Kaden Fulcher, G, Hamilton Bulldogs (OHL): The Bulldogs have blown their way past Kingston in the first three games of the Eastern Conference final, with Fulcher allowing just four goals in the series so far. After getting passed over in the draft, Fulcher signed with the Detroit Red Wings and the big netminder has cut a lot of the noise out of his game, particularly in the playoffs. NHL arrival: 2021-22
In the OHL, Givani Smith finished even with 6 shots as his Kitchener Rangers won 3-0 over the Sault Ste. Marie Greyounds.
Jordan Sambrook finished at -1 with 2 shots for Sault Ste. Marie, which leads the Ontario Hockey League’s Western Conference Final 2 games to 1, and you can watch highlights of the game here;
In the WHL, well…it’s hard to tell that it’s the WHL, given the way that the Tri-City Americans are scoring and surrendering goals.
Michael Rasmussen scored 2 goals and added an assist (including a 4-4, game-tying goal in the 3rd period) on Monday night, but Tri-City collapsed, losing 8-4 to the Everett Silvertips.
Everett leads the Western Hockey League’s Western Conference Final 2 games to 1, and Rasmussen has 14 goals, 15 assists and 29 points registered over the course of 14 playoff games.
Here are Rasmussen’s goals, per the WHL on Twitter:
I have rarely worried about sharing something in my chosen profession as something of a professional news gatherer/recycler/regurgitator. The Grand Rapids Griffins shared an unlisted 13-minute video chronicling the Griffins’ “Road to the NHL,” and I’m worried about the fact that it is unlisted, but this is too good not to share.
Eric Zane narrates this documentary of some of the Grand Rapids Griffins’ 2011-2012 season’s top players, prospects and mentors, and some six years after the video’s publication, it’s a bit sobering to realize how few players actually made the NHL and stuck there.
It’s a good reminder that the dream of making the NHL is elusive, and that player drafting and developing is far from an exact science:
Not everybody makes it, and not everybody sticks.
If you look at the 2011-2012 Grand Rapids Griffins’ roster, Tomas Tatar, Gustav Nyquist, Brendan Smith and Riley Sheahan are NHL’ers, but only one is with the Wings, and Brian Lashoff and Tom McCollum are still members of the Griffins.
The Griffins’ Swedes are back in Sweden, and the split between alumni who are AHL’ers, European pros or are plain old retired from the game and doing other things with their lives (Willie Coetzee, for example, runs a fitness studio in British Columbia).
Lesson lesson: the reason the Red Wings amassed 11 NHL draft picks last year, 11 picks this year, and had prospects playing on 26 various teams around the world this past season is because drafting and developing is hard work and a massive investment of time, money and energy.
If all of Evgeny Svechnikov, Joe Hicketts, Filip Hronek, Vili Saarijarvi, Filip Hronek, Dominik Turgeon, Axel Holmstrom and Tyler Bertuzzi (arguably the Griffins’ best NHL prospects), it’ll be a frickin’ miracle.
That doesn’t mean that I’m going to cover them with any less enthusiasm this week, and it doesn’t mean that I won’t root for them any less than I already do (and if you spend a lot of time following the Wings’ prospects, you root for all of ’em…
But the reality is that it’s a low-results business at the best of times, and you have to hope against hope that the Wings’ 22 draft picks over the past and this NHL draft turn into 1 or 2 stars and another 3-5 roster players. Add in the Wings’ current prospect corps, and you hope that there’s half a roster over the next 5-8 years.
Anyway, watch the video and give the Griffins credit, because they, like the Red Wings above them, treat every player like they are equally likely to become an NHL star, and that takes guts.
The Toledo Walleye have joined the cavalcade of teams honoring the Humboldt Broncos by wearing helmet decals honoring the players involved in the Saskatchewan bus crash, and the Toledo Blade’s Mark Monroe reports that the Walleye have put their money where their mouth is, too:
The Walleye organization held a moment of silence in honor of the crash victims before its April 13 first-round home playoff game against Indy. The team also raised $6,040 through a jersey auction that night, and upped its total donation to the Broncos to $10,000 through the Walleye Wishing Well charity fund.
Toledo coach Dan Watson said the tragedy hit home because the bus often is looked upon in the sport as a safe haven, a place to rest and build camaraderie.
“The best part of being on a team is traveling. We spend a lot of time on the road and on the bus with overnights, so for that to happen is an absolute tragedy,” Watson said. “It’s one of those things you don’t ever want to hear.”
Watson said he has not been surprised at the outpouring of support from the hockey community, including the stickers the Walleye players are wearing.
“We can’t even begin to imagine what they are going through,” Watson said. “So anything we can do to show our support we will try to do. The tragedy obviously hits close to home with the amount of travel and bus time we have. The hockey community is extremely tight.”
Good idea, via Twitter: if you sign up for the event, you might want to ask the folks in attendance if the ice is going to be better for the players next year…can’t hurt to ask.
Alex Howard’s journey to the driver’s seat of a Zamboni at the Huntington Center started at a baseball game, of all places.
She was a fan chosen for a promotion during a Toledo Mud Hens game, and she enjoyed her time so much, she asked to be a part of the crew. She was hired in as a member of the Pond Patrol for Toledo Walleye games. Then last December, an opening came up on the ice crew, and now here she is, working during Walleye games, change over for concerts and other events, and training to drive the Zamboni.
“It worked out really well,” Miss Howard said. “It’s been kind of wild. … It lined up perfectly.”
As simple and unlikely as that path sounds, there’s obviously more to the story. While she’s not the first female member of the ice crew, she’s the first female to be trained to drive the Zamboni at the Huntington Center, according to Jesus Rivera, operations manager for SMG, which owns the arena.
If I do end up writing Red Wings report cards, Justin Abdelkader would have to lean hard on my version of a “curve”–throwing out the fact that he’s signed to a ridiculous 4-year deal at $4.25 million per season–to get a passing grade, because there’s just no way that Abdelkader, 31, could possibly earn that salary without becoming a 20-goal-scorer.
All of that being said, I genuinely believe that Abdelkader’s 2017-18 campaign was his best in terms of consistency, effort and positive effects upon the Wings’ game both on and off the ice. He’s adjusted to the weight of the alternate captain’s “A” on his jersey, and more nights than not, he’s the Wings’ only physical presence in front of the net.
When he was placed on a checking line with Frans Nielsen and Darren Helm, the trio was competent–and again, ridiculously-compensated–but still competent as a shut-down line.
All in all, I’ve got few complaints with Abdelkader’s play, and as the Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan notes, for better or worse, Abdelkader is going to form part of the Wings’ leadership core going forward:
Abdelkader rebounded from a disappointing 2016-17 season in which he only played 64 games due to injuries, posting a career-low (for a non-lockout season) 21 points, with only seven goals and 14 assists.
Abdelkader had 35 points (13 goals, 22 assists) in 75 games this season, with four power-play goals (and nine points), and played in a variety of roles.
Always a physical player, Abdelkader was credited with a team-high 174 hits.
“That’s probably his greatest strength, the ability to play in a lot of different situations,” coach Jeff Blashill said. “He can play in a shutdown role. He can be a complementary winger. A net-front presence. He brings physicality. He’s got good skill, he can play the power play. He can penalty kill. He definitely has that type of versatility and that’s important to have on a team.”
Going forward, as Blashill and his coaching staff incorporate a more pronounced hard-charging, north-south, forechecking style of play into the Red Wings’ style, a player such as Abelkader will become increasingly valuable.
The Red Wings became that kind of team, gradually, this season, and Abdelkader sensed that from the Red Wings, and many other teams around the NHL.
“The game is changing, for sure,” Abdelkader said. “Most teams are playing that north-south game, so you have to be to be skating, forechecking, and getting pucks back. We’ve done a pretty good job, but you have to make sure you’re being strong at those lines, especially your defensive blue line and their offensive blue line. You have to make sure you’re not turning pucks over.”
Kulfan continues, and again, Abdelkader is one of the Wings’ players for whom compensation is above-market-value, but he is at least trying to give the Wings bang for their buck, and for that, I give him due credit.
FYI:
Justin Abdelkader has been named as the #RedWings King Clancy Memorial Trophy Nominee for his accomplishments in the community.
Daniel Cleary will know before anyone else with the Detroit Red Wings if they get lucky.
Cleary, the Red Wings’ player development assistant, will be the Wings man in the room Saturday in Toronto when the NHL holds the draft lottery to determine where this year’s non-playoff teams will pick in the first round of June’s draft. Cleary, along with other teams’ lottery witnesses, will not have any means of communication and will be sequestered until the news is revealed while televised (time TBD).
General manger Ken Holland will be the Wings’ representative during the TV show. The expected format is NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly first will announce the teams that pick from 15th to sixth, then taking a break before coming back to announce which team picks fifth, then fourth, then third, then first.
1. According to TSN, Gustav Nyquist will not be playing for Sweden at the World Championship, and the Swedish Ice Hockey Federation announced that Henrik Zetterberg, Niklas Kronwall and Jonathan Ericsson declined invites to join the Swedish Worlds team;
Update: But a Twitter follower says that the Nyquist situation is different:
Nyquist will play for Sweden at WC, thats confirmed by the management. This roaster is just for the tournament Sweden hockey games. When the WC starts Nyquist, Rakell and Hampus Lindholm will be added. Hopefully also Landeskog
The No. 1 adjustment for them this summer should be to find a way to create more offensive zone possession time. Starting with their entires, they can make adjustments to enter as a unit instead of always attacking as individuals. There are far more inverted/even entries each game, so instead of trying to beat two defenders solo, the best course of action would be to delay and hit the second wave of attack or use more releases behind the net to players without the puck who are finishing their routes.
Better decisions on entry will lead to more offensive zone possession time. The alternative is turning the puck over or chipping the puck deep and having to work to go and get it back.
Defenseman Joe Hicketts, a free-agent signing, has two assists. He impressed with his energetic play during five games with Detroit this past season.
Svechnikov, the Wings’ first-round draft pick from 2015, struggled in his second season of pro hockey, with 23 points in 57 games (he reached 20 goals as a rookie, among 51 points in 74 games in 2016-17). He had two goals among four points in 14 games with the Wings this season.
4. And in something of a complement to the recaps and round-ups of the Griffins’ 5-1 win over the Moose yesterday, the Griffins posted a clip of post-game interviews:
Red Wings fans will anxiously await the results of this upcoming Saturday’s draft lottery, and ahead of the big event (which takes place at 8 PM EDT on NBC on Saturday the 28th), even though the Wings only have an 8.5% chance of earning the top pick and a 26.1% chance of earning a top-three pick.
5. Evan Bouchard: Defenseman, 6-foot-2, 193 pounds. Shoots: Right Team: London (OHL) Stats: GP-67 G-25 Pts-87
An extremely intelligent player, Bouchard is a natural as a puck-moving defenseman. His strong passing ability is a boon to the transition game and he is exceptional at quarterbacking the power play.
6. Adam Boqvist: Defenseman, 5-foot-11, 170 pounds. Shoots: Right Team: Brynas (SWE J20) Stats: GP-25 G-14 Pts-24
Playing in the shadow of Dahlin, Boqvist is also a skilled blueliner who possesses outstanding vision and playmaking ability. He plays bigger than his size and many scouts feel he is just beginning to tap into his lofty talent level.
