartkowiak Jr. took note of the fact that the Red Wings’ jam-packed, 8-game exhibition schedule begins on Wednesday:
Jimmy Howard’s new mask embodies the ‘new Hockeytown’
Red Wings goaltender Jimmy Howard started training camp wearing a white mask, but he’s sporting this one, painted by Ray Bishop, today. It includes the new “Hockeytown” font on both sides of the chin:
Continue reading Jimmy Howard’s new mask embodies the ‘new Hockeytown’
TCRE’s Cook remembers Charlie Inman
Centre ICE Arena has seemed a little less grumpy without Charlie Inman there, and that’s a shame. For those of us who knew the Centre ICE volunteer in one form or another, the grumpy old man who wasn’t so grumpy once he got to know you–and Charlie was everywhere at Centre ICE, so you were bound to get to be known–was in fact a kind man who treated everyone like they were the star of the show.
Charlie was literally at Centre ICE on Sunday the urn of his ashes, a sand-colored jar with the word “Believe” on it and the autographs of Red Wings players on the stand below it, was at the rink along with his family, who dropped the puck for the Red vs. White Game, and then held a memorial service at Charlie’s place of work.
The Traverse City Record-Eagle’s James Cook paid tribute to Inman, and I can only say, “Me too, me too” when it comes to Cook’s admiration for the man who wielded a cane with a silver skull on its top:
Charlie had a gruff exterior, especially when first meeting him.
That eroded a little at a time, piece by piece each time you crossed paths.
The “curmudgeon” slowly morphed into someone who greeted you with a smile, opened doors. It took years of covering Red Wings events for that to happen, but it did. It was a process. After all, I didn’t have the instant credibility of being on skates as his adopted family of Red Wings did.
“Charlie sometimes had a gruff exterior,” Becki Van Horn, a bookkeeper at Centre Ice for 18 years, said in a Record-Eagle article about Inman’s passing in July. “It was to mask his big heart on the inside. He did anything and everything he was asked to do. Rarely, if ever, said no to a challenge as a volunteer. He was truly one of a kind and will be sorely missed.”
Cook continues, and his article is worth your time…