The Athletic posts 3 Red Wings-related stories this morning

The Athletic posted a trio of articles which discuss Red Wings-related topics this morning:

  1. Sean McIndoe offers “oddly specific predictions” for every NHL team…

Detroit Red Wings

It’s an annual oddly specific prediction tradition, so let’s make the Wings this year’s team that some people think will be a lot better, some people think will be a lot worse, but that actually finishes the year with exactly the same number of points they had in 2023-24 (91).

2. The Athletic’s James Mirtle and Harman Dayal rank every team’s defensive corps, and the Wings are ranked the “Below Average” tier (geez, The Athletic loves tiers)…

Detroit Red Wings

Ben Chiarot–Moritz Seider
Simon Edvinsson–Jeff Petry
Olli Maatta–Erik Gustafsson

Extra defense options: Albert Johansson, Justin Holl

On paper, this group looks like it will be the biggest impediment to the Red Wings finally returning to the postseason.

Jeff Petry is 37 in December and shouldn’t be playing higher than third-pair minutes at this point. Ben Chiarot doesn’t belong on a playoff team’s top pair. And there’s a reason Olli Maatta and Erik Gustafsson have bounced around as much as they have.

The big caveat to all of that is Moritz Seider is a stud and Simon Edvinsson has very high-end potential. Edvinsson, in particular, could level up into a top-pair defender as early as this season. If he’s ready, the Red Wings will climb this ranking quickly — and possibly even grab a wild-card spot.

3. And Sean Gentille ranks the “Hope-O-Meter” for the NHL’s 32 fan bases:

23. Detroit Red Wings — 70.2

Optimist Tim: It feels weird to be optimistic about a team that mostly overachieved last season, and I know “the model” says otherwise, but I really do think this Red Wings team got better. Edvinsson’s a top 4 upgrade over Walman. Tarasenko’s a slight upgrade over Perron. A full offseason of training for Kane. Continued growth for Raymond. Enough decent goalies to ride at least one of them at a time. The roster is still flawed, but this year I think we earn our playoff bubble slot instead of lucking into it.

Pessimist Kris: All I’ve heard for years is how great our prospect pool is, and yet we keep signing aged and overpaid vets that end up blocking them vs. just biting the bullet a little and letting the kids learn by doing.

Etc. etc. at this point.

Wyshynski picks the Wings to finish 6th in the Atlantic

ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski released a massive NHL preview article today, and he’s picking the Red Wings to finish 6th in the Atlantic Division. Here’s his rationale, per the Insider-only article:

The Red Wings have missed the playoffs in every year of Steve Yzerman’s tenure as general manager, since being hired in 2019. Their NHL roster skews older, and not just because Patrick Kane is back. The prospect pool has a collection of solid potential NHL contributors and a few standouts, but nothing resembling a franchise player, despite their time spent in the draft lottery. Is the plan to break the playoff drought, give the kids some seasoning and the use that sweet pizza money to lure big-name free agents to augment them? I don’t know. Right now, the plan seems like it’s produced a bubble team with little hope of upward mobility.

Stevie Y. must be thinking how much easier this was with Steven Stamkos, Victor Hedman, Nikita Kucherov and Andrei Vasilevskiy as your pillars …

Still, there are people who see Detroit, rather than Buffalo or Ottawa, as the breakthrough team in the Atlantic. A lot would have to break right for that to happen, from the instant impact of Simon Edvinsson, to giant leaps forward from big-contract earners Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider, to Cam Talbot helping to settle down a goaltending spot that had a cast of thousands auditioning in training camp. The NHL is a better place when the Red Wings are contending. I hope to visit that place again one day.

Continued (paywall); I would like to believe that the Red Wings will contend one day, and I would like to believe that they’ll do so under Steve Yzerman’s watch.

Steve Yzerman named one of the ’25 people who will define the NHL season’ to come

Sportsnet’s Luke Fox posted a list of “the 25 people who will define the NHL season,” and Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman is the last person on the list:

Steve Yzerman: How long would patience last in Detroit if the Red Wings were not being run by an on-ice icon and the architect of a championship in Tampa Bay? Yzerman enters his sixth year at the helm in Hockeytown as both the longest-tenured active GM yet to make the playoffs and overseer of the NHL’s second-longest active post-season drought — the longest in franchise history at eight seasons and counting. The Red Wings have a shiny new barn but attendance issues. They locked in two young stars in the nick of time (Lucas Raymond, Moritz Seider), and they’re banking on some fading ones (Patrick Kane, Vladimir Tarasenko). The man in charge can’t lace ’em up to save the day. Stevie Y needs a W.

Continued; the attendance is getting better as the team gets better, and that’s the truth.

Lalonde, DeBrincat believe the Wings will be ‘ready to go’ come Thursday evening

DetroitRedWings.com’s Jonathan Mills took note of comments made by coach Derek Lalonde and forward Alex DeBrincat after today’s practice at the BELFOR Training Center underneath Little Caesars Arena:

The Red Wings will have two more practice days before the Penguins come to town. Lalonde said now having a little more roster clarity will help the club prepare for Thursday’s season opener.

“Unique schedule in that we played six [preseason] games in six days, going two teams and we tried to ramp up practice by design,” Lalonde said. “We asked a lot of these guys throughout the exhibition [schedule], especially the games. We were tired in some of those games and unfortunately, it probably showed. But now, I wouldn’t call it a full reset because we’re building off camp, there’s a little time to refocus.”

Alex DeBrincat said he feels the team is in a good spot, but there’s still plenty of work to be done.

“We’ve been practicing really hard, competing out there,” DeBrincat said. “A couple of our preseason games weren’t up to par with our compete. Obviously it’s a lot of timing out there, stuff like that. I thought the last [exhibition] game was pretty good, and in practice we’ve been competing a lot. We should be ready for Game 1.”

DeBrincat also noted it will be important for the Red Wings to get back to what helped them be successful last season.

“When we’re working hard, we’re a good team,” DeBrincat said. “There’s stretches when we get away from that. I think we can learn from last year and really buckle in this year. Be focused every game, and you can’t afford to lose any points.”

Continued; Detroit plays 3 games in 5 nights to open the regular season, hosting the Penguins and Predators, and then the Wings head to New York to play the Rangers. After a two-day break, the Wings host the Rangers and head to Nashville to wrap up their season series with Nashville, so those first five games are going to be difficult, and they’re going to come in a hurry.

THN’s Eargood helps explain the Red Wings’ salary cap gymnastics

The Hockey News’s Connor Eargood did a very capable job of explaining some of the intricacies of the NHL’s salary cap as it applies to the Red Wings’ decisions to send Justin Holl down to the Grand Rapids Griffins (for now) and waive Austin Watson to send him to Grand Rapids tomorrow (for now).

Most of us are familiar with cap space as a year-long concept. If a player signs for $1 million, then a team is committing $1 million in cap space to them for the season. But cap hit is actually calculated by prorating the daily cap hit through however many days are left in the season. So long as a team doesn’t take advantage of long term injured reserve, whatever is left over to reach the salary cap is saved up as something called accrued cap space.

Accrued cap space is calculated with the formula: Projected Cap Space x (Total Days in the Season / Days Left in the Season). Accrued cap space is essentially saved up cap space that teams can use to afford bigger transactions later on. Let’s say a team comes in $2 million under the salary cap all season. By the 100th day of the 192-game season, they can spend $3.84 million and still be under the salary cap.

This accrued cap space is very useful. It allows teams to acquire players at the trade deadline when they would otherwise come in over the salary cap. Blogger Brett Lee broke this down well in a Substack post in 2023. I highly recommend you read his work.

So what does this have to do with Justin Holl? The Red Wings save $1.15 million in cap relief by sending him down to the AHL. On a daily basis, that is $5,989.58 in daily cap savings. This money, accumulated over however long he isn’t with the NHL team, can be used to pay the remaining cap hit later on a potential acquisition. Detroit already needed to send him down to clear the roster space to sign Watson without exceeding the 23-man roster limit. Now that he has cleared, there is no incentive to call him up early because Detroit is saving up cap space to use later each day he is on the AHL books.

Cap space is also accrued by not calling up a player to fill that 23rd roster spot that Watson’s AHL assignment opens up. And as Detroit already has the players for its opening night roster in place, there is no reason to fill that space with a player who won’t play. The open roster spot allows the Red Wings to make appropriate moves in the future — calling up Holl, Watson or even rookie Marco Kasper — while still accruing cap space.

These moves are all about flexibility — both for the usage of Holl, the usage of the final roster spot and the usage of accrued cap space later on.

Continued; good stuff here.

Coach Lalonde believes that the Red Wings have three capable goaltenders

The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan filed an expansive notebook article which discusses Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde’s remarks today regarding the Red Wings’ 23-man roster, the state of the team’s goaltending, and more.

Here’s what coach Lalonde had to say about the Wings’ three-goaltender rotation…

“We’re going with three, and three in a positive way,” Lalonde said. “By that, I mean you saw all three guys had very good camps. Good to excellent sometimes. All three had good camps and I’d be confident in playing any of the three.”

Lalonde did not disclose who the Wings’ starter will be against Pittsburgh.

“We’ll decide that, but again, that’s a good problem in that we came into camp with a blank slate and hoping someone could show us he could help us on night one,” Lalonde said. “The positive is all three have done so in camp.”

Having gone through the three-goalie situation once, the Wings have a better feel on how to divide the workload in practice and games this season.

“(It was) complicated last year because it was new, and finding the proper reps and giving guys what they need (in reps) and keeping guys sharp was a challenge,” Lalonde said. “We learned and have some experience from it. We’ve learned how to manage the games and managing practice so we’re a little better equipped with it this year.”

Continued (paywall); I have figured that the Wings will be working with a three-goaltender rotation for the first 10-15 games, but it’s entirely possible that the Wings will stick with all three goaltenders for the entirety of the regular season. We’ll see.

Update: Here’s a bit more from Detroit Hockey Now’s Kevin Allen:

As it turned out, everyone is a winner in Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde’s “blank slate” goaltending competition.

“We’re going with three and three in a positive way,” Lalonde said. “All three guys had very good camps. Anywhere from good to some excellent at times. We’ll start with three and it’s not a real clear picture. All three had good camps and we’d be confident in playing any one of the three.”

In other words, he’s not ready to name a starting goalie for the Red Wings’ home opener against the Pittsburgh Penguins Thursday at Little Caesars Arena.

“A good problem,” Lalonde said. “We came into this talking about a blank slate. We came in hoping someone could show us they could help us win on night one and the positive is all three did.”

Ville Husso was probably the most impressive goalie, throwing up a 43-save effort against to beat the Pittsburgh Penguins on the road, and then putting up a 30-save effort Saturday in a 3-2 loss to the Maple Leafs Saturday in Toronto. But Cam Talbot and Alex Lyon also had their moments in the preseason.

Reprise Three Goalies

This is the second consecutive season the Red Wings are carrying three goalies, and are open to using all of them. Last season, Husso, Lyon and James Reimer all had time as the interim starter.

“I wouldn’t say it was complicated last year,” Lalonde said. “it was new, in finding proper reps in giving guys what they need and keeping guys sharp was a challenge. I think we learned and have some experience from it. Last year was a little different in that Alex probably came into camp as a little bit of a distant No. 3 and carried our team during a stretch there.

Husso’s preseason was probably the most important occurrence because he was coming off an injury that prevented him from playing a full game after December.

“He had a little extra load and that was by design and he handled it very well,” Lalonde said. “There were some question marks with Ville, physically coming into the preseason and within his three games he answered those questions.”