The Malik Report

The Free Press’s Helene St. James examines the Red Wings’ best and worst free agent signings since 1998 this morning. This story parallels St. James’ article regarding the 11 best and 11 worst draft picks since 2008.

I prefer to accentuate the positive, so let’s examine St. James’ “bests“:

1. D Brian Rafalski

Signed: 2007 (5 years, $30 million)

A master at tape-to-tape passes, Rafalski produced 204 points in 292 regular-season games and 40 points in 63 playoff games before retiring early because of injuries.

2. F Brett Hull

Signed: 2001 (2 years, $9 million)

He scored 30 goals his first season and led the star-studded 2002 playoff team with 10 goals while forming the “two kids and a goat” line with Pavel Datsyuk and Boyd Devereaux. Hull ended up staying three seasons, leading the team with 207 points in 245 regular-season games and fourth with 24 points in 39 playoff games. 

3. G Chris Osgood

Signed: 2005 (1 year, $800,000)

Lost on waivers in 2001 after the trade for Dominik Hasek, the Wings brought back Osgood and he ended up staying five seasons. He took over for a struggling Hasek in the 2008 playoffs and backstopped the Wings to the Stanley Cup, and did what he could to help defend it, going 15-8 with a .926 save percentage in the 2009 playoffs. 

She continues at length, and I suppose you could consider this a solid critique of Ken Holland’s regime as Holland mostly made moves via the free agent marketplace.

NHL.com’s Dave Hogg penned a profile of Red Wings prospect and 2019 2nd round draft pick Antti Tuomisto, a “big and heavy” Finnish defenseman who may provide superb depth for the Wings in a couple of seasons:

“He’s a big guy who can certainly fill out and he’s a very good skater who plays with a natural bite,” Red Wings director of European scouting Hakan Andersson said. “He’s physical and he has a real good shot.”

After attending rookie and training camps in the fall, Tuomisto will head back to Finland for what he expects to be one more season with Assat. In 2020-21, though, he plans to be playing college hockey in the United States.

“It’s good hockey,” he said. “It is North American hockey and there’s an education on the side, which is a bonus for me. It is a good route, and that’s the right fit for me.”

A year in college will also give Tuomisto time to acclimate to the smaller rinks in North America, something he hadn’t seen until development camp.

“I just need to learn,” he said. “I have to keep educating myself.”

Continued

Right, so yesterday afternoon, I posted an explanation of where The Malik Report goes next from a planning perspective.

Over the past couple of days, I’ve received some well-meaning comments, some from those who are in the community and some from those who are not.

Their suggestion was a simple one, and it’s one that’s been echoed repeatedly: “Dude, the best way to fund your blog is to get a part-time job.”

This is obviously a good suggestion, and in a perfect world, I would be getting paid for doing a part-time job and I would not have to worry about the fact that this blog doesn’t make enough for me to keep my health insurance starting next year (as Michigan is establishing a work requirement for Medicaid recipients at approximately $750 a month in wages, or the equivalent to 20 hours a week of minimum wage work).

The problem is that this is not an ideal world, and the truth of the matter is that I have two part-time jobs. Their names are Anne and Mary Catherine, a.k.a. taking care of my 77-year-old aunt and my 69-year-old mom. My aunt has approximately 10 auto-immune disorders, and my mom has enough chronic health issues that we spend a fair portion of our time ferrying her to doctor’s appointments. Neither of them drive, neither of them do errands, and they both need my help on a daily basis.

It’s not that I don’t want to work or something. The problem is that I DO work, I just don’t get paid for it, and that’s why we’re trying to get my aunt signed up for Medicaid as well so that I can officially become her caregiver, and possibly get paid for doing the jobs I already do inside and outside the house.

So yes, I do hang onto the belief that, between Paypal donations and Patreon content, I will be able to make $750 a month and keep the blog going. I do so because I am optimistic, and because the concept of getting a part-time job to fund the job is simply not possible at this point because I am a full-time caregiver of two elderly ladies that I care about very much.

I’m not going to quit on them, so that means getting creative not wanting to quit this. So it’s https://paypal.me/TheMalikReport and https://patreon.com/TheMalikReport for now, with (hopefully) more to come.

Given that the St. Louis Blues have very few Michigan ties, the Stanley Cup’s visit to Sarnia, Ontario on Friday may be the closest Stanley gets to Detroit this summer.

The Sarnia Journal has the details of the Cup’s public appearance schedule on Friday:

Hockey’s greatest prize will be on display at Limbo Lounge on Friday, July 26 thanks to a pair of Sarnia natives, St. Louis Blues GM Doug Armstrong and amateur scout Dan Ginnell.

Clinton, Ont. native Ryan O’Reilly is also bringing the Conn Smythe Trophy he won as the playoff’s most valuable player.

…

The trophies will be on hand at 196 Christina St. North from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.

All are welcome. Photos with the cup are $5. All proceeds support Sarnia minor hockey. For more call the Sarnia Sting Box Office at 519-541-1717 or Limbo Lounge at 519-344-6037.

Red Wings prospect Jesper Eliasson engaged in a lengthy conversation with Hockeysverige.se’s Rasmus Kagstrom, discussing his past season with the Vaxjo Lakers’ Under-20 team, his campaign to come with Almtuna of the Swedish Allsvenskan (the league directly below the SHL) and his hopes regarding playing for Sweden at the World Junior Championship in December.

What follows is roughly translated:

Continue reading Roughly Translated: Goaltender Jesper Eliasson prepares for upcoming season, aims to play in World Junior Championship

The Grand Rapids Griffins have been posting player highlight reels from the 2018-19 season throughout the summer, and today, they focus on a big part of the Red Wings’ future in one Filip Hronek:

I’ve been hemming and hawing regarding this post for a couple of days now, mostly because I don’t like talking money, but here’s the TMR situation as we hit late July:

1. The prospect tournament and training camp are going to be held as early as they can be held his season, and as a result, I’m starting the fundraising drive for the events today. I don’t have the luxury of waiting till mid-August to make most of the money before I go and then earn the rest while I’m there–mom’s illnesses drained my bank account, so it’s time to get ‘er going. https://paypal.me/TheMalikReport is the Paypal link, https://patreon.com/TheMalikReport is the Patreon subscription link, you can email me directly for my addy at rtxg@yahoo.com, and I will add more services as necessary.
2. This year I’m also going to have to raise funds for the server costs. On August 31st, I get a bill for about $700 for the year for the various WordPress server costs, and for the past two years (yes, TMR was once a “secret blog”), I’ve eaten the costs, but the familial stuff means that it’s gonna be a raise-2K-for-TC + $700 for the server situation. That’s ambitious.
3. Just as importantly, I may end up going to the World Junior Summer Showcase in Plymouth, for which I would not raise funds, but I still may end up going on my annual family vacation to Grand Marais, MI, and that’s scheduled for the same week. If I could commute to Plymouth, I would, but that’s an 800-mile round trip, so that’s not possible.
4. I’m gonna be blunt about the whole draft analysis thing that didn’t happen but might still happen: I do pay attention to the comments, and the suggestions that I couldn’t possibly offer an remotely objective draft analysis was discouraging. Combine that with some health setbacks in the family department and I didn’t have the time or motivation to get shit done there, and now I’m reconsidering it. Let me know if that has any interest to you, because next week will be busy assuming that I’m going on vacation, but not too busy to write five draft analyses.
5. Raising funds long-term, which is going to be the key to this site’s survival, means motivating readers to buy something. That includes more original content, that includes merchandising–so if you want to make some money designing some t-shirts or hats or mugs or pillowcases or whatever and getting a cut thereof, send me an email at rtxg@yahoo.com–and yes, there is a more eventual goal of paying someone a nice chunk of change to redesign the website.
6. So that’s that for now. If you have some constructive suggestions as to how to make TMR better for you (for example: I find the podcasting world to be too crowded to enter, but you may not, especially if the podcast includes TMR readers like you), I am open to suggestions. This blog is small, and it may always be small, but there is a positive to that in that the community members play a big part in the present and future of the blog and the blogger.
7. Thank you for reading. I hope that you are staying as cool as possible in this oppressive summer heat.

The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan spoke with Red Wings defenseman Danny DeKeyser regarding the process involved in DeKeyser earning his general studies degree from Western Michigan via an extended study program. DeKeyser tells Kulfan that the past three years’ worth of work were inspired by his family, his wife, and a teammate and coach:

DeKeyser credits Wings teammate Justin Abdelkader, who went back to completed his degree from Michigan State about three years ago, with getting DeKeyser kick-started.

“I remember talking to him about it and not long after that, I kind of started taking my classes again,” DeKeyser said. “Seeing him do it definitely pushed me to get mine finished up. We had both played three years (in college) and had a year left. That gave me motivation.”

DeKeyser also credited former assistant coach Tony Granato, who earned his degree from Wisconsin before taking over as the Badgers’ head coach in 2016.

“That was pretty cool, and I thought about if I would want to coach college hockey one day, or something like that, I would need to complete the degree, and now I have it,” DeKeyser said.

Much of DeKeyser’s family, and many of his friends, were in attendance his graduation day. DeKeyser is a native on Macomb.

“A big group that day, it was fun,” DeKeyser said. “We went to lunch afterward and headed back to the East Side (Macomb County) and had a graduation party the next day. The whole shebang.”

Continued

According to Illegal Curve’s Dave Minuk, former Red Wings chief amateur scout Jeff Finley has found a new home:

With the announcement that Marcel Comeau was retiring after the conclusion of the 2019 NHL Draft there were a pair of big shoes to fill in the organization.  Comeau began as a scout with the Atlanta Thrashers, became Director of amateur scouting in 2003 and continued in that capacity for the Jets when they moved to Winnipeg until 2015 when he stepped down but continued to work in a scouting capacity.

Today the team announced that they hired Jeff Finley as Comeau’s replacement.  Finley has spent the past seven seasons in the Red Wings organization amateur scouting department which included being their chief scout for the last three seasons.  Folks around here may remember Finley as a member of the Winnipeg Jets 1.0 in the lame duck season before the team relocated to Arizona.

Of disparate hockey-related note this afternoon:

1. According to the Cadillac News’s Rick Charmoli, Kraft and the NHLPA have given Cadillac, MI $20,000 to help the 2nd-place town in the Kraft Hockeyville USA competition to improve their facility and purchase equipment for young players:

After being named one of the four finalists this past spring, the Wex and its supporters celebrated finishing in second place for the Kraft Hockeyville USA 2019 competition by hosting a barbecue Thursday.

 At the event, Shopper Marketing Analyst at The Kraft Heinz Company Emily Kosmin was in Cadillac to deliver a check for $10,000 to the facility for the second-place finish.  Kraft’s Hockeyville was in its fifth year of providing finances to ice rinks across the nation through a social media nomination and polling process. 

  During the competition, residents of a community are asked to submit photos, videos and stories as to why their local ice rink is so important to them. It was those submissions that led to the Wex becoming a finalist.

   Cadillac Area Visitors Bureau Joy Van Drie said the donation is special because it infuses dollars from outside the area into the community that will support the community. In addition to the $10,000 to be used toward the facility, the National Hockey League Players’ Association also donated $10,000 to be used toward equipment purchases for the youth hockey programs in Cadillac as part of its Goals and Dreams fund.

2. Also, in the Red Wings alumni category, Eishockeynews.de reports that former Wing and Grand Rapids Griffins forward Mitch Callahan has signed a one-year deal with the Augsburger Panther of the DEL.