MLive’s Khan inquires as to whether the Red Wings should hire Shawn Horcoff as GM and move forward

MLive’s Ansar Khan suggests that the Red Wings ought to hire interim general manager Shawn Horcoff as the team’s GM and/or president of hockey operations, given that training camp is a week and-a-half away, that Simon Edvninsson has yet to be re-signed, and given that the Dylan Larkin situation hangs over the team like a black cloud:

If they have no external candidates they’re sold on, or if no top candidate wants to leave his current team this close to the season, why not put Shawn Horcoff in charge?

That could be Red Wings governor and CEO Chris Ilitch’s best option at this point – promote Horcoff, if not permanently then at least on an interim basis.

Horcoff knows the organization as well as anyone, having worked for three years as assistant GM for the Red Wings and the GM of the AHL Grand Rapids Griffins. Horcoff worked alongside former GM Steve Yzerman and assistant Kris Draper in all hockey operations matters as well as handling day-to-day responsibilities for the Griffins – personnel decisions, contract negotiations, player movement.

He is currently handling the Red Wings day-to-day operations.

Khan duly notes that the Red Wings’ timing in terms of relieving Steve Yzerman of his duties in the middle of the summer (July 15th) to supposedly look over 100+ candidates for the job via the Turnkey ZRG firm put the Wings on their back foot in terms of being able to swing for top managerial talent, and he offers the following names as potential GM candidates:

Assistant GMs Brett Peterson (Florida), Jeff Kealty (San Jose) and Scott White (Dallas) are among the names that have been floated as candidates.

Continued;

I’m not certain what to say here. There’s a very solid argument for hiring at least an interim GM who will be allowed to negotiate contracts and make trades given the team’s inertia over the past summer, and given that inking a secondary scorer in addition to re-signing Edvinsson and resolving Larkin’s situation wouldn’t be a bad idea…

But do the Wings make a hire for the sake of expediency here, or do they “wait for the right guy?” (or gal?)

That’s the choice that Chris Ilitch and the Red Wings’ hockey operations department faces at present.

Dylan Larkin, dangling participle

Sportsnet’s Rory Boylen offers “one thing to remember” about each and every one of the NHL’s 32 teams ahead of training camps beginning next week, and he says this regarding the Detroit Red Wings:

Detroit Red Wings: Captain Dylan Larkin still has a trade request hanging out there

As Friedman reported in early June, Larkin had requested a trade out of Detroit with five years left on his contract, writing that there were two critical factors: “Detroit’s inability to make the playoffs, and a somewhat frosty relationship between the captain and the team’s top hockey executive.”

Since then, Steve Yzerman has vacated the GM seat, but no one has yet replaced him. There is no indication Larkin has rescinded that request, or that he will give the Red Wings freedom to cast a wide net in working around his no-trade clause. Training camp is right around the corner and if left unfinished, this could create an awkward reunion. Will Larkin report and/or rescind? Will he allow Detroit more trade options? Can he remain captain? Who is even making these calls?

Continued;

  1. He’s going to report;
  2. We don’t know.
  3. We don’t know.
  4. We don’t know.

That’s why Red Wings fans are so frustrated right now.

TSN’s BarDown pays tribute to the 2002 Stanley Cup Champion Red Wings’ strength as a team

Do you agree with TSN’s BarDown blog? They’ve suggested on Twitter/X that the Red Wings’ 2001-2002 Stanley Cup Championship team may be one of the greatest teams ever assembled:

Tigers GM Jeff Greenberg states that he’s removed himself from Red Wings’ GM/hockey ops search

Updated 2x at 3:21 PM: Aunt Annie has been sick all day, so I’m catching up here.

Anyway, per TSN:

Detroit Tigers general manager Jeff Greenberg told reporters on Monday that he has removed himself from consideration to take over as the Detroit Red Wings head of hockey operations.

Greenberg has been the general manager of the Tigers since 2023, leading the team to two playoff appearances in his three seasons. Detroit is on pace to miss the playoffs this season, holding a 78-84 record entering Monday’s action.

The 40-year-old manager said that he admires the Red Wings organization and was honoured to be considered, but is committed to finish what he started with the Tigers.

Prior to joining the Tigers, Greenberg was an associate general manager with the Chicago Blackhawks in for the 2022-23 NHL season. He also served as an assistant general manager with the Chicago Cubs from 2020 to 2022 working his way up in the organization from a baseball operations intern beginning in 2012.

The Red Wings are looking for a new head of hockey operations after Steve Yzerman exited his role in July, moving into a senior advisor to governor and CEO Chris Illitch.

And MLive’s Evan Woodbery:

Update at 3:16 PM: Elliotte Friedman confirms…

Continue reading Tigers GM Jeff Greenberg states that he’s removed himself from Red Wings’ GM/hockey ops search

Red Wings prospect Adam Levac hopes to emulate NHL shift disturbers

Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff posted a profile of Red Wings 2026 draft pick Adam Levac this morning, utilizing an interview that Levac gave to the OHL’s website as source material.

Levac, a center with the Peterborough Petes, stands at 6′ and 176 pounds, but Duff reports that Levac hopes to be a bit of a shift disturber:

He looks to pattern his game after a couple of NHLers who are thorns in the side of the Red Wings: Florida’s Matthew Tkachuk and Montreal’s Nick Suzuki.

“They kind of play great roles for their teams,” Levac said. “Two hundred-foot players and they play hard every shift.”

Levac plays that way, and he’s got a little bit of that Brad Marchand rat in him, too.

“I bring energy,” Levac said. “I play hard, and I work hard every time I’m on the ice. And I got a little playmaking ability.”

Those are the qualities that attracted the Red Wings to Levac.  

“They said they liked how hard I compete, how hard I work every shift,” Levac said.

Duff’s profile continues…

Afternoon news: Zeev Buium’s contract complicates Simon Edvinsson negotiations; the clock’s ticking on extending DeBrincat, Kasper to 8-year contracts

The Vancouver Canucks blew some minds last Friday by signing defenseman Zeev Buium, who hasn’t even played a full NHL season yet, to an 8-year, $75.04 million contract, awarding Buium an average annual value salary of $9.38 million.

With the Red Wings having yet to sign restricted free agent Simon Edvinsson to a contract extension, the Wings may have to exceed Moritz Seider’s $8.5 million salary in order to ink Edvinsson to a long-term pact.

As such, Detroit Hockey Now’s Max Smith wonders aloud what the Wings’ strategy might involve:

For the Red Wings, Edvinsson now finds himself comfortably in a position to be asking for a higher AAV and potentially shorter contract terms. Buium has 76 career NHL games and 26 points split across his rookie season with the Wild and Canucks last year, which is roughly comparable to the 25 points in 72 games Edvinsson had last year in his sophomore season.

That was a downtick from his production as a rookie, though Edvinsson did have to spend time recovering from two separate injuries over the year. However, Edvinsson has shown himself to be much more capable as a defender than Buium has, with a +/- of +12 in each of the last two years, while Buium finished his rookie season as a -24 with the Canucks.

Any way you slice it, for the moment, Edvinsson has the edge on the stat sheet and should be able to leverage that to his full advantage with the Red Wings next GM.

If Steve Yzerman were still the GM, I’d argue that the team would hold fast to Seider’s contract value as an internal salary cap, but with a new GM/president of hockey operations coming in, all bets are off…

Continue reading Afternoon news: Zeev Buium’s contract complicates Simon Edvinsson negotiations; the clock’s ticking on extending DeBrincat, Kasper to 8-year contracts

Roughly translated: Red Wings defenseman Moritz Seider gives a long interview to NHL.com/de

NHL.com/de posted a very long interview with Red Wings defenseman Moritz Seider as part of the NHL’s international sites‘ season previews today. Here is a rough translation of the interview from German:

Seider: “I want to be the best defender”

In the European Player Media Tour interview with NHL.com/de, the defender of the Detroit Red Wings talks about summer training, noise and doubters

As part of the European Player Media Tour 2026, NHL.com/de conducted numerous interviews with German-language NHL professionals. In this issue: Moritz Seider of the Detroit Red Wings

Hi Moritz! What was the highlight of your summer?

Just the two vacations we’ve taken. We were both with friends and had a few more days for both, so [it was] only my girlfriend and I. It was fun, we had a great time. We were together with Tim Stutzle and another player in Mallorca. Most recently we were on active vacation in Austria with a lot of hiking and cycling, which was really nice.

You’ve trained a lot with Tim Stutzle. You are both top players in the NHL and you meet on the ice as opponents. What was the joint training like?

It was great. I think without Tim, I wouldn’t be in the position I’m in right now, simply because we’re two people who can’t finish second. But there must always be a second-place guy. This helps us to get to a higher level, in every aspect, on and off the ice. So we have a healthy rivalry, and have found a way to accept second place. But that motivates us to work even harder in other areas to beat the other one there. This is our thing.

Tim is a forward, you’re a defender – doesn’t he rub it under your nose when he scores more goals?

(Laughs) No. We quit that a long time ago. This is also because such a thing often comes back at you quite quickly. There are so many things we can compete in, so it’s easier to shut up and accept victory.

Continue reading Roughly translated: Red Wings defenseman Moritz Seider gives a long interview to NHL.com/de

Valtteri Filppula has one heck of a hockey resume

According to Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff, former Red Wings forward Valtteri Filppula earned a prestigious honor recently, adding to a career full of personal and team achievements and accolades:

Valtteri Filppula was part of the Detroit Red Wings team that won the Stanley Cup in 2007-08. That’s the franchise’s most recent Cup victory.

He’s a member of hockey’s elite Triple Gold Club. Those are players who’ve won the Stanley Cup, the IIHF World Championship, and an Olympic Gold Medal.

Now, Filppula is also a Hall of Famer. On Saturday, Finland’s Ice Hockey Museum announced six new inductees to the Finnish Hockey Hall of Fame. Filppula was among that group.

Continue reading Valtteri Filppula has one heck of a hockey resume

The new CBA closes an AHL assignment loophole

The Hockey News’s Adam Proteau posted a list of 6 changes in the NHL-NHLPA CBA which go into effect this upcoming season, and the last one on Proteau’s list might be most apropos for the Red Wings.

If you recall, the Wings kept sending Marco Kasper down to the AHL on paper, and then recalled him to the NHL over and over during his rookie season (per Sean Shapiro’s intrepid reporting in 2025) to save salary cap space:

6. AHL Player Transactions

In the old CBA, NHL teams had the option of technically loaning a player to their minor-league affiliate without that player actually having to report before being recalled the following day.

It was a sneaky but legal maneuver, but in the new labor deal, any player assigned to the American League is required to play in at least one game before they can be recalled to the NHL. 

This particular change isn’t going to register all that much on the radar of hockey fans, but it’s one of those odd holes in the CBA that teams found a way to exploit. Every new labor deal tries to tie up whatever loose ends are out there, and that’s the case with this move.

It’s holding teams to account, and teams now are going to have to adjust to this more stringent rule.

Continued; this will also apply to players who no longer clear waivers and are recalled.

They’re subject to waivers again after playing in 10 NHL games or remaining with an NHL team for 30 days, so a John Leonard, for example, would have to head back down to Grand Rapids for real and play in an AHL game before being recalled again instead of remaining in Detroit when he was assigned to GR on paper.

Playing ‘what if?’ with Sebastian Cossa and Trey Augustine

I’m not the biggest fan of “What if?” articles regarding situations that haven’t happened yet.

That being said, Sports Illustrated’s Jason Fink asks whether the Red Wings made the right decision in determining that turning-pro prospect Trey Augustine’s a better bet to become Detroit’s “goalie of the future” than 24-year-old Sebastian Cossa, who will make his NHL debut with the Utah Mammoth as Karl Vejmelka’s presumed back-up this upcoming season…

And you do have to factor the future potential of one University of Michigan forward JP Hurlbert into the equation, given that the Wings essentially traded Cossa to Utah for the Hurlbert (also known as the 23rd overall pick in the 2026 NHL Draft)…

So let’s play along with Fink’s equation:

Scenario A: Augustine becomes the Red Wings’ long-term starter and the trade looks brilliant.

Scenario B: Both become quality NHL goalies and the trade becomes more about what Detroit received for Cossa.

Scenario C: Cossa becomes a star while Augustine struggles, and Detroit spends years hearing about the goalie it let get away.

And because Cossa was a first-round pick Detroit traded up to acquire, Scenario C would sting considerably more.

Again, to me, it’s way too early to determine the answer to the question as to whether the Wings made the “right decision,” especially given that 24-year-old Michal Postava’s emergence as a potential NHL-caliber goalie played into the Wings’ decision to trade Cossa. Scenario “D: Postava emerges as the #1 goalie, and the equation doesn’t matter” is an entirely possible option.

However…

The Red Wings have spent years searching for its next franchise goaltender and, for a brief period, appeared to have two candidates. The Red Wings decided they didn’t need both.

Cossa now gets the opportunity to prove Detroit gave up on him too soon; meanwhile, Augustine gets the considerably heavier burden of proving the Red Wings didn’t. Detroit has made their choice.

Now comes the part that could take years to determine: whether they chose the right goalie.

Too soon. Too soon.