Category: Uncategorized

Waiting for the ‘juice’

USA Today’s Mary Clarke posted a set of preseason power rankings this morning, and she ranks the Red Wings 16th overall:

16. Detroit Red Wings: We’re entering Year 5 of the Yzerplan, with the Red Wings just barely missing out on a playoff berth at the end of last season. Expectations continue to rise in Detroit, with the team even adding Stanley Cup champion Vladimir Tarasenko in free agency this past summer. The Red Wings should be on the cusp of the playoffs once more; the question remains is if they have enough juice to get there for the first time in eight years.

Continued; not much to say here other than, “Yep” and to remind you that if it’s Year 5, the Red Wings theoretically are in the middle of an 8-to-12-year rebuilding phase.

Why Skelleftea might be the best option for Michael Brandsegg-Nygard

EP Rinkside’s Sean Shapiro discusses the differences between the SHL and AHL in his “Shap Shots” blog this morning:

“It’s not about the ice size, really at all,” [Jonatan] Berggren said. “You get used to that quickly, it’s the other things, and I talked to (Brandsegg-Nygård) a bit before he went back home.”

Berggren said there are advantages of playing in the AHL, but the atmosphere and culture are completely different than in Sweden. In the AHL, the Grand Rapids Griffins main job is to develop for the Red Wings, winning is secondary. In the SHL, Skellefteå’s job is to try and win league titles, development comes secondary.

Berggren isn’t wrong, in fact I co-authored an entire book about AHL hockey that dove into this subject. Teams, management, players, agents, and coaches all know this. At the end of the day, a successful AHL coach is one that creates NHL players on the cheap in a salary cap world.

Griffins coach Dan Watson knows this. Last season he and I had a lengthy chat about how his job changed when he was promoted from the ECHL to the AHL. With the Toledo Walleye, the goal was always about winning the Kelly Cup — the ECHL, frankly, isn’t a prospect league — while in Grand Rapids he’s well aware his game was always the second-most-important one that evening.

It’s why I believe coaching in the AHL is one of the most difficult jobs in hockey. Your job description rarely matches how most people will publicly judge whether you are successful or not.

Continued (paywall)

Marco Kasper’s going to play major AHL minutes for now

The Hockey News’s Connor Eargood wonders aloud “what’s next for Marco Kasper?” and the answer is that he plays, and plays significant minutes for the Grand Rapids Griffins:

“Obviously, some scenarios where he could have found himself in a day one lineup, but that’s kind of what I alluded to (Saturday),” Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde said Monday. “We’re just trying to maximize our roster. And it’s not a bad thing for him to go straight down, be playing 22 minutes in every situation and be a simple call at any time.”

For now, Kasper is back in Grand Rapids, where he is set to play top line minutes as one of the most important players on the team. The way the Red Wings see it, putting Kasper in this role is better for his development than keeping him in Detroit, where he would only play a depth role in the bottom six. At his age, players can learn a lot by playing more minutes and seeing situations in games — especially for a player whose offensive game is still a work in progress, minutes are all the more valuable. The Red Wings don’t want to stunt Kasper’s development by hurrying him to the NHL all for a diminished role.

Kasper’s situation is very similar to that of Red Wings defenseman Simon Edvinsson. Last preseason, Edvinsson was one of Detroit’s better defensemen in preseason, but the Red Wings sent him down to Grand Rapids so that he could play a larger role and run a power play unit. He still got into 16 games, 14 of which came in the heat of Detroit’s late playoff push. This time around, he leaves training camp as a top four defenseman, one that the Red Wings will lean on a lot during the year ahead.

Kasper’s AHL assignment doesn’t preclude his playing in the NHL at some point. Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde acknowledged how much rosters change during a season, saying Saturday that “Grand Rapids is two hours away. We’ll have played 33 players by Christmas. Maybe it’s a little old school. Maybe that’s where it was 20, 25 years ago — you made the team on day one. In reality, we’re probably going to have 15 forwards and 10 D that are gonna play for us and make our team, so it’ll be very interesting how it plays out in the next couple weeks.”

Continued; Kasper, Carter Mazur and Nate Danielson will all be significant contributors to the Grand Rapids Griffins’ own push for a playoff spot.

Starting with Husso?

MLive’s Ansar Khan wonders aloud whether Ville Husso has re-earned the Red Wings’ starting goaltender’s job over the course of the team’s exhibition season:

Husso was the only Red Wings goaltender to play two full games. He posted a 2.28 goals-against average and .936 save percentage in eight periods overall.

“He had a little extra load and that was by design and he handled it very well,” coach Derek Lalonde said. “There were some question marks with Ville, physically, coming into the preseason and within his three games he answered those questions.”

Husso, 29, missed the majority of last season with two separate lower-body injuries. He hadn’t played a full game with the Red Wings since Dec. 14.

“It was a good summer doing stuff and I feel good to go,” Husso said. “I’m confident. It’s a nice thing to do, get a couple of full games, get back to the routine, game yesterday, practice today and feel the body again. It’s nice to get those games and get some reps.”

Husso appears to have earned the starting job, but Lalonde did not commit to a starter for Thursday’s season-opener against Pittsburgh at Little Caesars Arena (7 p.m., Bally Sports Detroit).

“A good problem,” Lalonde said. “We came into (camp), talked about a blank slate. We came in hoping someone could show us they could help us win on night one and the positive is all three did.”

Continued (paywall)

The Athletic posts 3 Red Wings-related stories this morning

The Athletic posted a trio of articles which discuss Red Wings-related topics this morning:

  1. Sean McIndoe offers “oddly specific predictions” for every NHL team…

Detroit Red Wings

It’s an annual oddly specific prediction tradition, so let’s make the Wings this year’s team that some people think will be a lot better, some people think will be a lot worse, but that actually finishes the year with exactly the same number of points they had in 2023-24 (91).

2. The Athletic’s James Mirtle and Harman Dayal rank every team’s defensive corps, and the Wings are ranked the “Below Average” tier (geez, The Athletic loves tiers)…

Detroit Red Wings

Ben Chiarot–Moritz Seider
Simon Edvinsson–Jeff Petry
Olli Maatta–Erik Gustafsson

Extra defense options: Albert Johansson, Justin Holl

On paper, this group looks like it will be the biggest impediment to the Red Wings finally returning to the postseason.

Jeff Petry is 37 in December and shouldn’t be playing higher than third-pair minutes at this point. Ben Chiarot doesn’t belong on a playoff team’s top pair. And there’s a reason Olli Maatta and Erik Gustafsson have bounced around as much as they have.

The big caveat to all of that is Moritz Seider is a stud and Simon Edvinsson has very high-end potential. Edvinsson, in particular, could level up into a top-pair defender as early as this season. If he’s ready, the Red Wings will climb this ranking quickly — and possibly even grab a wild-card spot.

3. And Sean Gentille ranks the “Hope-O-Meter” for the NHL’s 32 fan bases:

23. Detroit Red Wings — 70.2

Optimist Tim: It feels weird to be optimistic about a team that mostly overachieved last season, and I know “the model” says otherwise, but I really do think this Red Wings team got better. Edvinsson’s a top 4 upgrade over Walman. Tarasenko’s a slight upgrade over Perron. A full offseason of training for Kane. Continued growth for Raymond. Enough decent goalies to ride at least one of them at a time. The roster is still flawed, but this year I think we earn our playoff bubble slot instead of lucking into it.

Pessimist Kris: All I’ve heard for years is how great our prospect pool is, and yet we keep signing aged and overpaid vets that end up blocking them vs. just biting the bullet a little and letting the kids learn by doing.

Etc. etc. at this point.

Wyshynski picks the Wings to finish 6th in the Atlantic

ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski released a massive NHL preview article today, and he’s picking the Red Wings to finish 6th in the Atlantic Division. Here’s his rationale, per the Insider-only article:

The Red Wings have missed the playoffs in every year of Steve Yzerman’s tenure as general manager, since being hired in 2019. Their NHL roster skews older, and not just because Patrick Kane is back. The prospect pool has a collection of solid potential NHL contributors and a few standouts, but nothing resembling a franchise player, despite their time spent in the draft lottery. Is the plan to break the playoff drought, give the kids some seasoning and the use that sweet pizza money to lure big-name free agents to augment them? I don’t know. Right now, the plan seems like it’s produced a bubble team with little hope of upward mobility.

Stevie Y. must be thinking how much easier this was with Steven Stamkos, Victor Hedman, Nikita Kucherov and Andrei Vasilevskiy as your pillars …

Still, there are people who see Detroit, rather than Buffalo or Ottawa, as the breakthrough team in the Atlantic. A lot would have to break right for that to happen, from the instant impact of Simon Edvinsson, to giant leaps forward from big-contract earners Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider, to Cam Talbot helping to settle down a goaltending spot that had a cast of thousands auditioning in training camp. The NHL is a better place when the Red Wings are contending. I hope to visit that place again one day.

Continued (paywall); I would like to believe that the Red Wings will contend one day, and I would like to believe that they’ll do so under Steve Yzerman’s watch.

Steve Yzerman named one of the ’25 people who will define the NHL season’ to come

Sportsnet’s Luke Fox posted a list of “the 25 people who will define the NHL season,” and Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman is the last person on the list:

Steve Yzerman: How long would patience last in Detroit if the Red Wings were not being run by an on-ice icon and the architect of a championship in Tampa Bay? Yzerman enters his sixth year at the helm in Hockeytown as both the longest-tenured active GM yet to make the playoffs and overseer of the NHL’s second-longest active post-season drought — the longest in franchise history at eight seasons and counting. The Red Wings have a shiny new barn but attendance issues. They locked in two young stars in the nick of time (Lucas Raymond, Moritz Seider), and they’re banking on some fading ones (Patrick Kane, Vladimir Tarasenko). The man in charge can’t lace ’em up to save the day. Stevie Y needs a W.

Continued; the attendance is getting better as the team gets better, and that’s the truth.