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Doing this almost for free…but it is a grind…

I went to bed at 3:30 last night and got up at 8 AM to start trade deadline machinations, despite the fact that I’m not expecting the Red Wings to do anything today.

Aunt Annie and I had an understanding that today would be a “hockey day,” and that I’d take care of my 82-year-old aunt whenever possible, but that it was going to be very hard with both the 3 PM trade deadline and tonight’s game between Detroit and Washington.

I don’t ask for a lot from you other than your readership as I try to navigate my health issues and my status as a lone caregiver, but I am going to ask for a bit of financial help. It’s not easy to put in these hours, and I’m doing it for you.

A big donation isn’t necessarily needed, but if you can help us pay the bills, we would be incredibly grateful.

If you’re willing to lend a hand, we have a PayPal option at https://paypal.me/TheMalikReport; there’s Venmo at https://venmo.com/george-malik-2; if you’re into the, “I don’t want to use any of those pages” option, here’s always the Giftly option by using my email, rtxg@yahoo.com, at https://www.giftly.com…

And in the banking options, you can contact me via email if you want to send me a paper check, or “Zelle” me via my email, rtxg@yahoo.com.

It’s my pleasure to provide you with as much information as I can give, but this is also a job, and it requires money, time, energy and effort (a.k.a. work). If you are willing or able to support this endeavor, it is greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time.

Larkin on the playoff push: ‘You have to go out there and do it’

DetroitRedWings.com’s Jonathan Mills posted a preview of tonight’s game between the Detroit Red Wings and Washington Capitals (7 PM EST start on FanDuel SportsNet Detroit/Monumental Sports Network/Sportsnet Pacific/Sportsnet 360/TVA Sports/97.1 FM), and Dylan Larkin’s comments about the balance of the regular season schedule stand out:

The Eastern Conference’s Wild-Card race remains exceedingly tight, as six clubs entered Friday within four points of each other. After Thursday’s slate of games, the Red Wings were one point behind the Ottawa Senators for the second Wild-Card spot.

Larkin feels Detroit has “made a case to continue to push this thing and keep playing for the playoffs.”

“We can’t be looking outside,” Larkin said. “We’re not going to get into the playoffs with 66 points, so you have to show up to the rink and play the game. You have to win hockey games to get into the playoffs. You can’t scoreboard watch. You can’t hope it happens. You have to go out there and do it.”

Continued

Red Wings-Capitals game-day updates: Logan Thompson starts in goal for Caps as the ‘GR8 Chase’ continues

The Detroit Red Wings will battle the Washington Capitals this evening (7 PM EST start on FanDuel SportsNet Detroit/Monumental Sports Network/Sportsnet Pacific/Sportsnet 360/TVA Sports/97.1 FM) the day after dropping a 4-2 decision to Utah HC on Thursday evening.

Washington has won 2 straight games (one via shootout vs. Ottawa on Monday, and one via overtime vs. the Rangers on Wednesday), while the Red Wings have lost 4 straight.

NHL.com’s hyping this one as part of the “GR8 Chase“…

Detroit Red Wings at Washington Capitals (7 p.m. ET; FDSNDET, MNMT, SNP, SN360, TVAS)

The Alex Ovechkin watch continues with the Capitals captain 10 goals from passing Wayne Gretzky for most in NHL history. Ovechkin (49 points; 32 goals, 17 assists) scored to help Washington (40-14-8) to a 3-2 overtime win at the New York Rangers on Wednesday, has six goals in his past six games and is one point from becoming the 11th NHL player to reach 1,600. The Red Wings (30-26-6) will look to end a four-game losing streak and are a point behind the Ottawa Senators for the second wild card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Eastern Conference. They’re trying to qualify for the playoffs for the first time since 2015-16.

Anywho, in Washington, the Red Wings did not hold a morning skate, given that they played last night, but Washington did skate this morning at Capital One Arena:

Super quick Red Wings-Capitals game preview

The 30-26-and-6 Detroit Red Wings headed to Washington, D.C. overnight to play the 40-14-and-8 Washington Capitals this evening (7 PM EST start on FanDuel SportsNet Detroit/Monumental Sports Network/Sportsnet Pacific/Sportsnet 360/97.1 FM).

Detroit has lost 4 straight games, including last night’s 4-2 loss to Utah HC, while the Capitals snapped a 3-game losing streak of their own this week in a pair of extra-time wins, beating Ottawa 5-4 in a shootout on Monday, and winning 3-2 in overtime over the New York Rangers on Wednesday.

Washington sits 2 points behind the Winnipeg Jets for the NHL’s overall lead in points, so tonight’s going to be one hell of a challenge for struggling Wings.

Both Field Level Media’s game preview (which focuses on what NHL.com is calling “The GR8 Chase,” a.k.a. Alex Ovechkin’s pursuit of Wayne Gretzky’s goal-scoring record) and the Capitals website’s preview are kind of “meh” this morning, so we’re going with Monumental Sports Network’s Tarik El-Bashir’s succinct Tweet explaining where the Capitals are at mentally this morning…

The Red Wings, of course, have the NHL’s hardest schedule in terms of quality of competition, and they’re beginning a stretch in which Detroit plays 7 of their next 10 games away from Little Caesars Arena.

Here are tonight’s game notes, all 88 pages of ’em, in PDF form:

Continue reading Super quick Red Wings-Capitals game preview

HSJ in the morning/morning Khan: it’s trade deadline day, and the Wings’ fate is uncertain

The Free Press’s Helene St. James and MLive’s Ansar Khan weigh in on the Red Wings’ 4-2 loss to Utah Hockey Club last night, with St. James wondering aloud whether the Red Wings are repeating last year’s floundering March full of losses that cost them a playoff spot…

“We just can’t find a win,” captain Dylan Larkin said after Thursday’s 4-2 loss to the Utah Hockey Club. “We’ve lost not playing well and we’ve lost playing well. We’re losing in different ways. You look at the big picture and kind of zoom out a little bit, it’s four games.”

It’s four games, but it’s four games in the stretch run, the phase of the NHL season when good teams separate from the lesser ones and cross the finish line to the postseason. That stretch run only has 20 games remaining, and only seven of those are at home — and the next one is on the road, against the elite Washington Capitals, the same day as the NHL trade deadline.

(That would be this evening at 7 PM EST on FanDuel SportsNet Detroit/Monumental Sports/Sportsnet Pacific/Sportsnet 360/TVA Sports/97.1 FM)…

“You zoom out from Christmas time,” Larkin said. “We talked about it as a group, how far we’ve come. We didn’t really see ourselves in this position, but we put the work in and we got ourselves here. I feel we’ve made a case to continue to push this thing and keep playing for the playoffs and get in.”

[Coach Todd] McLellan spoke earlier this week about how at this time of year, “we have to expect tighter checking and a little more grind to the games. It’s supposed to feel hard, it’s supposed to hurt a little bit, it’s supposed to stress you a little bit, it’s supposed to stretch you to the max in whatever way, shape or form during the game, and we’re learning that.”

But is the lesson sinking in fast enough?

MLive’s Khan also took note of McLellan’s comments regarding the imminent trade deadline, which hits today at 3 PM EST:

Continue reading HSJ in the morning/morning Khan: it’s trade deadline day, and the Wings’ fate is uncertain

Is it the goaltending, stupid?

The Detroit News’s Bob Wojnowski offers a novel suggestion as we reach 2 AM on trade deadline day:

Yzerman didn’t add anyone at [last year’s] deadline, and you’d hope he’d at least snatch a decent defenseman this time. But the seasoning process can’t dramatically be sped up at one trade deadline. It can only be sped up by a larger roster overhaul, and that’s a debate for the offseason.

For now, I might just take a flyer on a goalie switch. The Wings outshot Utah 40-19, and Alex Lyon reasonably should’ve stopped two of the four goals. Yzerman keeps spinning the veteran goalie wheel, from Alex Nedeljkovic to Jonathan Bernier to Thomas Greiss to James Reimer to Ville Husso, now to the interchangeable Lyon and Cam Talbot.

If St. Louis is willing to listen, I’d offer Lyon or Talbot plus a pick or another asset for Jordan Binnington, 31, who won the Stanley Cup with the Blues in 2019 and was brilliant leading Canada to the recent Four Nations tournament title. His overall numbers aren’t much different than Lyon or Talbot, but he’s considered a big-game goalie and has two years left on his contract at $6 million AAV, not unreasonable.

Yzerman has been forced to plug and play with veterans while waiting for his prized young goalies — Sebastian Cossa and Trey Augustine — to sufficiently ripen in the minors and college hockey. In the meantime, the Wings are getting average-to-subpar goaltending too often. They’re last in the league in penalty-killing and 19th in goals-against, and while that speaks to a young defensive corps — rookies Edvinsson and Albert Johansson man the second pairing — it also speaks to weaknesses elsewhere.

“Obviously we gotta play better defensively, and get another save,” McLellan said. “But we also gotta give our goaltenders and our overall defensive game a little bit of breathing room for mistakes, and we haven’t done a lot of that lately.”

Continued; it’s a thought….

Red Wings-Utah HC wrap-up: sloppy loss to the Hockey Club from Utah belies deadline jitters, from the team as well as its fans

The Detroit Red Wings’ self-inflicted mistakes and bad bounces yielded a 4th straight loss on Thursday night, in the form of a 4-2 loss to Utah HC.

Perhaps the worst loss of the night was in the form of one Carter Mazur, who suffered what Facebook told us was a dislocated left elbow in a collision with Jack McBain, as the Free Press’s Helene St. James noted…

The affable forward got hurt on his second shift Thursday, when he got tangled up along the boards with Utah Hockey Club forward Jack McBain. Mazur immediately went down the tunnel to the locker room. The Wings announced during the first intermission that Mazur would not return because of an upper-body injury.

“You basically really have to be banged up if you’re not going to return to the ice your first night that early in the game,” coach Todd McLellan said after the 4-2 loss. “He won’t travel with us, and he’ll be further evaluated.”

But coach Todd McLellan wasn’t using Mazur’s loss as an excuse for the team’s flip-flop from confident team back to the Struggle Bus, as he told Detroit Hockey Now’s Kevin Allen:

Continue reading Red Wings-Utah HC wrap-up: sloppy loss to the Hockey Club from Utah belies deadline jitters, from the team as well as its fans

The official word on Carter Mazur’s ‘upper-body injury’

The official word on Carter Mazur is that he’s got an upper-body injury…

But even Ken Daniels said that Carter’s father posted on Facebook that Carter suffered a dislocated left elbow, and it had to be reset in a hospital ER, probably at the Detroit Medical Center.

He will be reevaluated tonight, but it’s hard to imagine a dislocated elbow not costing Mazur some significant recovery time.

Here’s to a full recovery ASAP.

Red Wings-Utah HC quick take: bad juju

The Detroit Red Wings attempted to snap a 3-game losing streak as they faced Utah HC on Thursday evening.

And the Red Wings were cursed, absolutely cursed, losing a 4-1 decision to Utah despite out-shooting Karel Vejmelka 40-19.

It wasn’t as if Alex Lyon sucked, or the Red Wings sucked…It was a situation where there were some very bad defensive reads–two by the Seider-Chiarot pairing–Utah got some very lucky bounces, and ultimately, losing Carter Mazur to a dislocated left elbow appears to have been too much for a fragile team to overcome.

So the Wings have lost 4 straight, they play 7 of their next 10 games on the road, and thing suddenly look quite desperate for a Detroit team that needs everything to break its way in order to make the playoffs over the final 19 games.

The good news? Detroit got goals from Larkin (25th) and Berggren (10th) to take a 2-1 decision in the 1st period, but really, after the Utah power play goal that made it 2-2, Detroit sort of nodded off a bit defensively, and…

I hope that whatever the Red Wings’ GM and management do, they find a way to un-curse themselves by the time that Detroit plays Washington tomorrow night at this time in the nation’s Capitol.

Continue reading Red Wings-Utah HC quick take: bad juju

Tweet of note: Mazur suffers upper-body injury in NHL debut

An unfortunate development for a great young man: