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MLive’s Ansar Khan penned a profile of new Wings defenseman Jon Merrill this morning, and it’s just refreshing to hear a player discuss the excitement he feels about “coming home”:

Jon Merrill could barely contain his enthusiasm Friday after becoming a Detroit Red Wing, fulfilling a lifelong dream.

“It’s an honor to play for the Red Wings,” Merrill said. “I was such a die-hard Wings fan as kid, played for Little Caesars as a youth hockey player, going down to Joe Louis Arena for practices and things like that.

“As a 13-year-old, I was one of the flag bearers in the playoffs coming into the tunnel and skating around with the flag. Tons of memories in a Red Wings jersey as a kid going to games. It’s just extremely exciting for me and my family.”

…

Merrill’s memories of Michigan are endless, he said.

“As a kid, as a pro hockey player even, I always told myself if the opportunity to play for the Red Wings ever came up, I would jump at it,” Merrill said. “To see them call right away today, it was an honor, and it was a real easy decision for me.”

Continued

The only real loss I suffered due to the crashing of GAMERA, my beloved old laptop, was my extensive selection of hockey bookmarks on Firefox. I had thousands of websites and Twitter handles bookmarked from leagues and teams and press sources all around the world, and not having those sources of knowledge at my fingertips is both depressing and frustrating.

If you guys and gals have good sets of hockey bookmarks, be they of NHL scribes and local newspapers or good links to Russian and Swedish newspapers, please, please, please let me know via comments or email at rtxg@yahoo.com.

Thankfully, in terms of prospects, at least, Red Wings Prospects on Twitter is on the case tracking our Wings’ young players, and I’m leaning on him heavily as I slowly but surely rebuild and renovate.

Today was a busy day for the Wings’ Finnish-playing prospects. In the Finnish Liiga:

Victor Brattstrom stopped 18 of 19 shots in KooKoo’s 3-1 win over JYP;

Jared McIsaac’s HPK lost 3-1 to Lukko without the Canadian defenseman, who has a hand injury;

Kasper Kotkansalo played 20:04 and Otto Kivenmaki scored a goal, playing 12:53 in Assat Pori’s 3-2 win over a team known as “Sport.” Here’s C More’s clip of Kivenmaki’s goal:

#Liiga
– Kivenmäki 1+0, +1, 1 SOG, 2 PIM, 12:53 ice time & Kotkansalo 0+0, +/- 0, 2 SOG, 20:04 ice time in a 3-2 win
– Viro 0+2, +3, 2 SOG, 17:32 ice time in a 4-3 OT win
– Brattström 18/19 saves in a 3-1 win
#LGRW pic.twitter.com/mwuAnCFdVl

— Red Wings Prospects (@DRWProspects) October 9, 2020

Eemil Viro had 2 assists and played 17:32 in TPS Turku’s 4-3 OT win over SaiPa;

Viro's first assist. #LGRW pic.twitter.com/2kZCRkTZNv

— Red Wings Prospects (@DRWProspects) October 9, 2020

And in the Swedish Allsvenskan, Gustav Berglund posted 1 assist and finished at +2 in 15:49 played Vasteras IK won 4-2 over Tyngsrids IF.

Red Wings prospect Moritz Seider arrived in Angelholm, Sweden to play for Rogle BK of the Swedish Hockey League, and he spoke with Rogle BK’s website for about 2-and-a-half minutes. I can’t embed the video, but you can watch it here.

Moritz will be playing for Rogle on Saturday.

The Toledo Blade’s Mark Monroe wrote a superb article regarding the ECHL’s decision to re-start the season in staggered fashion come January (for most teams), and Monroe spoke with Walleye coach Dan Watson, Walleye captain T.J. Hensick, Walleye forward Shane Berschbach and Walleye GM Neil Neukam regarding the ECHL’s attempts to come back with fans in the stands:

“It will be a season unlike any on record,” [Neukam] said. “We’re accepting of the fact that this season will be a financial challenge and because the team has and will incur financial losses, we hope that all of those who have supported the Walleye over the years will continue to do so during the upcoming season. We’ll need our fan support now more than ever before.”

Walleye captain T.J. Hensick, who is the team’s player rep with the PHPA, said there is general discontentment among the membership about the staggered approach.

“Frustration, disappointment,” Mr. Hensick said. “I think there are many hurdles in the way of starting and finishing a season. Personally, I think a staggered start is a joke.”

Mr. Hensick said he had hoped the Walleye would be able to start in December, but the players understand the connection between attendance and financial revenue.

“It’s the cards we’ve been dealt and all you can do is control what you can control,” he said. “I feel bad for the community too that we’re not having Winterfest.”

Here’s a video that popped up on my feed from the NHL Network. Bobby Ryan spoke with the gents from the network for 6-and-a-half minutes:

The Detroit Red Wings filled a couple of “holes” in the roster in the low-risk signings of Bobby Ryan and Jon Merrill today, but the Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan duly notes that the Wings are not done in terms of achieving their free agency roster-reinforcing goals:

“Obviously we still have some positions to fill that we will continue to pursue,” Yzerman said. “We still have some holes in our lineup we’re trying to address in free agency. If we’re not able to do that, we’ll kind of wait and see what other opportunities may come over the remainder of the offseason, depending on what some of the other teams do.”

The Wings need a goaltender to team with Jonathan Bernier, could use another defenseman, and another forward, so there is work to be done.

Yzerman was honest about the state of his team as far as free agency is concerned:

Continue reading Summarizing the beat writers’ takes on the Red Wings’ first day of free agency, 2020

Here’s the NHL Network discussing Bobby Ryan’s probable impact upon the Red Wings, for 3-and-a-half minutes: