Category: Uncategorized

Kulfan, St. James, Allen on Carter Bear, updated with video

Updated at 10:56 PM: The Detroit Red Wings drafted Everett Silvertips winger Carter Bear with their 13th overall draft pick at the 2025 NHL Draft in Los Angeles. After Bear was drafted, he spoke with several media members, including the Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan:

Bear (6-foot, 180 pounds), who suffered a partially torn Achilles tendon that ended his season in March, scored 40 goals in 56 games for Everett (WHL). Bear said expects to be ready for training camp.

“I’m skating right now,” said Bear on a Zoom call with Detroit media after being selected. “It’s about 80 percent I would say, not getting into contact yet right now, but it’s good for the season with Everett for sure.”

Not competing in the playoffs was a disappointment but Bear found out much about himself in the rehabilitation.

“Pretty bummed out when you can’t play with your team,” Bear said. “I tried to take it in a positive way going through this whole stage in recovery. To hear my name called, it’s kind of a relief for sure. I’m grateful to think of what Detroit thinks of me and to give me an opportunity.”

Bear was emotional after hearing his name called by the Wings and broke down in an interview with ESPN.

“It really did (hit me),” Bear said. “I didn’t really realize (how emotional he was) until I was in that building and it hit me hard.”

Bear is one of the fiercest competitors in this draft, going to the net and playing a hard, edgy game. But he combines that with an offensive ability that’s among the best in the draft.

“Wanting the puck, creating plays, I have a hard nose with the puck in front of the net for sure,” Bear said. “I’m at the right spots at the right time.”

Continued; I like the pick. Scoring and intensity are two things that the Red Wings need in their prospect pool, and the more competitive they can get, the better they will be in the future.

The Free Press’s Helene St. James also posted Bear’s Zoom interview:

The Wings also posted a clip of Bear’s post-draft scrum:

Here’s a little more from Detroit Hockey Now’s Kevin Allen:

Continue reading Kulfan, St. James, Allen on Carter Bear, updated with video

Red Wings select Carter Bear 13th overall

The Detroit Red Wings drafted forward Carter Bear with the 13th overall pick in the 2025 NHL Draft.

Continue reading Red Wings select Carter Bear 13th overall

Not expecting surprises as the Red Wings’ ‘little engine that could’ steams along at a familiar pace

It’s been a long time since I got behind the keyboard and wrote a blog entry, but not so much has changed when it comes to the Detroit Red Wings.

The Wings have been following their front office’s usually methodical path through the offseason, not yet choosing whether to buy out Justin Holl or Vladimir Tarasenko, and instead, revealing plans for the team’s Centennial celebrations, re-signing Griffins defensemen Antti Tuomisto (a prospect with a little bit of runway left to develop at 24 years of age) and William Lagesson (a 29-year-old d-man who dutifully served as the Wings’ 7th defenseman in warm-ups for the vast majority of the regular season)…

And that’s about it. We can all guess that the Wings are probably eying diminutive Swede William Eklund with the 13th overall pick, and then they’ll draft 8 more players on Saturday in LA…

We know that the team is going to sign more Grand Rapids Griffins players before the Summer Development Camp begins on Monday and free agency begins on Tuesday…

And there are a lot of people who are frustrated with the team right now, because their front office doesn’t seem to be doing what the Detroit News’s Bob Wojnowski prescribed yesterday night:

Continue reading Not expecting surprises as the Red Wings’ ‘little engine that could’ steams along at a familiar pace

Taking action

Hello, everybody.

I see that some of you are still checking the blog, and I’m grateful for that. I wanted to post a quick update regarding my mental and physical health here:

Things are starting to get better after a long time of really struggling with depression.

I’ve been working very hard with my psychologist to find a way out of the ditch, which has been productive, and my psychiatrist upped the dosage of one of my medications when I spoke with her recently.

I’ve still been hampered by heavy anxiety as well as depression, but I’m able to at least get a couple of days a week where I feel like a human being, and that’s progress.

Caring for Aunt Annie has served as good discipline, too, because nobody else is going to do it if I don’t, and so I have to drag my butt out of bed and spend my evenings with her. She’s been really supportive of me as I battle through my symptoms, too, and that’s been of great comfort, and she’s been very supportive of my desire to return to the blog, too.

As far as a timeline for getting back to work is concerned, I miss the job tremendously, and I am hoping to try and get back by the time the NHL Draft hits next Friday. I don’t know whether that’s realistic at this point, but that’s the plan as of this morning.

I know that it’s been a shitty year for me coverage-wise, but dealing with moderate-to-severe anxiety, depression and bipolar 2 = some years are better than others.

I thank you for your support and your time, and, as I continue to place a significant amount of work into my recovery, I hope to get back to work soon.

Marco Kasper’s going to play at the World Championship

Just as an FYI, because everybody seems to have missed it: in addition to Lucas Raymond and Simon Edvinsson (Sweden), Moritz Seider (Germany) and free agent signing Eduards Tralmaks (Latvia), Red Wings center Marco Kasper is going to play in the World Championship next week, representing his native Austria.

The Austrian Ice Hockey Association posted the news on their website last week.

Suggestions of a Larkin-Yzerman feud are bullshit

Holy shit, folks. Red Wings fans seem to have too much time on their hands, because there’s “much ado about nothing” going on both within and without the fan base, with the clickbait kings of the interweb benefiting the most from misplaced rage.

So Dylan Larkin, the Red Wings’ captain, did what captains do, and discussed his disappointment regarding the Red Wings’ relatively quiet trade deadline during his postseason press conference.

Good! A team captain fairly and understandably expressed criticism of the team’s management group, most probably expressing the feelings felt by the majority of his teammates through his statements. That’s good and healthy and normal for a leader to speak out for his charges; I was happy to hear that Larkin was comfortable enough in his role to offer some constructive criticism as his days in the media sun for the 2024-2025 season draw to a close.

As far as I’m concerned, Larkin utilized the proper medium by which to express his thoughts and feelings about his team’s direction, and he did so while also expressing a high level of personal responsibility for the team’s disappointing finish. All healthy and signs of strong leadership.

A few days later, Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman held an incredibly organized press conference, utilizing Wings coach Todd McLellan as his “wing man,” and Yzerman expressed a different opinion than Larkin’s, suggesting that the team’s best players should have provided a post-trade deadline “boost” after Yzerman was unable to swing a substantive deadline deal.

Moreover, Yzerman stated that he’d addressed the issue with Larkin over the course of the team’s exit meetings, and while GMSY chose not to make his comments to Larkin public, he encouraged Larkin to share them with the media if he wishes to do so.

Good! A GM’s job involves explaining his rationale for trades made or not made, and Yzerman did that. Just as importantly, Yzerman shared his side of the story in a meeting with the captain. That’s what you want to hear–that there are open and honest lines of communication between players and management.

As you might imagine, I was taken aback by the attempts made by the clickbait kings and sports talk radio hosts to play this stuff up as trade rumor-inducing fodder, or indications that the relationship between a traitorous captain and ineffective GM have been irreparably strained.

I call bullshit.

Continue reading Suggestions of a Larkin-Yzerman feud are bullshit

Things have not been getting better

Hi, everybody. I just wanted to post a short update here as it’s been quite a while since I’ve written anything.

My mental health seems to have plateaued of late. My anxiety is still incredibly uncomfortable, and my depression remains at a high level. I didn’t even start watching playoff hockey until late Monday night, despite my 2nd favorite NHL team, the Winnipeg Jets, battling the St. Louis Blues in the 1st round out West.

It’s just been a very difficult time for me, and the cloud of anxiety-and-depression funk has not lifted.

As soon as I am able, I want to get back to work. Even Aunt Annie agrees that I’m better health-wise and happier when I’ve got the blog to work for…

And while I know that Steve Yzerman and Todd McLellan haven’t spoken with the media yet–I’m guessing that they’ll speak after the team’s end-of-season meetings with players wrap up–the Wings’ YouTube channel has something like a dozen interviews with everyone from Dylan Larkin (whose comments regarding the trade deadline were substantially blown out of proportion on Monday for click-bait’s sake) to Patrick Kane and quite a few players in between, and there’s a lot to talk about there.

Hell, today, I know that there’s a report from Hockeysverige.se’s Lukas Stenstrom reporting that Liam Dower Nilsson’s heading back to IF Bjorkloven despite some desire from the Red Wings to sign the Allsvenskan-playing center, Wings free agent signing Eduards Tralmaks is starting to train with the Latvians‘ World Championship again after suffering an arm injury a couple of weeks ago, we know that Moritz Seider will play for the Germans at the Worlds, big prospect defenseman Brady Cleveland has transferred colleges for the third time, joining Max Plante at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, and Owen Mehlenbacher’s headed to Jack Phelan’s UMass.

There’s already early draft talk as the Wings finished likely to pick 12th overall this June, and with Brock Boeser suggesting that he’s all but certain to leave the Vancouver Canucks, there’s some speculation that the Wings might be interested in improving their top-six scoring…

Though the team’s free agency needs remain the same as they were last summer, basically speaking–to add scoring and physicality up front, to integrate a scoring defenseman to replace Shayne Gostisbehere’s offense, and to sort out the team’s goaltending by mixing in both free agent signings and the team’s own youngsters playing in Grand Rapids, where the Griffins got a first-round “bye” and will play in a 2nd round, 5-game series against the Texas Stars starting next week.

In other words, there’s a lot of stuff going on right now, and I want to follow it along with you, but I’m still in a lot of physical as well as mental discomfort. As soon as the “fever breaks,” I promise that I will come back and I promise that I am paying attention, so I know that there are things going on and I am at least glancing at and saving the articles to catch up when I’m ready to go again.

So I know that the blog is quiet, and I don’t like it one bit, but my stupid mental health is still pushing back hard, and I’ve got to feel better than I do to be able to put these “bed days” behind me and get back up and get to work. I’m really sorry for the delay, but shit happens sometimes, and when you’re chronically mentally ill, extended depressive episodes happen.

I’m doing my best to work with my therapist, psychiatrist, my meds and my support system to sort myself out and get back ASAP, but health has to come first here, and health is a mixed bag right now.

Assigning blame when we don’t have all the answers (yet)

I’ve continued to battle significant depression and anxiety while attempting to at least show up on Twitter over the past half-dozen games. I suppose that, given the Red Wings’ loss to Montreal on Tuesday, we’re looking at the last 5 games of the team’s 2024-2025 season here.

Another playoff-less spring means another postmortem examination, and, ultimately, another autopsy conducted upon the Red Wings’ personnel, coaching staff and management.

I’ve found that, on social media, the mainstream media, the blogosphere, sports talk radio and the podcast universe, there’s a significant desire to want to find a single person to blame for the mess–be it Steve Yzerman, Dylan Larkin, coach Derek Lalonde, etc. etc.

I believe that it’s just unlikely that one person is at fault here.

There’s more than enough blame to go around between the Red Wings’ players, coaches and management.

As the regular season concludes and we listen to the post-season media availabilities, we may receive some further clues as to what the locker-room dynamic might have been, we may find out how well coach Todd McLellan felt he and his coaching staff felt that they did in attempting to salvage the Red Wings’ season from about its halfway point, and we should glean some clues as to what Steve Yzerman and the management team are considering going forward.

And we should address the elephant in the room here:

Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman is not going to lose his job. He is not on the “hot seat” for the team’s under-performance, though there is clearly pressure upon him to deliver a playoff-worthy product next season after being passed by the Senators and Canadiens in the rebuilding process.

Continue reading Assigning blame when we don’t have all the answers (yet)

Hard times and hockey blues

I’ve been having a very difficult time of late. My chronic anxiety attacks have yielded a pretty deep depression, and while I’ve been working with my psychiatrist, psychologist, and my own damn self to get through things…

I feel like I’m just starting to see some distant sunshine about to peek over the horizon, but the last two weeks’ worth of not blogging, and the last month-plus, have been particularly difficult.

Being a caregiver on top of it all doesn’t help the healing process, either, but that’s the life I’ve chosen for myself.

While all of this personal shit has been going on, of course the Red Wings have dropped 9 of their past 11 games, and while I’ve tried to at least show up on Twitter/X when I’m able to watch a game, I’ve been more a grief counselor than Red Wings partisan once games end.

The Red Wings are struggling, too, and it feels like they’re in a deep depression, too. It’s just…It’s hard to watch.

There’s a lot of blame going around. Blaming the coach. Blaming the GM. Blaming the captain. A lot of scapegoating, which isn’t necessarily productive. But there’s clearly a lot of blame to go around right now, and, to me, the Wings look out of gas, mentally, physically and emotionally.

I know that the “McLellan bump” was wonderful, but the Four Nations Face-Off break seemed to take the wind out of Detroit’s sails, and when they tried to build a winning streak in late February, the pair of losses to Columbus, Stadium Series included broke the Wings’ backs and hearts.

Continue reading Hard times and hockey blues

Stupid anxiety and stupid depression are flaring up

The problem with enduring chronic mental illnesses is that if you have more than one, you can get into a vicious cycle.

I have a severe anxiety disorder, moderate depression and bipolar II (bipolar disorder without mania). When I’m having a difficult time with anxiety, for example, I can get depressed really easily, or my bipolar II can kick in, and I can get stuck in a rut between the gloomy downs and the super-intense middles.

Long story long, I’m having a very hard time with my mental illnesses–plural–right now.

My anxiety is still spiking, and over the past couple of days, I’ve been dealing with a significant amount of depression.

I will speak with my psychiatrist on Thursday (i.e. tomorrow), and I speak with my psychologist on Friday, so I have two appointments in two days in order to try and tamp this shit down.

In the interim, if I can sit up and type, I will try to man the blog, but right now I am struggling, big time, and I hope that you’ll understand that it’s impacting my ability to do my job.