The Athletic’s Murat Ates discusses “7 NHL teams [which] are likely to take a step back” this upcoming season, and you’ll be shocked–shocked, I tell you, shocked!– to find out that the Detroit Red Wings made Ates’ cut:

Detroit Red Wings

2025-26 record: 41-31-10, 92 points

The best case for a decline: Detroit’s offence is in trouble if Dylan Larkin is a part of it and in peril if he isn’t.

Patrick Kane’s departure hurts the Red Wings’ 12th-ranked power play, which helped Detroit make up for the NHL’s third-worst five-on-five offence. Meanwhile, James van Riemsdyk’s departure hurts Detroit’s depth scoring. The Red Wings will hope summer signing Viktor Arvidsson and rising young player Michael Brandsegg-Nygård make up for those losses, but Arvidsson’s injury history and Brandsegg-Nygård’s youth allow room for doubt.

The challenge isn’t about a lack of players to be excited about. Moritz Seider was dominant in so many facets of the game last season that he finished 11th in Hart Trophy voting and fifth in Norris Trophy voting. Lucas Raymond is an electric offensive player whose defensive commitment is solid for a 24-year-old star in the making. It’s about what happens when the Red Wings’ top line and top pairing aren’t playing — it’s hard to look at veterans such as Andrew Copp, J.T. Compher and Mason Appleton and find Detroit’s missing depth scoring.

Detroit does have a next wave of young talent and it’s possible that Simon Edvinsson (23) or Marco Kasper (22) goes off in 2026-27. The other route to avoiding a decline would involve John Gibson turning back the clock to his early career dominance, while Daniil Tarasov may make a few more saves than last season’s edition of Cam Talbot.

Continued (paywall); I have mixed feelings about the Red Wings’ possibilities this upcoming season.

The Wings could do very well and piss some people off and/or prove some folks wrong, or the Wings could go south in a big way, especially if an inevitable Dylan Larkin trade yields a return of future assets.

Depending on injuries, shaky performances and plain old luck, Ates is right in suggesting that the Wings don’t have a whole lot of depth scoring, and as such, they’re going to have to get their shit together in a hurry and play as well as possible from the first drop of the puck next Friday onward.

Hockeysvergige.se’s Ronnie Ronnqvist spoke with Red Wings prospect defenseman Anton Johansson in the wake of Anton’s 4-point preseason game against the Pittsburgh Penguins on Tuesday.

What follows is roughly translated from Swedish:

Swedish talent for the fight with Crosby: “Became a little pissed off”

Anton Johansson showed his front foot during Detroit’s pre-season.

Overnight on Wednesday, the talented prospect scored four points in the big victory against Pittsburgh – and ended up in a fight with superstar Sidney Crosby.

“He just got a little grumpy because I boxed him out,” Johansson told Hockeysverige.se.

Bleacher Report posted two NHL articles this morning, with Lyle Richardson discussing “1 player for every NHL team to get excited about” ahead of the 2026-2027 season, and Yerdon discussing “pending unrestricted free agents [2027] who could be traded” this season if their contract extension talks go south.

First, we’ll talk about the Red Wings’ stalwart defenseman and arguable face of the post-Dylan Larkin franchise…

Detroit Red Wings: Moritz Seider

The Detroit Red Wings have endured inconsistency over the past three seasons, which stretched their playoff drought to 10 years. While that’s resulted in front-office turmoil and uncertainty about the future of former captain Dylan Larkin, a bright spot remains star defenseman Moritz Seider.

Since being chosen sixth overall by the Red Wings in the 2019 NHL Draft, Seider has steadily developed into an elite all-around defenseman. He won the Calder Memorial Trophy in 2021-22 and has become the anchor of the Red Wings’ blue line.

Seider, 25, is a workhorse who logs big minutes in all situations. He had a league-leading 2104:39 of total time on ice per game last season and a career-high 60 points. The young German is entering his prime and remains crucial to the Wings’ hopes of ending their long postseason drought.

And you’ll be familiar with the Red Wings’ trade candidate in Yerdon’s column as well:

The Athletic’s Max Bultman spoke with 4 different sports’ executives about the data-driven world that the Red Wings are delving into as the team searches for a full-time general manager.

Bultman duly notes that the NHL and hockey in general are going through an information revolution, in which streams of new data are being incorporated through the NHL’s EDGE stats, high-speed video, skills coaching tailored to individual players and a whole lot of sorting through all the data and translating it into decisive decision-making.

This article is very wordy and a little technical, but Bultman’s conversation with Florida Panthers GM Bill Zito is particularly enlightening:

While Zito’s Cup-winning front offices, for example, notably included Sunny Mehta — now the GM of the New Jersey Devils — with a background in data science, they also featured multiple former NHL players, with Gregory Campbell and Roberto Luongo in high-level roles, NCAA champion player-turned-agent Brett Peterson as an assistant GM, and a long-tenured coach in Paul Maurice behind the bench.

It wasn’t necessarily any one of those skill sets that elevated the Panthers. But it may well have been the combination.

“It’s that buy-in where everybody is respected for their role,” Zito said. “And they, in turn, by being good at what they do, help everybody else be better and fill voids so that the puzzle comes together as a whole. And I don’t think that’s any different than other businesses or other collaborative efforts.”

MLive’s Ansar Khan discusses Red Wings prospect defenseman Anton Johansson this morning, noting that Detroit coach Todd McLellan is bullish on the 22-year-old right-shooting Swede.

Johansson posted 4 assists in Tuesday night’s win over Pittsburgh (though he was on the ice for 3 goals against), and Anton skates well, handles the puck professionally, and is quite physical and scrappy:

“This might be an unfair comparison, but Brent Burns used to be like that. Burns could shoot the puck from out far, he could pull it in tight, and as a result, he got a lot of pucks through. I sometimes equate the shot at the top like a quarterback throwing the football. There’s no sense throwing the football into the end zone if there’s no receivers there. So the net presence combined with his willingness to shoot the puck is a good combination.”

The former fourth-round pick (104^th overall in 2022) made a favorable impression during a brief stint late last season with the Griffins, picking up five assists in 11 regular season games and one assist in three playoff games after being on loan to r Leksands during the Swedish Hockey League season.

“I feel like it suits my game pretty well to play on the smaller sheet,” Johansson, 22, said. “I’m tall, I’m a good skater, I can handle the puck. I’ve learned you got to be quicker; you got to be faster to everything because (the ice) is smaller. I want to be a two-way defender, reliable in the defensive zone, and they know what I can do in the offensive zone.”

Continued (paywall); to me, Anton is more of a Brad Stuart 2.0 in the making, someone who can be reliably utilized in all situations while pissing off the opposition.

I fully believe that the younger Johansson will grow into an NHL defender within the next year or two.

The Free Press’s Helene St. James breaks down the “battle” between Axel Sandin Pellikka, William Wallinder, Anton Johansson, Jacob Bernard-Docker and Jacob Bryson for the 6th, 7th and 8th spots on the Wings’ blueline.

St. James spotlights the three Swedes battling the established Bernard-Docker and small but plucky Bryson for places in the opening-night lineup; as you’re probably familiar with ASP’s body of work, we’ll look at Detroit’s younger Johansson and Wallinder here:

Anton Johansson

Johansson, 22, was drafted at No. 105 in the 2022 NHL Draft. A rangy 6-foot-4, 203-pound right-shot defender, he’s steadily made strides to improve his overall game. He showed off his offensive skills to great effect in the Wings’ 7-4 exhibition victory over a Pittsburgh Penguins lineup that included Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, recording four assists. Combine that with what McLellan has heard from his colleagues in Grand Rapids, where Johansson played eight games in the regular season (after coming over from his Swedish club) and eight in the playoffs, and McLellan has been impressed.

“To me, he has joy for the game,” McLellan said. “When he’s out there, he loves being out there smiling. He brings an energy. That energy kind of rubs off on other people. And then he’s real direct with his play. He’s aggressive on killing plays, but he’s also aggressive with the puck in the offensive zone. You saw how he created his and other teammates scoring chances last night, just creating a lane and getting it there. There’s players on our team and on other teams that create lanes, and then they want to look and do something else. It’s pretty simple, and it worked. And that’s how he approaches it.”

Anton was on the ice for 4 “goals for” and 3 “goals against” against the Penguins, so he’s far from perfect as he comes over from the SHL, but his size, skating and all-round abilities (and mean streak) are intriguing…

Of brief Red Wings-related note overnight:

1. The Hockey News’s Michael Whitaker spoke with Red Wings defenseman Axel Sandin Pellikka and Detroit coach Todd McLellan regarding the young defender’s progression over the course of last season’s stint with the Grand Rapids Griffins, this summer’s training, and training camp and the exhibition season:

“I’m excited; having that experience and being here that first year is going to help a lot,” he said. “Just experience-wise, knowing what’s going on all the time and how we play over here, it’s a lot easier to adapt. I feel like I’ve gotten stronger, and I’m excited.”

Not only did Sandin-Pellikka tally in Detroit’s win over the Penguins, but forward Michael Brandsegg-Nygård, who also made the Opening Night roster last season, scored twice. 

According to head coach Todd McLellan, both Sandin-Pellikka and Brandsegg-Nygård are in a far better position than they were at this point last year, and they have every right to feel confident. 

“He should be confident and feel good,” McLellan said. “We went through Axe’s progression and how he finished in Grand Rapids, and we said he and (Brandsegg-Nygård ) should come back confident – coming back and feeling good, way better than last year at this time.

“He handled the puck, made some really good plays, defended fairly well,” he continued. “So, he’s where he should be. Just have to keep pushing away and believing in himself, and it’ll take over.” 

2. NHL.com’s Adam Kimelman examines how teams that missed the Eastern Conference’s playoff cut might find their way into the playoff mix this upcoming season. Kimelman includes the Red Wings in his set of assessments:

As mentioned yesterday evening, Daily Faceoff’s Anthony Di Marco reported that Red Wings assistant director of player development Dan Cleary would be taking over the GM’s duties for the AHL’s Grand Rapids Griffins.

Late last night, WZZM “13 On Your Side” confirmed through the Griffins that Cleary has been named the interim GM of the AHL team:

I don’t enjoy being sick, contrary to some folks’ opinions…It isn’t fun being sniffly and sweaty and hot and cold and tired all the G-D time, all the symptoms of a flu bug I probably picked up from the visiting nurse or the visiting OT or PT specialists we’ve entertained while Aunt Annie recovers from a double hospitalization and one hell of a UTI.

“Outside bugs” got in, and after busting my ass during training camp, I’m sorry, but I got dinged.

I’m still sniffly and sweaty tonight, but I am also not going to be absent of the blog for more than three days, so let’s dig into a Red Wings catch-up post which at least summarizes some of the stuff we’ve both missed over the last day.

The preseason moves fast, so there are tons of articles out today, and I don’t want to get us bogged down, so:

We’ll look back briefly ahead of the second half of the exhibition season (I did watch both streamed games, so there’s that), in which the Red Wings will host the banged-up Buffalo Sabres on Thursday (7 PM EDT on Detroit SportsNet/WWJ 950) and the Columbus Blue Jackets on Saturday (7 PM EDT on Detroit SportsNet/WWJ 950).

Detroit will be looking to improve upon its 1-0-and-1 exhibition record, with the Wings having lost a 1-0 decision to Columbus on Monday, and they took a 7-4 win the Pittsburgh Penguins on Tuesday.

Hey everybody. I caught my aunt’s flu bug and am resting because I feel quite sick. I hope to get back to work by tomorrow morning. My apologies for the pause in service.