Joe Veleno and Christian Fischer check in with their new employers

Former Red Wings Joe Veleno and Christian Fischer appeared for the first time with their respective new employers on Saturday, with Veleno playing in Chicago’s 3-2 overtime loss to Nashville, and Fischer preparing for a road game in which the Blue Jackets will play against the New York Rangers on Sunday evening.

After his game, Veleno checked in with the The Athletic’s Mark Lazerus regarding his status as going to a rebuilding team to take on a bigger opportunity to play regularly…

“Obviously, playing meaningful hockey gets a little bit more intense,” said Veleno, the newest Blackhawks forward. “When you’re not playing for anything — well, I wouldn’t say ‘for anything,’ but when you’re not playing for a playoff spot, it’s not as intense. The games aren’t as intense. You probably don’t have the same feeling in the locker room and all that.”

Still, Veleno told Lazerus that he’s happy to be joining a new team with the opportunity to re-set his career at 25 years of age…

“The beginning of the season didn’t go as well as I’d like in terms of production and ice time and the way that I wanted to play,” he said. “I thought I’d have a good opportunity there, but things weren’t working out. I couldn’t really tell you why. But everything involved with the coaching change (Todd McLellan replacing Derek Lalonde right after Christmas) and all that stuff — just couldn’t find a real groove to the year, didn’t feel too good about my game, getting out of the lineup a little bit and having to deal with that. Just a lot going on. I thought another opportunity somewhere else (could be good) and see what that brings.”

Life in general, and hockey in particular, is a series of contradictions, and Veleno embodies that as well as anyone. He went from a playoff hunt to the top of the draft lottery, but it might be the best thing for him. At 25, he’s too old to be considered a prospect but too young to be considered a comfortably entrenched veteran. Even the start of his Blackhawks career is a bit confounding. He gets nine days on the road to get to know his new team but doesn’t get a chance to get his bearings in his new home of Chicago, where he’s signed through the end of next season.

Again, it’s a lot to process.

“I don’t like to think of myself as an old guy … but it does happen fast,” he said. “Just that age where you’re not really a young guy but not necessarily an old guy. Just trying to bring whatever I’ve learned with the Wings and that experience, and try to mold that into the younger group that’s over here as best as I can. Especially being a really, really young team. I’m just really excited.”

The Chicago Sun-Times’ Ben Pope offered a scouting report on Veleno…

Continue reading Joe Veleno and Christian Fischer check in with their new employers

Getting ready for the next challenge

The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan filed a day-after-the-game column discussing the Red Wings’ state of mind after the trade deadline and the team’s 5th consecutive loss, a 5-2 defeat at the hands of the Washington Capitals on Friday.

Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin was blunt in addressing both issues:

“The message is the message” captain Dylan Larkin said after Friday’s defeat. “We didn’t do a whole lot (trade-wise), but it’s also hard. It’s honestly been hard to follow because of our game and the back-to-back (games). You look at it, you look at what’s going on around the league, and it’s pretty wild with all the big teams loading up. It is what it is right now. We’ve got a group in here that we believe can win, and we just got to start doing it.”

Along with the Wings’ five-game losing streak, they’ve only won twice in the last nine games (2-6-1) and they desperately need to win to change course quickly. Monday’s game in Ottawa, which is just above Detroit in the standings, is obviously huge. But at this juncture, the Wings just need a victory against anyone.

“We just got to get a win, get off the schneid, find a way to win and then continue to find ways to win, not find ways to lose,” Larkin said. “We’re not scoring enough. We’ve got to get to the hard areas.”

With all the losing, the Wings’ confidence appears to be a bit shaken.

“Absolutely it is,” Larkin said. “That’s why I continue to say, ‘Just find a way to win a hockey game.’ It’s not going to get any easier down the stretch with our schedule. You can’t waste good starts like that (Friday) and Talbs (goaltender Cam Talbot) played really well. We just turned the puck over and he had two-on-ones and breakaways coming at him. It’s unacceptable.”

The Red Wings still have the toughest remaining schedule in terms of quality off competition, but even after a meager trade deadline performance, coach Todd McLellan told Kulfan that the Wings will look to Petr Mrazek and Craig Smith to bring a spark to the team…

“I haven’t even talked to the players yet personally,” McLellan said. “They’re both older guys. I would imagine they probably have families that they have to get situated in Chicago or else get them to Detroit. So, that’s the first thing we’re going to do. Then, we’ll sit down with them and explain how we’re going to use them and then we’ll practice. Sometimes that injection of new bodies can bring a lot of energy to a hockey club and I’m hoping that happens in this case.”

Or, as Patrick Kane put it:

“A lot of that stuff is out of our control,” forward Patrick Kane said. “We kind of focus on what we’re doing on the ice. We haven’t been playing as well lately. We’ve played well some games even though we’ve lost. They (Mrazek, Smith) are valuable pieces that we added to our team. Nineteen games left in the year, we have no choice, we have to get ready for the next one.”

Oof

Detroit Hockey Now’s Kevin Allen quantifies the numbers behind the Red Wings’ 5-game losing streak, and the numbers aren’t pretty:

It’s difficult to know whether it’s Detroit’s defensive sloppiness or its offensive inefficiency that is causing them to nosedive out of the playoff contention. Over the past 10 games, the Red Wings have given up four or more goals eight times. They have given up 4.1 goals per game in that span. During their current five-game losing streak, they have scored two or fewer goals four times. They are averaging 2.0 goals per game during this slump. Trade acquistions Petr Mrazek and Craig Smith will practice with the team for the first time Sunday. Detroit’s next game is Monday in Ottawa (7 p.m., FanDuel Sports Network)

Continued; it’s been tough all over for the Wings over the last 5 games, and I’m not necessarily surprised that they suffered a Stadium Series let-down after dropping those back-to-back games to Columbus on the big stage.

But it’s time for the Wings to get their heads out of their hockey pants and reset and regroup now, and that starts tomorrow at practice.

With confidence in short supply, the Red Wings rest today, and will regroup tomorrow

The Hockey News’s Sam Stockton wrote an article entitled “deja vu now unavoidable” after the Red Wings’ 5-2 loss to the Washington Capitals last night, in which Stockton discusses that sinking feeling that this year’s Red Wings are engaging in the same down-the-stretch collapse that doomed their playoff push a year ago at this time.

That’s true, but as the Red Wings attempt to reset themselves amidst a 5-game losing streak, with a near-must-win game against Ottawa looming on Monday, I liked what coach Todd McLellan had to say about the team’s level of confidence post-game, as noted by Stockton:

“We didn’t go to the mall and lose our confidence,” coach Todd McLellan told reporters, when asked about his team’s confidence.  “It doesn’t fall out of your pocket.  You tend to gain it and then you give it back as a group, so if we’re talking like that, we have to look at each other or look at ourselves and figure out what we can do better individually and collectively.  We need to have a real good practice on Sunday, and we need to go to Ottawa, and we’re gonna play a real hard game there.  They’re a real good hockey club right now, playing good hockey.  That’s the way it should be at this time of the year.  It’s hard at this time of the year, and our guys are learning that.”

The Wings took today off as the team played 3 games over the course of the 4 previous days and nights, and as the Wings will now play every other day for a total of 5 games over 9 nights starting on Monday, the team and the coaching staff alike needed to rest, recover, and reset mentally as they nurse their mental and physical bruises (and, by this time of the year, everybody is nursing some sort of minor injury).

Detroit will return to the ice at Little Caesars Arena tomorrow, and the team and the coaching staff will attempt to stop the bleeding. It’s not an ideal situation to be in, but this is a team with a younger core than last year’s, which is learning the hard way–by making mistakes–and in hockey, learning by making mistakes means that the puck ends up in the back of your net too often.

Yes, the Red Wings can get better goaltending, play better defense, score more 5-on-5 and on the power play, and play more consistently over the course of 20-minute periods and 60-minute games.

But they’ve gotta take it a day at a time, a game at a time, a period at a time and a shift at a time, just like the rest of us, doing their best to improve as they are able.

We are where we are at, so dealing with reality is part of our job description right now.

My take on the Wings’ trade deadline performance, and the state of the rebuild

There’s a fair amount of criticism of Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman’s lateral trade made at the 2025 trade deadline (in adding 35-year-old forward Craig Smith and 33-year-old goaltender Petr Mrazek from Chicago, in exchange for Joe Veleno) being levied today…

But there’s a lot of crap out there about the so-called “Yzerplan’s” presumptive failure given the Red Wings management group’s continued risk-averse rebuilding plan, too.

I’ll readily admit that, as a Wings partisan, I was underwhelmed with and slightly confused by what the Red Wings did at the trade deadline.

With the team needing a second-line center due to Andrew Copp’s season-ending injury and a depth defender to attempt to fill the hole left by Jeff Petry’s season-ending surgery, the Wings addressed neither one of their needs, which struck me as a little weird.

Of course, during yesterday’s press conference, much to the annoyance of the Free Press’s Carlos Monarrez, Yzerman explained to the press that he was only presented with deadline rental deals for players who wouldn’t be part of the Wings’ long-term future, and/or trade proposals that would require “a 1st round pick plus plus” (as in plus a top prospect and meaningful roster player) to acquire a meaningful contributor.

Continue reading My take on the Wings’ trade deadline performance, and the state of the rebuild

Khan on Sebastian Cossa’s delayed arrival in Detroit

MLive’s Ansar Khan took note of Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman’s remarks regarding the future of top goaltending prospect Sebastian Cossa, who may end up spending one more season in Grand Rapids.

Why? The Griffins’ starter watched Detroit add Petr Mrazek to the goaltending mix, and both Mrazek and Cam Talbot have contracts which extend into next season, which means that Cossa would have to “steal a job” to earn a regular goaltending spot in Detroit:

“I’d rather take a conservative approach and if the season ends so strongly for Sebastian in GR and he has a good off-season and a good preseason and simply forces his way in, that would be a great thing,” general manager Steve Yzerman said.

“But right now, looking at the (goalie) market for next year, we felt not only does Petr help us short-term for the remainder of this year he gives us some solidity going into next year. And if we want to do something different, I don’t think what we’ve done precludes us from doing that. If we think there’s something that is a real upgrade that makes sense, whether in a trade or whatnot, we’ll do that. But let’s see how the season itself plays out.”

Cossa, 22, is 17-10-5 with a 2.36 goals-against average and .914 save percentage with the Griffins. He’s appeared in one NHL game – not by design. Injuries to Talbot and Lyon prompted the Red Wings to recall Cossa on Dec. 2 to back-up Ville Husso. One week later, Cossa replaced Husso at the start of the second period and stopped 12-of-14 shots through the final two periods and overtime in a 6-5 shootout victory at Buffalo.

“For the most part, I think Sebastian’s had a really good year.” Yzerman said. “He continues to improve. Before I kind of fully assess him or make my determination on where he’s at in his career, we’ve got a stretch run here and hopefully a good playoff run and I’ll kind of make my final evaluation when the season is over.”

Continued

Axel Sandin Pellikka sets a SHL record for the most goals scored by an under-20 defenseman

Both Expressen’s Mikael Ljungberg and Aftonbladet’s Benjamin Hanafi report that Red Wings prospect Axel Sandin Pellikka set a SHL record for the most goals scored by an under-20 defenseman as he scored his 12th goal of the season in Skelleftea AIK’s 2-1 win over Brynas IF.

As you might expect, Red Wings Prospects on Twitter has a clip of the goal…

And the Hockey News’s Sam Stockton has more:

After the win, Sandin-Pellikka will be gearing up for a deep SHL playoff run, but for Red Wings fans, it’s impossible not to look forward to his North American future.  As noted by Detroit general manager Steve Yzerman in his post-trade deadline remarks, it’s possible Sandin-Pellikka could come to the United States for the end of the season once his SHL campaign wraps up.

More than likely, that would mean joining the Grand Rapids Griffins for the end of their season, though, depending on how the Red Wings playoff push progresses, perhaps he could also make an NHL cameo.

The more significant question is probably where Sandin-Pellikka will begin his ’25-26 campaign, and once again, the likeliest answer to that question is Grand Rapids.  Sure, Sandin-Pellikka could play his way into a role with the Red Wings out of camp, but Yzerman has tended to exercise patience with his drafted prospects (especially so with defensemen), preferring to see them thrive with the Griffins before advancing to an NHL role.

From what Yzerman said yesterday, it sounded like ASP would get the “Henrik Zetterberg treatment”–meaning that the Wings might bring Sandin Pellikka to Detroit down the stretch to see the NHL team make a playoff push instead of simply assigning him to Grand Rapids, just as Henrik Zetterberg was brought over from Timra IK in the spring of 2002 to watch the Red Wings’ Stanley Cup run.

There are still some concerns about ASP’s size and strength as he’s 5’11” and 185 pounds, as well as his ability to defend (stop me if you’ve Simon Edvinsson heard this before), so I wouldn’t be surprised if he spends the next season in Grand Rapids, but anything can happen if he surprises over the course of training camp or the AHL’s regular season. The Wings won’t hesitate to afford him the opportunity to “steal a spot” on the NHL roster and supplant an NHL veteran.

Tweet of note: Governor Whitmer declares March 8th ‘Faturday’

Per the Detroit News’s Tony Paul, Governor Gretchen Whitmer paid tribute to Detroit sports fan and superb human being Andy Isaac, who passed away recently after an extremely lengthy battle with Hodgkin’s lymphoma:

Trade deadline grades and/or a lament about the Red Wings GM’s timeline

This morning, The Athletic’s Max Bultman gives the Red Wings a passing-grade’s “C” for the team’s slightly puzzling trade deadline move(s)…

Detroit Red Wings: C

Craig Smith is a veteran who brings some scoring and needed hard elements to the Red Wings’ bottom six, likely on the fourth line. At 35, he’s not likely a long-term piece, but for 2025 he’s a nice addition and someone who should help Detroit, which hasn’t gotten enough offense down the lineup this season. Petr Mrázek is the more confusing piece of this deal. The Red Wings’ goaltending has struggled of late, to be sure, but Mrázek is having one of the worst statistical seasons of his career, with an .890 save percentage and minus-9.52 goals saved above expected through 33 games. His environment is key context, as he’s been playing behind the lottery-bound Blackhawks, but Mrázek’s trajectory hasn’t been inspiring: his save percentage has been below .900 in three of the last four seasons. Maybe he turns that around in Detroit, where he previously played from 2013-2018, but with another year at $4.25 million on his contract, it’s a risky bet on him turning things around. Detroit gets credit for bringing in Smith, who is the kind of deadline addition playoff teams typically seek, but the Mrázek portion is a giant question mark. A goaltending boost would certainly help the Red Wings, but counting on that from Mrázek is an iffy bet. — Max Bultman

And the Free Press’ Carlos Monarrez also issued a grade–a “D”–for the Red Wings’ GM. Monarrez suggests that Steve Yzerman “did nothing” to help the Wings make the playoffs, and, as his questions during yesterday’s press conference indicated, Monarrez is testy this morning:

Continue reading Trade deadline grades and/or a lament about the Red Wings GM’s timeline