Red Wings defenseman Mike Green, forward Anthony Mantha and coach Jeff Blashill spoke with the media during scrums at the Red Wings’ training camp on Saturday, and:
Mike Green discussed his return to health after neck surgery and his preparations for what he hopes will be an improved season:
Anthony Mantha talked about his hopes of playing on a fast line with Dylan Larkin and Tyler Bertuzzi, his inability to box this past summer and his non-decision regarding the shot blockers on his gloves:
Finally, Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill addressed his sleepy campers this morning, the chicken-or-egg game that is ice time vs. opportunity for Andreas Athanasiou, his hopes that AA and Thomas Vanek skate well together on the Wings’ third line, his take on tonight’s alumni game and much more over the course of an 11-minute interview:
Of Red Wings-related note from the early media availability at Centre ICE Arena:
1. Andreas Athanasiou discussed the ice time vs. opportunity debate while speaking with the media today, suggesting that he needs consistent ice time to play well…
2. And Red Wings prospect David Pope spoke about his high confidence level as he attempts to battle for a spot on the Wings’ roster:
He’s one of the all-time stand-up guys, always willing to face the questions after an ugly loss, offering no excuses. Zetterberg wouldn’t rip teammates, but when he said something forcefully, you knew it mattered. It certainly mattered to the team.
“He leaves a massive hole for a lot of reasons,” GM Ken Holland said. “Not only all those minutes (played), but when you’re trying to go younger, you need role models, and there was no better role model than Henrik Zetterberg. … On one hand, obviously it’s a massive downer. But on the other hand, as we move forward, there’s an opportunity for somebody in that locker room, from a leadership standpoint and time on the ice, to grab it.”
To grab it, you have to earn it, and that was what Zetterberg represented. No, he wasn’t as smooth as Lidstrom, or as gifted as Pavel Datsyuk, or as fast as others. Zetterberg had to work harder, as time passed and injuries mounted, to keep playing, and he did.
The Wings’ next captain might indeed be Larkin, although maybe not right away. He said he’s eager to take on more responsibilities but doesn’t need the “C” to do so, a mature stance in itself. Niklas Kronwall and Justin Abdelkader wear the “A” as alternate captains, and perhaps another will be added. Holland said he’d discuss it with Blashill, but it sounds like there might not be a captain this season, a symbol of how hard it is to earn, and how difficult Zetterberg will be to replace.
Lots of players endure pain, but Zetterberg also endured a pressure no Wings captain had for 25 years, missing the playoffs during a difficult (but necessary) rebuild.
I’m not quite sure where to post these, so here are the Red Wings’ videos of interviews with Thomas Vanek, Jonathan Bernier and Joe Hicketts, as well as coach Jeff Blashill…
Friday was by far the strangest, most surreal and plain old unusual day of training camp that I’ve ever experienced since first coming to Traverse City in 2010, and I must regrettably admit that it was one of the worst in terms of being able to actually watch players skate.
Instead, the 9:30 AM practice began with Ken Holland announcing that Henrik Zetterberg would no longer play, and Zetterberg himself confirming the news, for about 25 minutes. Watching one of your favorite all-time Wings essentially retire in front of you is weird enough; witnessing that happen while there’s hockey going on in the other rink is…well that’s just hard.
I was able to gather glimpses and glimmers of Team Delvecchio, Team Lindsay and Team Howe skating through what were mostly dump-and-chase retrieval drills, I mean drills which focused on puck retrieval and breakout plays, as well as a little bit of Team Lindsay’s 5-1 victory over Team Howe in the daily scrimmage, but I’d be full of even more crap than usual if I were to suggest that I could give you full player assessments.
All in all, I was able to watch a fair bit of goaltending drills, I saw chunks of players in action between player media availabilities, and I at least got the flow of the scrimmage, but I usually take in excess of 10 pages of notes regarding a practice alone, and today, I took four pages of scribbled garble.
Henrik Zetterberg spoke with the assembled media at Centre ICE Arena early this morning, and shortly afterward, he spoke by phone with scribes from Sweden.
Zetterberg’s announcement hung over the first day of camp, but there was plenty of work to do nonetheless.
What impressed Wings coach Jeff Blashill was the intensity of the drills and scrimmages.
“The competitive level was extremely high,” Blashill said. “In each group there were guys who really competed. It was a good start.”
The Michael Rasmussen, Joe Veleno and Filip Zadina line received a good lesson overall Friday, scrimmaging after a rigorous 60-minute workout.
“It’s a hard scrimmage for those guys. They had practiced and there was a ton of battle stuff,” Blashill said. “But it’s a good lesson. You have to keep grinding, and they grounded it out and continued to do stuff. “
Two players, Martin Frk and Veleno, left the ice early and didn’t finish the practice session. Blashill had no immediate update, though he didn’t think either was serious.
“It wasn’t anything major but you never know,” Blashill said. “It’s the time of year where you have nagging stuff and you don’t want the nagging stuff to then turn into a long-term thing.”
What are the chances NHL players will opt-out themselves?
“It’s something that’s pretty real,” Red Wings forward Dylan Larkin said during the NHL/NHLPA Player Media Tour last week. “You see it in guys’ contracts; everyone’s preparing for a [work stoppage] with signing bonus money. I don’t think we’re very happy with the deal we got; we’re looking for more for ourselves. I think it’s very real but … I definitely don’t want that to happen. [I’m] pretty grateful for every day in the NHL, so I wouldn’t want to waste time being young and entering a prime age.”
Larkin, 22, signed a six-year, $30.5 million extension with the Winged Wheel this summer. He’s one of the rare all-star- calibre players to not get some sort of “lockout protection” in the form of a signing bonus for the 2020-21 season, which will paid out on July 1 before any work stoppage would go into effect.
According to CapFriendly.com, 78 players will collect $252 million in signing bonuses for 2020-21 to protect against potential lost wages. That might give you an indication as to what players (and agents) think about the likelihood of a work stoppage.
Updated repeatedly at 6:39 PM: Here are the stories available regarding Henrik Zetterberg’s decision to step away from hockey, on a source-by-source basis:
“For me, I’ve kind of been living this for a while,” Zetterberg said. “Starting in January last year I knew something was not quite right. I found a way to play through that season but kind of mid-summer here when we hoped it was going to get a little bit better and it kind of wasn’t. I went to see Dr. Camissa last week and got the final result and nothing really had changed, so that’s kind of when it kicked in.
“Obviously, it is emotional. It’s been 15 years here. Even though I knew I was on my last couple years, I wish that I could have played a little bit longer.”
Because the condition is degenerative, general manager Ken Holland said that there is no solution that would have allowed Zetterberg to safely continue to play.
“Part of the degenerative condition is significant arthritis,” Holland said. “Nothing can be done, no back surgery, no rehab, no more time off is going to have any positive impact. Obviously if he plays professional hockey, it’s going to accelerate the degeneration and if he does get a bad hit or something, then he’s risking a significant back surgery. Henrik has decided that his quality of life is more important than taking the risk of back surgery.”
Wakiji continues, and the Red Wings posted videos of Holland and Zetterberg’s pressers, as well as comments from Dylan Larkin and Niklas Kronwall:
Red Wings captain Henrik Zetterberg “stepped away from the game” today, which is a nice way of saying that he’s retired from hockey, but can’t formally retire because he’s going to go on the LTIR for the next three years.
For this observer and partisan Wings fan, being there in the first person to witness Holland and Zetterberg speak was…a little surreal.
First and foremost, Holland spoke, dropping the highly-anticipated bombshell that Zetterberg would no longer be able to play per recommendations from Wings team doctor Douglas Plagens and Dr. Frank Cammisa, who performed the discectomy on Zetterberg in 2014. Holland was as blunt and as brief as Holland can possibly be regarding the situation, and so, several feet away from me, the career of one of the most celebrated Wings ever drew to a close…
And then, in the bowels of a rink where cell phone coverage is spotty and the internet is up-and-down, Zetterberg himself came out, and a person who I admire as a human being first and a hockey player second did his best to keep things together while explaining why he’s stepping away from the game. There were more than a few moments when the corners of his mouth quivered from emotion, but the captain kept his cool, delivered a unified message, and that was that.
Except for me, that wasn’t that…I had to wrap my head around the finality of what had just taken place while covering the rest of training camp, watching the practices, peeking at the scrimmages and listening in and occasionally chiming in during the media availabilities that stretched from 9:30 until 3:30.
You probably know more right now about Henrik Zetterberg’s condition and comments than I do, and that’s very specifically because my marching orders come from you, and I was sent up here to cover all of training camp, not just part of it. That’s yielded a dearth of information that I wish I could have posted, but…I had to pay attention to the other 70-something players, too, and get in on the scrums to get good audio.
I’m sorry. I feel like I’ve failed by not being able to be behind the computer picking up Swedish stories and not being able to follow all the disparate threads at once. This was a weird day, and I’ll likely spend the vast majority of my afternoon and evening not writing, but reading and translating.
Training camp itself was fast-paced, hard-charging, and involved a lot of dump-and-chase recovery drills as the Wings’ players worked on their outlet and breakout passes and plays. I can tell you that wearing shot-blocking protection on the gloves is the new fad among the Wings’ players equipment-wise, and a couple of players have changed brands. I can tell you that Jonathan Bernier looks quite good at first glance, while Thomas Vanek is still slow, and some of the Walleye’s signings look like they mean business, as do the Griffins in attendance.
More on that later, I suppose, because the captain has stepped away…and I got to see it happen live, which was very, very strange.
