The Malik Report

From the University of Minnesota-Duluth Bulldogs:

Max Plante Named to 2025-26 CSC At-Large Academic All-America Team

University of Minnesota Duluth men’s hockey player Max Plante earned one last award for his sophomore season Wednesday, named to the 2025-26 Academic All-America® at-large teams selected by the College Sports Communicators.

The academic honor — Plante’s second Academic All-American nod this season after being named a ACHA All-American last month — joins a long list of honors the Hermantown, Minn. native has pocketed this season. The 2026 Hobey Baker Award winner, Plante previously earned district academic team accolades with a 3.58 cumulative GPA in Communications this year. Plante was also the USA Hockey’s College Player of the Year, USCHO’s Player of the Year, was a First Team 2025-26 CCM/AHCA Hockey All-American and the NCHC Player of the Year and the NCHC Forward of the Year.

Plante becomes just the fifth-ever CSC All-American for the Bulldogs, and the first since Tanner Laderoute earned the honor in 2023. Previously winners were Kyle Schmidt in 2011 and Jeff Scissons and Dan Shroyer in 2000.

The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan posted a profile of Red Wings 2026 draft pick Michal Orsulak, a right-catching goaltender who played for the WHL’s Prince Albert Raiders this past season. The Red Wings are awash in goaltending prospects like Trey Augustine, Michal Postava, Michal Pradel, Rudy Guimond and Carter Gylander, but they chose to add Orsulak to the mix for good reason:

In any draft, in any sport, a team looks to acquire talent. Regardless of position. When Kris Draper, the Wings’ director of amateur scouting, and his staff saw Orsulak available, the Wings had to pounce. The Wings grabbed Orsulak in the third round, 79th overall.

“The size, the compete, the way he moves, we just felt that with where we were in the draft, we felt it was a real good pick to add,” Draper said. “We feel we have a good athlete, competitive. We’re real excited to add him.”

Orsulak, 18, had an outstanding season for a powerful Prince Albert team in the Western Hockey League (WHL), after having played junior hockey in his native Czech the year before.

Orsulak was 28-4-4, with a 2.22 goals-against average and .907 save percentage with four shutouts, helping Prince Albert get to the WHL finals. Orsulak also was a key factor in Czechia earning a silver medal at the world junior championships, getting the attention of numerous scouts.

“We (Prince Albert) had a good year for sure, and I played better than the year before,” said Orsulak, who is returning to Prince Albert next season. “Confidence real high after world juniors, but (people don’t remember) who finished second.”

Kulfan also takes note of Orsulak’s physical attributes:

Continue reading Getting to know Wings goaltending prospect Michal Orsulak

Red Wings prospect and former Michigan State Spartans goaltender Trey Augustine’s both very good at goaltending and very good at academic pursuits:

Congratulations to our two @CollSportsComm Academic All-Americans, Matt Basgall and Trey Augustine!

Both conclude their careers at MSU as two-time Academic All-Americans, with Basgall earning first team honors and Augustine being named to the second team.

The Big Ten Defensive… pic.twitter.com/Mq23BuVaN0

— Michigan State Hockey (@MSU_Hockey) July 8, 2026

DetroitRedWings.com’s Jonathan Mills posted an article which discusses new Red Wings forward Viktor Arvidsson. Arvidsson, a 33-year-old forward, joined the Wings as a free agent on July 1st, and he spoke with the media two days later:

“I know Todd [McLellan] and I really liked playing under him,” Arvidsson said in his introductory Zoom call with the media last Thursday. “It was an easy decision. I’m happy to be a Red Wing, and it’s going to be fun.”

The 2025-26 campaign was another productive one for the 33-year-old forward, who reached the 20-goal mark for the sixth time in his 12-year NHL career, totaling 54 points (25 goals, 29 assists) in 69 regular-season games before scoring two goals in four Stanley Cup Playoff contests with the Boston Bruins.

Arvidsson valued playing with mostly the same linemates this past season, explaining how he felt that consistency helped him offensively. 

“I think I’ve always been good, scored and created offense at 5-on-5,” he said. “And defensively, I’ve been good. I just feel like going from L.A. to Edmonton, I kind of got stuck in Edmonton a little bit with not playing consistently 5-on-5 and playing with a lot of different people. In Boston, I played with the same players. You create that chemistry with certain players, and I think we meshed together last year really well. It was fun to play. I just think I compete so hard. I get chances. I like to be around the net and find loose pucks. That’s a big part of my game.”

Arvidsson also discussed his desire to help the Red Wings’ leadership as a veteran forward who’s familiar with coach McLellan’s “tough but fair” coaching style:

Continue reading Viktor Arvidsson hopes to assist Detroit’s leadership group as part of Todd McLellan’s Red Wings team

I know someone on Twitter/X whose handle is, “Dylan Larkin is a #1C,” and we ought to start an, “Andrew Copp is a #1C” account given that it’s true for the Detroit Red Wings without Dylan Larkin’s services.

Anyway, the Wings posted a Tweet commemorating Copp’s 32nd birthday this morning:

🥳🎂 pic.twitter.com/iyYI0NEClR

— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) July 8, 2026

To his credit, Copp posted a Red Wings-tenure-high 43 points in 79 games this past season, and he was more consistent than he’s ever been as the team’s de-facto #1B center as Dylan Larkin struggled down the stretch. Here’s hoping that he can exceed his 2025-2026 season performance this upcoming campaign.

DobberHockey’s Alexander MacLean estimates which players fantasy hockey poolies should pick for their “dynasty” fantasy hockey leagues this upcoming season, and MacLean suggests that Red Wings 2026 draft pick JP Hurlbert might make his NHL debut by the end of the 2026-2027 season:

Pick 18 – J.P. Hurlbert (RW) – DET

Another high-upside winger available in this range, Hurlbert thrived in the WHL where he could showcase his offence, and is off to Michigan in the NCAA this coming season who is loading up for another championship run. It’s possible that if he thrives there too, that he could be one and done at the NCAA level and see a few NHL games at the end of the season for a Wings team that likely won’t be playoff bound.

Continued; I’m not certain whether Hurlbert will end up in the NHL by the end of the season, obviously, given Detroit’s preference for “seasoning” their prospects in the AHL before they graduate from the Grand Rapids Griffins to the NHL.

After scoring 42 goals and accumulating 97 points over the course of 68 games with the WHL’s Kamloops Blazers this past season, it’s entirely possible that Hurlbert can continue to buck the developmental curve…

But Detroit’s just not the kind of team to give young players late-season “cups of coffee” with the big team just to give them some NHL experience.

The Athletic’s Sean McIndoe argues that 8 of the NHL’s 32 fan bases should feel “insulted” by their respective teams’ offseason performances as of July 8th…

But McIndoe suggests that it’s not the franchise that the Red Wings’ fan base should be insulted by:

2. Detroit Red Wings

What happened: With a team-record playoff drought hitting the ten-year mark, captain Dylan Larkin stood up and declared that enough was enough. As in: He’d had enough, and wanted to be traded to a good team that was already winning without him. You guys can figure out the whole “winning in Detroit” thing once he’s gone.

The case for: While Larkin certainly wasn’t the only or the biggest star to demand a trade this summer, he was the only one to do so with five years left on his contract. And as has become the norm, he used his no-trade clause to limit his potential destinations to just three teams: Minnesota, Florida or Vegas, none of whom necessarily seemed to have the assets Steve Yzerman would need to make a deal.

So far, Yzerman has been holding strong, waiting for Larkin to either change his mind or provide a longer list. Neither has happened yet, raising the possibility that we might get an extremely awkward September reunion when training camp opens.

The case against: With no trade in place yet, there’s always the possibility that Larkin and Yzerman could work out their differences, similar to what we saw with Werenski in Columbus. And while Yzerman has been pushed into trades before by players like Martin St. Louis and Jonathan Drouin, his track record in those deals is solid, so he might be able to find a way to make this work for the Wings.

The insult-o-meter reads: 8.5/10. Having a captain throw in the towel is a brutal look for a fan base, and barring an unexpected reconciliation, it’s hard to see this ending in anything other than more salt being poured in Wings fans’ wounds.

Continued (paywall); Larkin and Yzerman are NOT going to make up and be friends again, and it IS HIGHLY LIKELY that the Red Wings will not end up with the best player or players after trading Dylan Larkin to another team.

What is also true is that it’s going to be up to Detroit’s players, coaches and management to ensure that the team doesn’t take a step back during the 2025-2026 season.

The Athletic’s Max Bultman discusses the contractual “dominoes” which the Detroit Red Wings face over the course of July, August and early September, a.k.a. Detroit’s offseason, in the form of Patrick Kane’s status, Alex DeBrincat’s potential contract extension, and the same for Simon Edvinsson:

Alex DeBrincat

While [Patrick] Kane and DeBrincat’s friendship makes it tempting to link these two situations, Kane’s age (37) means DeBrincat’s decision about his future needs to be made independently.

One year from becoming an unrestricted free agent, and thus eligible for an extension, DeBrincat is in line for a huge raise on his next deal — and maybe more than we even realized a month or two ago. At the time, the main parameter-setting contract was Adrian Kempe ($10.625 million for eight years), and Alex Tuch’s eight-year deal at $10.5 million reinforced that for a late-20s scorer.

DeBrincat has outproduced both of them, though, and after seeing what kind of money NHL teams were willing to throw around for Jason Robertson and now Leo Carlsson — although Carlsson is much younger and a center, so certainly not a perfect comparable — it’s fair to wonder what could be out there a year from now for DeBrincat, a three-time 40-goal scorer who was 11th in NHL goals and 19th in points last season.

In other words, the Red Wings need to come correct with their offers to DeBrincat, even if that number is over (and possibly well over) $11 million. It’s a lot of money, but it’s the new way of the world in the NHL. And if they don’t pay it, the odds are good that someone else will a year from now.

…

The Red Wings don’t technically have to sign DeBrincat to an extension this summer, with a year left on his current contract. But getting a deal done sooner would prevent this one from looming all year. And with the cap set to rise again in a year, it may save Detroit some money, too. Letting a player get too close to the open market is always a risk.

Bultman continues at length (paywall), and Bleacher Report’s Lyle Richardson weighed in on the prospect of DeBrincat asking for a trade this upcoming season, should Detroit not reach a contractual solution with #93:

Continue reading Two takes on Alex DeBrincat’s future with Detroit

MLive’s Ansar Khan weighs in regarding the scuttlebutt surrounding Elliotte Friedman’s suggestion that the Carolina Hurricanes have considered submitting a restricted free agent offer sheet to Red Wings defenseman Simon Edvinsson:

If they do, or any other team does, it will be an exercise in futility, accomplishing nothing but inflating the Red Wings’ payroll and possibly prompting general manager Steve Yzerman to tender a retaliatory offer sheet to one of that club’s future restricted free agents.

That’s because the Red Wings are sure to match any offer to Edvinsson, even if it exceeds $10 million a season. With more than $18 million in cap space, a number in flux given the uncertainty of what they’ll get back in the inevitable Dylan Larkin trade, they can easily afford to match any offer.

The compensation for an offer sheet with an AAV of between $9,551,333 and $11,939,166 is two first-round picks, one second-round pick and one third-round pick. Anything more than that would garner four first-round picks if the club declined to match.

Khan continues, estimating Edvinsson’s contractual worth as a restricted free agent:

Continue reading Khan weighs in on the rumors regarding a Simon Edvinsson offer sheet

As noted last week, new Red Wings forward Wilmer Skoog spoke with Hockeysverige.se’s Ronnie Ronnqvist on Friday, discussing his decision to sign with Detroit and his expectations for his upcoming tenure with the team.

This morning, Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff offers more highlights from Skoog’s Swedish-language interview:

In his third pro season with the Florida Panthers organization in 2025-26, Skoog, 26, finally made his NHL debut. He played three late-season games for the Panthers. In the season finale, an 8-1 drubbing of the Red Wings, Skoog collected two assists. Those were his first NHL points. He thought he’d done enough to earn a new contract with the Panthers. Skoog thought wrong. No qualifying offer was forthcoming from Florida.

“It wasn’t disappointing, but I was a little surprised,” Skoog said. “I then mostly saw opportunities to talk to other teams and see where there was interest.”

He knows that the Red Wings haven’t made the Stanley Cup playoffs since 2016. Skoog embraces the opportunity to be a piece of the puzzle that finally puts it together and gets Detroit back into the NHL postseason.

“These are new challenges, and I hope to be a part of and contribute to hopefully making it to the playoffs,” Skoog said. “It’s a process all the time, even for all the players. I think it’s more about where I see opportunities for myself. A little bit of what they say and what I myself think and believe. I think it feels like a good ‘fit’.”

Duff also noted Skoog’s remarks regarding joining a team with a history of utilizing Swedish players:

Continue reading A bit more from new Wings forward Wilmer Skoog’s interview with Hockeysverige.se…