The Malik Report

Of Red Wings-related note this evening:

1. The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan filed an off-day notebook which discusses the team’s frustrating inconsistency as the Wings’ playoff hopes fade. Kulfan focuses on the comments that the Wings made after their 3-2 loss to the Bruins:

The Red Wings didn’t give the Bruins any pushback until the third period, and by then, it was too late.

“There are no moral victories,” forward Henrik Zetterberg said. “We have to be better from the start if we want to win games. We weren’t good enough.”

Continue reading Three Things: On ‘figuring it out,’ a review of Little Caesars Arena and a Red and White podcast

The Detroit News’s Gregg Krupa spoke with several Olympic hockey participants as part of an article mostly discussing the Michigan natives taking part in men’s and women’s hockey in PyeongChang, and it’s worth noting that Krupa snagged a couple of quotes from Pavel Datsyuk:

The Olympics will elevate Datsyuk’s august position in Russian hockey history. Only the former Red Wings defenseman Viacheslav Fetisov and Boris Mikhailov have been two-time captains of Russian or Soviet Olympic squads.

He is also, at 39, still the top player on the Russian team.

“It is a huge honor to play for your country in the Olympics,” Datsyuk said. “I am extremely honored. Life is complicated, and we cannot always control events or do everything we want to do. I always remember Detroit. It has a special place in my heart.

“I have left Detroit,” Datsyuk said. “But I never said good-bye.”

Continued

The Grand Rapids Griffins host the Manitoba Moose at 7:00 PM EST this evening, and ahead of tonight’s match-up, the Griffins posted a thorough game preview video:

The gents from Red Wings Brasil are some of the most passionate hockey fans out there, regardless of the the time, distance and language differences between Brazilian hockey fans and the league they follow.

Red Wings Brasil’s Flavio de Moura reached out to me asking me to post the following, as well as a superb PDF which summarizes why so many Brazilian sports fans love hockey:

Hockey is a niche sport in North America and TV ratings are low, That said, you can imagine how hard it is for us here. We got only ESPN broadcasting games with awful play-by-play and color commentaries (this part you can leave behind) So, we got together and created the hashtag #BrasilTemNHL (Brasil Has NHL) and we’re pounding it everyday. We wish to be noticed by the League somehow. Just to set a flag on our way to have proper transmission on TV/Web, by people who love the sport.

BrasilTemNHL-Release

No surprise here. MLive’s Scott DeCamp got the latest Vegas odds of the Wings making noise in the playoffs from Bovada.lv, and said odds are slim to none:

According to Bovada, the Red Wings’ already slim odds of accomplishing big things this season are slipping further away.

As of Jan. 2, the Red Wings’ chances of winning the Stanley Cup were at 150-to-1. As of Feb. 2, those odds were down to 200-to-1, per Bovada.

In that same, one-month time span, the Red Wings’ odds of winning the Eastern Conference have fallen from 66-to-1 to 75-to-1.

After their 3-2 home loss to the Boston Bruins Tuesday night, the Red Wings (21-23-8; 50 points) were sitting eight points behind Columbus and the New York Islanders and nine points behind Philadelphia in the Eastern Conference wild-card race. Detroit is tied with Montreal, and it’s chasing Florida, the New York Rangers and Carolina as well.

Well who knew that Friday’s game against the Islanders would be a “four-point affair?”

Of miscellaneous Red Wings, Grand Rapids Griffins and Toledo Walleye-related note, starting with a press release from the Grand Rapids Griffins:

Continue reading Miscellaneous items of note: On the Griffins’ IceHouse, Walleye’s Zombie Night and Wings contests/appearances

The Athletic’s Evan Sporer takes a “deep dive” into stats and video to discuss whether Andreas Athanasiou is better-used as a winger or center, and in case you didn’t see Athanasiou on the fourth line last night (and I sure didn’t as he was all but invisible), Sporer spends a tremendous amount of energy to come to a sensible conclusion:

By no means does playing him at center mean Athanasiou can’t get out on the rush, or use his speed to his advantage. Playing lower in the defensive zone that foot speed can be a tool, like on that sequence against the Bruins where he was able to apply puck support and get a clear. He certainly can apply pressure and take away time and space in that area of the ice, another beneficial skill.

But up to this point, what seems to be Athanasiou’s biggest strength is at the other end of the ice, and more specifically, his combination of speed and finishing ability.

It seems like he gets more opportunities to flex those muscles on the wing.

Continued (paywall), and Sporer’s analysis is worth your time…

Among Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman’s “31 Thoughts“:

2. . Trade that might make sense only to me: something around Justin Faulk from Carolina to Detroit for Andreas Athanasiou.

It doesn’t make sense to me. Athanasiou’s ceiling is still high, and the Wings don’t appear to want to move him…yet, anyway.

Update: To make this work cap-wise, the Wings would have to send a defenseman to Carolina as well. Per CapFriendly, Faulk earns $4.83 million dollars per season through 20-21, while Athanasiou is a restricted free agent after this season, with a $1.387 million cap hit.

In the late-breaking recap department, the Free Press’s Helene St. James penned a Wings-Bruins recap that didn’t hit until 10 AM…

The Wings didn’t use their speed, didn’t forecheck, didn’t do much to bother Boston goaltender Tuukka Rask for two periods, beyond Martin Frk scoring a power-play goal early in the second period.

“We are not ready,” Frk said. “The whole game we are kind of sloppy. We didn’t show up here.”

Frustration simmers because when the Wings do show up — as they did last week against San Jose and in Carolina — they are often rewarded with points. And yet the Wings keep following up strong performances with soft ones. At the 52-game mark, the Wings are eight points from a playoff spot, but with four teams ahead of them.

“It’s frustrating and I really don’t have an answer,” Nielsen said. “Soon it is going to be too late if we don’t figure it out. If we play two good games again now and we stand here some time next week and you ask the same questions, it’s going to be too late. We have to figure it out now.”

And MLive’s Ansar Khan noted the coach’s frustration with his players in a 6 AM-filed piece:

“We had 20 guys going hard (the past three games) and tonight we had a handful of guys going hard,” Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill said. “We weren’t good enough. We didn’t have enough guys going hard.

“We got to be better than that. You got to be way more ready to compete. … It’s a learning process for sure, especially with some young guys. It’s an every-day league.”

Blashill didn’t single out anybody but clearly was referring to young players. Andreas Athanasiou and Anthony Mantha, in particular, have had exceptional performances but have also been no-shows too many times. On this night, when the Red Wings needed their best players to step up against the hottest team in the league, Athanasiou had no points, no shots on goal and was a minus-2 in 10:57 while Mantha had no points and two shots in 17:18.

“I want these young guys to grow, so I don’t want to hide them, but they got to play better than that,” Blashill said, without naming anybody.

In the ECHL, the Toledo Walleye got 2 goals from Connor Crisp, 3 assists from David Obuchowski and 2 assists from Davis Vandane during a 6-2 win over the Wheeling Nailers. The Walleye’s website posted a recap:

Continue reading Prospect round-up: Walleye win big over Nailers; Sulak scores a goal; Griffins weekly press release available