Red Wings-Blue Jackets morning skate Tweets: Rasmussen skates but won’t return yet; Talbot starts vs. Columbus

The Detroit Red Wings face the Columbus Blue Jackets in the first game of an impactful home-and-home series tonight at Little Caesars Arena (7 PM EST start on FanDuel SportsNet Detroit/FanDuel SportsNet Columbus/97.1 FM).

The Red Wings hit the ice at LCA just before 10:30 AM, with Michael Rasmussen preceding them (good news in terms of his recovery)…

But it doesn’t appear that he’s ready to return…

Cam Talbot will start tonight…

Continue reading Red Wings-Blue Jackets morning skate Tweets: Rasmussen skates but won’t return yet; Talbot starts vs. Columbus

Tweet of note: we may see the Stadium Series jerseys more than once

Per CBS Detroit’s Rachel Hopmayer:

Bultman tells Dominik Shine’s story

The Athletic’s Max Bultman posted a comprehensive, in-depth article about Grand Rapids Griffins forward Dominik Shine’s NHL debut at 31 years of age, and its inspirational effects upon those around him:

“Pretty much every game I’ve played so far, someone’s come up to me and said, you know, ‘Hey man, so pumped for you, that’s awesome,’ or little things like that,” Shine said by phone last week. “It really means a lot. It was pretty overwhelming, though.”

“Even when we were in Milwaukee, their head coach came over to our locker room, right outside the door, and talked to him and congratulated him,” said Griffins equipment manager Brad Thompson.

Shine said the response to his long-awaited debut — he received roughly 950 texts after his first game — was “a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be.”

After a career outside the spotlight, maybe that makes sense. On the other hand, it underscores how widely Shine’s story resonates.

An overlooked, heart-and-soul player who had spent his entire career with the same organization finally getting his shot at the age of 31 is more than a feel-good story for fans. It will ripple down to players throughout the minor leagues, giving them a reason to believe that, if they keep going, one day their hard work could pay off, too.

“It’s perseverance,” said Griffins assistant coach Brian Lashoff. “You can say it all you want, I think, but to see it is a totally different thing.”

Continued (paywall)

A pair of very mild compliments

Of Red Wings-related note from The Athletic this morning:

  1. The Athletic’s Harman Dayal uses advanced statistics to rank every NHL team’s first line. Given that the Red Wings have a goal differential of zero, the Wings rank fairly low. Dayal explains that the team’s struggles to score at even strength are why Lucas Raymond, Dylan Larkin and Marco Kasper are seen as pretty average until recently–and I should note that the Columbus Blue Jackets’ first line of Kirill Marchenko, Adam Fantilli and Dmitri Voronkov is the NHL’s best:

Detroit Red Wings

Despite their elite, No. 2 ranked power-play, the Red Wings’ top line has had trouble scoring even-strength goals for most of the season. However, it appears it has unlocked a new gear recently and could be on the cusp of a monster breakout.

Todd McLellan has put Dylan Larkin, Lucas Raymond and rookie Marco Kasper (who has 16 points in his last 18 games) together for the last several weeks, and they’ve annihilated opponents from a territorial standpoint. This new-look first line has controlled nearly 58 percent of expected goals and is scoring goals at a much higher rate than the first line managed earlier in the season.

2. The Athletic’s Corey Pronman ranks the best prospects drafted with traded draft picks acquired at the trade deadline from 2020 to 2023. That’s a lot of words to say, “Be careful what you wish for when you send a top pick to another team in a deadline deal.”

As you know by now, the Red Wings drafted Axel Sandin Pellikka with their first-round pick from the Filip Hronek trade, and Pronman issues what I would deem as a very mild compliment to ASP:

3. Axel Sandin-Pellikka, RHD (Filip Hronek to Vancouver)

Detroit moved out an average-sized puck-moving defenseman in Hronek and hoped it would replace him long-term with ASP. He is a very intelligent and hardworking defender with a cannon of a shot, though his size will be an issue defending NHL forwards.

ASP is listed at 5’11” and 185 pounds, which isn’t big by today’s NHL standards, but something tells me that he’s going to be okay in terms of learning to defend at the NHL level, even if it takes him a year of apprenticeship in Grand Rapids to learn the ropes.

Red Wings-Blue Jackets preview: Columbus takes a playoff approach to home-and-home series with Detroit

Updated 2x at 10:06 AM: The 30-22-and-6 Detroit Red Wings host the 28-22-and-8 Columbus Blue Jackets tonight (7 PM EST start on FanDuel SportsNet Detroit/FanDuel SportsNet Ohio/97.1 FM) as they open a pair of “four-point games” against Columbus, both tonight and in Saturday’s Stadium Series game in Columbus.

Columbus has won 2 straight games to snap an 0-3-and-1 stretch, having defeated the Chicago Blackhawks 5-1 last Saturday, and defeating the Dallas Stars 6-4 on Tuesday.

As such, the Red Wings hold the first Wild Card spot with 66 points, and the Blue Jackets are right behind the Wings with 64 points. They hope to not only pass the Red Wings over the course of the next two games, but also close in upon the New Jersey Devils, who sit 3rd in the Metropolitan Division standings with 70 points.

ColumbusBlueJackets.com’s Jeff Svoboda reports that the Blue Jackets held an optional practice on Wednesday, but Zach Werenski , Ivan Provorov and Kirlll Marchenko did discuss the fact that this is essentially a mini “playoff series” against the Red Wings:

Continue reading Red Wings-Blue Jackets preview: Columbus takes a playoff approach to home-and-home series with Detroit

Red Wings ‘feel less shame’ under coach McLellan

The Red Wings’ penalty-kill remains a work in progress, but Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff reports–in a subscriber-only article–that the Wings are taking fewer penalties under coach Todd McLellan:

The Red Wings are 17-5-2 under McLellan. Detroit and the Dallas Stars each have accumulated an NHL-best 36 points over that span. Dallas, it’s worth noting, has played one more game than Detroit.

Entering Thursday’s big showdown against the Columbus Blue Jackets at Little Caesars Arena, the Red Wings are 9-1-1 over the past 11 games.

There are plenty of factors playing a role in this impressive turnaround. At the top of that list is the fact that the club is embracing the notion of playing a smarter game.

Under McLellan, Detroit is the NHL’s least penalized club. The Red Wings have also been shorthanded the fewest times of any NHL team since McLellan assumed his position behind the Detroit bench.

“I think we skate well,” was McLellan’s initial explanation for his team’s disciplined approach to the game. “You’re gonna go, ‘what does that mean?’ I think we have the ability to skate and keep our legs underneath us, so we’re not reaching and pulling a lot. That’s got to be part of our identity. A good skating team, fairly disciplined.”

Continued (paywall)

HSJ in the morning: Red Wings-Blue Jackets series consists of two ‘four-point’ games

The Free Press’s Helene St. James discusses the concept that the Red Wings will be playing two “four-point” games in the standings when they face the Columbus Blue Jackets tonight (7 PM EST start on FanDuel SportsNet Detroit/FanDuel SportsNet Ohio/97.1 FM) and in Saturday’s Stadium Series:

It’s a battle for playoff positioning. The Wings (30-22-6, 66 points) occupy the first wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference, and the Blue Jackets (28-22-8, 64 points) are right behind them.

If the Wings win both games, they would not only bank four points, they’d keep them from the Blue Jackets, further securing a foothold inside the playoff picture. That’s why these points hold extra value.

Wednesday was a scheduled day off for the Wings, after practices and three games had them on the ice eight straight days. The Wings have collected five of six possible points since emerging from the 4 Nations Face-Off break, rolling along despite losing Andrew Copp to season-ending shoulder surgery and Michael Rasmussen being day-to-day after sustaining a blow to the head; both were injured last weekend.

Thursday’s game is one of just 10 home games remaining for the Wings. They have 14 road games left, which includes five of their last six games, highlighted by a back-to-back, at the Florida Panthers and Tampa Bay Lightning, and the fellow playoff-contending New Jersey Devils and Toronto Maple Leafs. Four points in three days this week — for an eight-point swing — over the next two days would go a long ways toward shoring up a playoff spot before a hectic finish to the schedule.

The Red Wings are simply at a point in their season where every game feels like a playoff game, because the Red Wings are attempting to hang onto their Wild Card spot, if not push the Tampa Bay Lightning for 3rd in the Atlantic Division…

While the Columbus Blue Jackets are not only hoping to hang onto their Wild Card spot, but also push the New Jersey Devils for 3rd in the Atlantic Division:

Cotsonika: Meet Dylan Larkin and Zach Werenski, friends and foes

NHL.com’s Nicholas J. Cotsonika posted a comprehensive discussion of the friendship between Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin and Columbus Blue Jackets star defenseman Zach Werenski.

The duo will temporarily put their friendship on hold as their respective teams play a critical home-and-home series starting tomorrow night, and culminating in Saturday’s Stadium Series:

When Zach Werenski gets married in Columbus in July, he’ll have one hockey guy standing in the wedding: Dylan Larkin. The best friends have played together many times — as kids, as college roommates, for their country — and skate together in the offseason.

But don’t think they won’t compete against each other. They’ve become pillars of their NHL teams — Werenski as the all-time leading scorer among defensemen for the Columbus Blue Jackets, Larkin as the captain and No. 1 center for the Detroit Red Wings — and they’ll go at it in two big games over the next three days.

The Red Wings hold the first wild card into the Stanley Cup Playoffs from the Eastern Conference. The Blue Jackets hold the second wild card in the East, two points behind. Columbus visits Detroit at Little Caesars Arena on Thursday (7 p.m. ET; FDSNOH, FDSNDET), then Detroit visits Columbus in the 2025 Navy Federal Credit Union NHL Stadium Series at Ohio Stadium on Saturday (6 p.m. ET; ESPN, TVAS-D, FX-CA).

They’ll be like brothers on a backyard rink.

“A couple years ago, Dylan and Zach got into a little scrum where they were kind of throwing punches or fake punches,” said Joe Smaza, their youth coach. “You can’t take the competitive nature out of these guys. I was like, ‘What are you guys doing?’”

Smaza laughed. It’s true. Although they weren’t exactly throwing haymakers, Larkin and Werenski dropped the gloves and received fighting majors late in a 3-2 Columbus win at Little Caesars Arena on Jan. 18, 2021. They were just doing what hockey players do.

Continued at length–this is a good one, give it your time…

Seth Jones or John Gibson might not be real solutions for the Wings’ needs

Bleacher Report’s Sara Civian suggests that 7 teams have “urgent needs” to address before the 2025 trade deadline on March 7th, and she believes that the Red Wings might want to consider adding defenseman Seth Jones from the Chicago Blackhawks, though Jones is only in his 3rd year of an 8-year contract with a $9.5 million cap hit (and a full no-movement clause):

Detroit Red Wings: Look, the aforementioned Jones to Detroit deal could work if the Blackhawks retain an absolute boatload of cap space, but it could handcuff Detroit in an obviously overcommital way that would bleed into the future. Regardless, the Ducks did them a solid earlier this week as they took veteran goalie Ville Husso’s $4.75 million AAV off the books in return for future considerations.

The Wings will be working with a projected ~$14 million in cap space at the deadline, and they’ve got more than enough high draft picks for suitors to choose from. You could see them going the defense route, given how weak the depth is in that position despite some top heavy star power. You could also see them deciding to really go for it with a veteran goaltender. 

Cam Talbot and Alex Lyon are both above .900 on the season, and improved as the team did after the terrible start. But things are looking questionable again at the wrong time, and you wonder if “future considerations” could mean, like, next week if the Red Wings decided to trade for John Gibson?

Regardless, they’ve got to find a way to turn things around on the defensive side of the ice for the present and the future.

Continued; I’m not sold on Gibson as a long-term solution in goal, either. The 31-year-old makes $6.4 million for two more seasons, and he’s had some injury hiccups over the past two seasons.

At this point, unless the Red Wings can make a meaningful addition at forward and/or on defense to shore up their long-term positional depth, I don’t believe that the Wings need to sacrifice assets for rentals, nor potential contractual millstones.

Vielen dank!

As you know by now, I’m not a big fan of power rankings, but the Hockey News’s Jason Chen offers this take on a certain Red Wings defenseman born in Zell, Germany while issuing a set of power rankings, and it’s a very nice compliment:

13. Detroit Red Wings (30-22-6, -10. Previous: 11)

At just 23 years old, Moritz Seider might already be the best German defenseman ever. Christian Ehrhoff had some high peaks, but he can’t change the game or defend the way Seider can. He has the potential to be a true No. 1 and anchor Germany’s defense for at least a decade.

Continued; I don’t know if Seider can be talked up as the best German defenseman ever–yet–but he’s on track to become one of them for sure.