Libor Sulak will join the Griffins

Per the Grand Rapids Griffins on Twitter:

Here’s the press release:

Continue reading Libor Sulak will join the Griffins

NHL.com on ‘what went wrong’ and ‘reasons for optimism’ for the Wings

NHL.com’s Brian Compton penned a now-that-they’re-eliminated article about the Red Wings, discussing “what went wrong” and offering reasons for optimism:

Reasons for optimism

Help is on the way: They used the No. 9 pick at the 2017 NHL Draft to select forward Michael Rasmussen, their first top-10 selection since 1991 (Martin Lapointe). Rasmussen, 18, had 59 points (31 goals, 28 assists) in 47 games for Tri-City of the Western Hockey League this season. He could compete for a job with the Red Wings at training camp in September.

Stockpiling picks: Detroit will be busy at the 2018 NHL Draft, with eight picks in the first four rounds. They added a second first-round pick when they traded forward Tomas Tatar to the Vegas Golden Knights on Feb. 26.

Bertuzzi brings hope: He may have two goals in 40 games, but Tyler Bertuzzi, a second-round pick (No. 58) in 2013, is showing signs of being a top-six forward at the NHL level. He’s been playing on a line with Henrik Zetterberg and Gustav Nyquist this month and has a Red Wings best seven points (all assists) in 12 games since Feb. 28, and has drawn a team-high six penalties while being assessed two penalty minutes. Bertuzzi, 23, was most valuable player of the Calder Cup Playoffs last season, when he had 19 points (nine goals, 10 assists) in 19 games for Grand Rapids.

Custance on Ken Holland and the young Mr. I

The Athletic’s Craig Custance penned an article discussing Ken Holland’s future, as well as the Ilitch-sized elephant in the room:

As hard as it is to win a Stanley Cup, Holland may be facing his biggest challenge yet. The Detroit fan base wants change. There’s a mess to clean up that is the result of his attempts to optimize the team’s Stanley Cup chances in the final stages of the Nicklas Lidstrom, Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg era. There are bad contracts to burn off and high-end prospects who need to be drafted. Whether or not Holland will be the one tasked with doing that is all going to come to a head in the next few weeks.

“I think that probably between now and sometime at the end of the year, I would expect there would be some kind of decision made,” Holland told The Athletic this week.

Yzerman, a man whose opinion still carries much weight in Detroit, offers his support.

“I believe [with] everything he’s done, he deserves the time to rebuild it now,” Yzerman said. “He deserves the time and the respect of everyone to rebuild it.”

That may hinge on one person.

Continued (paywall)

Cup of Khan: Wings’ leadership on the youth movement

MLive’s Ansar Khan’s 6 AM-posted column discusses the Red Wings’ loss to Washington and the Wings’ post-game discussion regarding their youth movement.

Coach Blashill weighed in regarding the concept of simply giving young players ice time because the team’s out of the playoffs…

“There’s a fine line there,” coach Jeff Blashill said following his team’s 1-0 loss to the Washington Capitals Thursday at Little Caesars Arena. “You have to make sure you compete and work. If you don’t compete and work you’re not getting ice time.

“Two … if you want to take one of those guys’ job, you got to play better than them. If I start playing guys because of their age, you lose 100 percent credibility and you don’t teach lessons of earned ice.”

And both Jimmy Howard and Henrik Zetterberg spoke with Khan regarding the players’ belief that “the kids” need to play in a competitive environment:

Continue reading Cup of Khan: Wings’ leadership on the youth movement

Prospect round-up: Fulcher wins playoff start for Hamilton; Rasmussen 2G+1A for Tri-City

Of playoff, related note, in the KHL, Alexander Kadeikin didn’t play in Lokomotiv Yaroslavl’s 3-1 loss to SKA St. Peterburgh.

SKA eliminated Lokomotiv 4 games to 1, and Kadeikin probably won’t be signed by the Wings;

In the Swiss NLA, Joren van Pottelberghe served as the back-up in HC Davos’ 5-3 loss to EHC Biel-Bienne. EHC eliminated Davos 4 games to 2.

I believe that JvP has another year as Wings property, and it’s going to take another season for the Wings to decide whether to sign him as he’s just played a very limited role behind Gilles Senn in Davos;

In the OHL, Kaden Fulcher stopped 20 of 23 shots as his Hamilton Bulldogs won 6-3 over Niagara, taking a 1-0 lead in the teams’ first-round playoff series;

And in the WHL, Michael Rasmussen had an excellent playoff debut as the captain of the Tri-City Americans, scoring 2 goals in Tri-City’s 5-0 win over Kelowna.

Rasmussen had 2 goals and an assist, finishing at +1 with 5 shots and went 4-for-5 on faceoffs, and he was named the game’s 3rd star.

The WHL’s Twitter account posted Rasmussen’s goals:

 

Khan, Krupa: Wings will call up a defenseman with Green out

Updated at 12:16 AM: Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill spoke with the media after the Wings’ 1-0 loss to the Washington Capitals on Thursday, and I listened in on 97.1 the Ticket…to rather disturbingly hear Blashill tell the media that Mike Green’s neck injury was a long-term issue dating back to last year, which could flare up with the “wrong type of hit.”

According to Blashill, the Red Wings had hoped that Green would be able to play through the injury through the balance of the season, but he was definitely going to need surgery (the same doctor that performed the discectomy on Henrik Zetterberg will perform a similar procedure on Green), and that’s why he wasn’t traded.

Also:

Who would you prefer to see the Wings recall, Joe Hicketts or Filip Hronek? I’m guessing Hicketts will come as the Griffins kind of need Hronek’s offense to make the playoffs.

Also, no surprise here:

Continue reading Khan, Krupa: Wings will call up a defenseman with Green out

Red Wings-Capitals quick take: Grubauer grabs a win for Washington as Wings are eliminated from playoff contention

The Detroit Red Wings attempted to earn a rare two-game winning streak when they hosted the Washington Capitals on Thursday night.

The Red Wings played damn well over the course of a 1-0, playoff-eliminating loss to the Capitals, attacking well, defending superbly and getting good goaltending from Jimmy Howard, but the Red Wings were unable to dent Philipp Grubauer and one mistake–a fall from Xavier Ouellet–yielded surrendering a goal to Brett Connolly that the team could not recover from.

The fact that the Wings blew a 2-minute 5-on-3 didn’t help, but the Wings got more than enough chances to score on Grubauer (includling an Athanasiou goal waved off due to goaltender interference by Bertuzzi), and they couldn’t find a way to beat the Caps on 39 shots and 70 shot attempts.

Continue reading Red Wings-Capitals quick take: Grubauer grabs a win for Washington as Wings are eliminated from playoff contention

Mike Green out for the season due to neck surgery

From the Red Wings:

MIKE GREEN TO UNDERGO NECK SURGERY; WILL MISS REMAINDER OF 2017-18 SEASON

Detroit, MI…The Detroit Red Wings today announced that defenseman Mike Green will undergo surgery on his cervical spine and will miss the remainder of the 2017-18 season.  Green missed seven games from Feb. 17-28 with the injury but returned to the Detroit lineup on March 2 at Winnipeg.  He re-aggravated the injury during the team’s practice on March 21 at Little Caesars Arena.  The procedure is scheduled for April 5 at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City and will be performed by Dr. Frank Cammisa.  A minimum two months of recovery time is expected.

Green, 32, has appeared in 65 games for the Red Wings this season.  He leads all Detroit defensemen in assists (25) and points (33), while ranking second among blueliners with eight goals.

A bit about Jordan Sambrook

The Athletic’s Max Bultman spotlights Red Wings prospects Givani Smith and Jordan Sambrook this week, and as far as I’m concerned, Sambrook doesn’t get enough press, so:

Sambrook was also traded earlier this year, going from the Erie Otters to the Sault St. Marie Greyhounds and joining a higher-scoring team in the process. That hasn’t always led to more individual scoring for Sambrook, but at least he’s playing with a team that’s working the attack.

“He’s been steady in transition,” Greyhounds general manager Kyle Raftis told The Athletic. “He’s been able to kind of separate guys from pucks, get the puck going the other way. And we have a real lethal attack up front, but it really starts at our back end and our back end is really what kind of drives the bus for it.”

It’s worth remembering that Raftis traded for Sambrook, so he’s probably inclined to have a pretty high opinion of him. That said, any praise of the 6-foot-2 defenseman’s ability to generate offense — whether directly or indirectly — is a good sign for a prospect developing an all-around game, even if it’s perhaps more firmly rooted in his defensive basics.

“I think you look at the defensemen in the National Hockey League and it’s tough to play in that league if you can’t play in your own end,” Otters coach Chris Hartsburg told The Athletic. “And the guys that are one-dimensional players on the offensive side, generally, — they see their offensive time on power play — but for guys that play heavy minutes it’s important that they’re good in their own end.

Bultman continues (paywall)…