Late night video link: Moritz Seider speaks with RNF.de

Strange things one finds in the middle of the night: RNF.de, a network/website from the Rhein-Neckar region of Germany, posted a 33-minute podcast interview with Moritz Seider in video form. “Menschen aus der Kurpfalz,” or “People from the province,” is the name of the podcast.

The video is in German, but it promises to discuss Seider’s journey (thanks to his parents) from Zell to Mannheim to play hockey for the Adler Mannheim’s developmental system, his time spent in the DEL, his decision to play in Sweden for Rogle during the pandemic, his time spent with Detroit, and his familial and personal ties to Mannheim.

Give it a glance if you wish!

MLive’s Khan updates player addresses, addresses Filip Zadina’s missteps, new start in San Jose

This Thursday night, MLive’s Ansar Khan posted a primer as to where the 12 players who left the Detroit Red Wings wound up earning contracts (or pro try-outs) this offseason, and Khan also engaged in an interesting exercise:

Khan spoke with San Jose Hockey Now’s Sheng Peng, discussing Filip Zadina’s missteps in Detroit, and his potential with his new team, the San Jose Sharks.

Regarding last season, and the Red Wings coaching staff’s decision to place Zadina away from his favorite shooter’s spot on the right wing faceoff circle:

“He did not have a good training camp and pre-season. He was actually a healthy scratch [for the first two games of the year]. He just quickly fell out of favor with a new coach, and he never really recovered. [Then] he got injured, I think in November, blocking a shot, got hit by a shot and broke his leg,” Khan said, also noting that Zadina got behind free agent Wings forwards Kubalik, David Perron, and Andrew Copp on the depth chart. “They had more options on the power play, and it was simply a matter of Zadina just dropping down the pecking order.”

Zadina himself noted that he suffered an appendicitis at the end of the 2021-22 campaign, which put him behind the eight-ball in his summer training.

Anyway, Zadina did not look comfortable in the high slot on the power play, a high-traffic area which requires quick, accurate passing and shooting decisions. Khan agreed.

So of course, the obvious answer for the San Jose Sharks is to reinstate Zadina on the right flank of the power play. He was an above-average scoring threat from there from 2019 to 2022, ringing up 2.11 Power Play Goals Per 60, good for 57th among all NHL forwards (of 178 qualified, 300-plus PP minutes). That’s not too bad for a youngster.

Ansar’s not so certain about that:

“Their whole thing with him the last couple of years was they didn’t want him to be as much on the perimeter. And just to be like a one-trick pony. Where all he could do was fire off shots, one-timers from the flank,” Khan said. “They wanted him to be a little bit more at the net, and be more on the inside, and kind of expand his repertoire a little bit. I think that’s why they moved him. They wanted to get him closer to the net. Try to find different ways to score, whether that’s garbage goals around the net and things like that.”

Khan and Peng continue, and it’s an intriguing discussion!

Representing the Winged Wheel in Israel

According to the Detroit Jewish News’s Steve Stein, a team of Jewish athletes from Metro Detroit, Grand Rapids and New York teamed up together to represent the Winged Wheel at the Maccabi Games in Israel:

Resplendent in their Detroit Red Wings-style uniforms, hockey players from Detroit and Grand Rapids gave it their best shot a long way from home. They didn’t win a medal at the JCC Maccabi Games last month in Israel. They won just two of five games.

But the memories they made during their three-week stay, that included the week-long Maccabi Games and two weeks of immersive educational travel around Israel with other athletes ages 14-17, will remain with them for the rest of their lives.

“Going on that tour around Israel was one of the best experiences of my life,” said Mason Marcus. “To take in all those significant sites in Israel with Jewish kids my age was great.” 

Nine players representing Detroit, two representing Grand Rapids and four representing New York City made up one of the eight teams in the Maccabi Games hockey competition.

The Detroit/Grand Rapids/NYC team practiced just four times before the Maccabi Games began. Three practices were at the Farmington Hills Ice Arena. One was in Israel, where the NYC players joined with their Michigan teammates. 

“We were competitive,” said Detroit/Grand Rapids/NYC coach Mark Weiss. “There were some very good teams there.”

Continued

The (fundraising) beat goes on

You might not think so, but after yesterday’s tumultuous set of emotions, I’m actually having a pretty difficult Thursday in terms of keeping things all buttoned up. Yesterday went from the lowest of lows to the highest of highs, and all the way back to, “Well, okay, now you’ve got to make a real run of it. So how do we do this thing, anyway?”

It’s a real grind to fundraise, even when you’ve been absolutely blessed by an anonymous benefactor. With my car…under-performing…We’re still up against a bit of a wall.

I’m also still struggling to find my voice in terms of plain old writing more. I’ve got a friend who has me considering starting a podcast, too, so that’s rattling around in my brain as well.

Long story long, it’s a good day to have a therapist to help me sort out the disparate threads of thought bouncing off each other like bumper cars, and yes, it’s time for the daily reminder that we are still fundraising here at TMR.

Being at $2,350 on the GoFundMe is awesome, and at the same time, we’ve got $1,150 to go there in terms of more fundraising to cover accommodations and gas up, there and down, and thirteen days to get as close as we can to that mark.

We also have the server paid off and the internet bill paid, but there are pre-trip expenses (ye olde grocery shopping + dry cleaning) that will gobble up the “couple hundred” in the Venmo account, and the Paypal account has to be kept at or around that $150 mark in case we deal with some unexpected expenses.

So that’s where we’re at, and where we’re going, hopefully, is to Traverse City on the 12th of September. You’ve all been wonderful and I am incredibly grateful for your kindness and readership, but the journey is far from over.

If you can lend a hand with our overall expenses, we have an old-fashioned GoFundMe here https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-george-annie-attend-prospect-tournament, you can use PayPal at https://paypal.me/TheMalikReport, Venmo at https://venmo.com/george-malik-2, Giftly by using my email, rtxg@yahoo.com, at https://www.giftly.com. And you can contact me via email if you want to send me a paper check. I’m also on Cash App under “georgeums.”

Quick Tweet of note: DeBrincat’s at the Power Edge Pro camp

Power Edge Pro is in Metro Detroit for a skill development camp held with locally-based professional and NHL hockey players, and it appears that they have a returning attendee who might interest you:

THN’s Stockton reviews ‘Unrivaled,’ a story worth revisiting

It’s the end of August, and the Hockey News’s Sam Stockton spends today’s column examining the ESPN documentary of the Red Wings and Colorado Avalanche’s bloody, bitter rivalry throughout the late 90’s, a.k.a. “Unrivaled.”

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Alsjp_GRAls%3Fsi%3DbRKbad6ejNSm5vzK

There was nothing like that particularly vicious rivalry between Detroit and Colorado, and, as Stockton suggests, the documentary feature–aired among what seems like an endless sea of (pardon the pun) hard-hitting sports documentaries–stands alone:

Unrivaled couldn’t be confused for a SportsCenter highlight pack because games defined by players like these don’t seem to exist anymore.  As if the game highlights from the era aren’t enough to make this clear, Brian Burke—then the NHL’s player safety boss—tells us that any wound requiring fewer than 10 stitches was then considered a “shaving cut.”

Of course, prioritizing McCarty and Draper within this story would only work if those players had something new to add to this well-told story, and that’s where Unrivaled works best.  From a film-making perspective, its most powerful tool is live footage of McCarty and antagonist Claude Lemieux at a sports bar in Royal Oak.  By bringing together the erstwhile combatants, Unrivaled arrives at a fresh perspective on an evening—March 26, 1997—that has been discussed by Red Wing fans in exhaustive detail for 25 years.

The documentary also uses its interviews to make plain that even with the passage of time, tensions are still beyond a simmer.  This is never clearer than when Draper is asked directly at the outset of the film whether he’s forgiven Lemieux.  Draper’s response?  

“Um…It seemed like was brought of what he did, but in the end, I quote my good friend Darren McCarty, karma’s a b**ch.

As Stockton continues, he notes that the most important part of the documentary, from a Red Wings fan’s perspective, at least, is the footage of Vladimir Konstantinov during and after his heyday as one of the NHL’s most punishing and complete defensemen. I happen to believe that the dignity with which Konstantinov lives his life today is a beautiful thing, and, as Vladdy himself summarizes the rivalry, what mattered?

“Beat them.”

DetroitRedWings.com’s Regner discusses Borje Salming, a one-season Wing with a huge Swedish legacy

DetroitRedWings.com’s Art Regner continues his “How Swede It Is” series with an article about defenseman Borje Salming. Salming only played one season in Detroit–his last in the NHL–but his importance to the Red Wings’ Swedes is massive:

Though he meshed well on and off the ice with his Red Wings teammates Salming retired from the NHL at the conclusion of the season. Yet, his impact on the Red Wings Swedish players that followed him is immeasurable.

“Back in ’91, before I joined the Wings, he was my partner (at the 1991 Canada Cup). I was actually an extra defenseman when the tournament started and someone got hurt and I got paired with Börje and I played all the games with him,” Red Wings legend Nick Lidstrom said. “I was nervous. I was nervous to meet him, but he made me feel so relaxed. I remember he told me, ‘Just go out there and play your game, I’m going to take care of the defense, you can go join the offense’ and be the offensive player that I was at a young age. He made me feel comfortable right away, which was huge for me.”

Lidstrom remembers how Salming showed up for every game and how he never took a shift off, something he tried to emulate during his Red Wings career. He was also impressed with how Salming conducted himself.

“He probably exceeded what I expected. Off the ice he was such a nice man. He cared for other people in the locker room, he didn’t act like the superstar he was. He was just being himself and really was thinking about everyone else as well,” Lidstrom said. “He paved the way for not only Swedes but for European players when he came over in the early ’70s. He wasn’t the first European player, but he was one of the first that became a star. So, he paved the way for all the Europeans the way he played and the way he stood up to the tough hockey that was played back then.

“He was my idol growing up.”

Continued