The Malik Report

The Athletic issues “way too early” 2024-2025 season predictions this morning, and they do so by sharing a poll of their NHL writing staff, all 49 of ’em.

The Red Wings don’t get much of a mention until Shayna Goldman, Sean Gentille and Jesse Granger are asked which coach will be fired first: in The Athletic’s staff poll, 31.3% of the respondents said it will be Wings coach Derek Lalonde:

Gentille: I’m not sure the Red Wings got any better this offseason, and expectations are still high. Derek Lalonde is a good coach, but it’s easy to see him as a scapegoat.

Granger: It’s hard to argue with that explanation for Lalonde. I personally wonder how things go in Philadelphia if the Flyers don’t exceed expectations the way they did for most of last season.

Goldman: Lalonde definitely makes sense, but I actually went with Jim Montgomery here if the Bruins don’t look like a team ready to go on a deep run.

Continued (paywall); Gentille also complains when he finds that the Wings earn the last playoff spot in the East in the poll, but that’s it for the Wings.

As far as Lalonde is concerned, I don’t know whether he’s going to get the Wings back into the playoffs, but he’s the coach, and I believe that he’ll do a competent job this upcoming season.

The Red Wings’ GM may be overly patient and thoroughly methodical, but he’s not dumb–if the team struggles this season, Steve Yzerman won’t hesitate to make changes on the roster, both on and behind the bench.

And as far as the rest is concerned, the Wings are not going to have a lot of believers this upcoming season, just like last year, and they’ll have to prove people wrong. Again.

Strange things happen in the KHL all the time, and this morning, Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff tries to make sense of Dmitri Buchelnikov’s situation.

Buchelnikov was recently traded from the mighty SKA St. Petersburg club to Vityaz Moscow Region, but the player Buchelnikov was traded for, former Red Wing Dmytro Timashov, was traded as well, with Timashov being sent to what is essentially SKA’s farm team in HC Sochi.

What does all of this have to do with Buchelnikov? It’s a strange turn of events for a player who bounced between St. Petersburg in Russia’s west and Vladivostok in the far, far east (think north of Japan) last season. That moving around wasn’t great for his stats in Buchelnikov’s first full season in the KHL, but he managed to post 29 points in 53 games.

Blah blah blah, get to the point, George? Well, Duff explains that Buchelnikov getting sent to Vityaz was a bit weird given his one-time status as a rising star with SKA, and he notes that the Red Wings have to simply cross their fingers that the young man who stands at 5’10” and 170 pounds wants to come over to North America so that he can be assessed properly:

Buchelnikov was a 13-goal scorer in the KHL last season with Admiral, a team he was sent to on loan by SKA St. Petersburg. Does he have NHL potential? The fact of the matter is that at this stage of his development, no one can say for sure.

The Red Wings brass can’t get into Russia to see Buchelnikov play in person. And since Russia is under ban from international competition, there’s no chance to measure him against his peers on the international stage.

So what can the Red Wings do to determine how Buchelnikov is progressing until his contract with Vityaz is up in 2025? Get first-hand reports from their Russian scout, and watch as many games as necessary on streaming services:

Continue reading Overnight Duff: On the curious case of Dmitri Buchelnikov

WWMT’s Nate Brown reports that Red Wings assistant GM and director of amateur scouting Kris Draper was in Grand Rapids to take part in his other favorite sport on Wednesday:

Day Two of the 2024 Beer City Open brought with it a few differences: matches played inside due to poor weather, and the beginning of Major League Pickleball sanctioned matches as the professionals began their fun.

Day Two also brought with it tournament Number Two for the “One Dollar Man”, Kris Draper.

Draper, the longtime Detroit Red Wing who won four Stanley Cups with the organization, competed in the 2023 Open as an amateur and finds himself back in Grand Rapids for the second straight year.

As someone who played the sport of hockey at the highest level imaginable, though, watching other professionals at the top of their craft only brings out the fan in Draper that much more.

“I love watching the best of the best. Last year was great getting to watch all the pros play,” said Draper. “This year with MLP here, it’s pretty neat just to watch the way these guys warm up. The way they hit the ball, it’s just a different sound. It’s just fun to watch how they move, how they play, how they are. It motivates you to continue to get better.”

Continued with a non-embeddable video…

Per the Grand Rapids Griffins on Twitter:

Starting off the season seeking revenge against Milwaukee 🔥💪 #GoGRG | See you soon @mkeadmirals 😉 pic.twitter.com/K0bBDR1KGm

— x – Grand Rapids Griffins (@griffinshockey) July 10, 2024

This afternoon, Detroit Hockey Now’s Kevin Allen has posted a subscriber-only article which discusses five points of emphasis for the Red Wings to make the playoffs in the upcoming 2024-2025 season. Here’s his most important point:

Tighten Defensive Coverage: Last season, 17 NHL teams gave 252 or fewer goals over 82 games. They all had a 3.02 team GAA or better.  Thirteen of those teams qualified for the playofs. The Red Wings have a good understanding of what they can do this season to improve their playoff chances.

Getting in the top half of the GAA seems like a “must” for this team. The team’s overall defensive coverage has to improve or they will miss the playoffs for a ninth consecutive season.

It feels as if they made some strides in defensive coverage last season, but numbers say it was negligible. They gave up 275 goals in Derek Lalonde’s first season and 273 last season. Their 11-point improvement resulted primarly from offensive improvement (particularly on the power play).

To make the playoffs, must set their sights on reducing goals against to 250. That will require a restructuring of how the team plays.

Continued (paywall); the Red Wings do indeed need to stem the flow of goals against, and as Allen suggests in his article, that will take improving the team’s level of goaltending, becoming a better road team, “pushing back” physically, and, of course, not allowing the team’s own goal-scoring to decline to the point that it’s a liability.

This is a bit gossipy, and a stark contrast from the serious nature of the last entry. It’s not intentional.

So: the Hockey News’s Caleb Kearney reports that new Red Wings goaltender Jack Campbell is spending hockey’s wedding season in Mexico:

Recent Detroit Red Wings addition Jack Campbell is getting married this week. His fiancee, Ashley Sonnenberg, took to her Instagram stories to share a few pictures.

As it’s not much in the way of news, I’ll let you read the rest on your own. Congrats to the happy couple.

TSN’s Rick Westhead broke this story a couple of hours ago, and while it’s not necessarily Red Wings-related from an on-ice perspective, it does tell the story of the death of former Red Wing and Nashville Predators forward Greg Johnson from CTE.

This does discuss suicide, so be warned:

Former National Hockey League player Greg Johnson, who played 14 seasons in the league, has been posthumously diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, the brain-withering disease linked to repetitive brain trauma in contact sports. 

Johnson’s family and the Concussion Legacy Foundation disclosed the news Wednesday in a joint statement, five years after his death by suicide.

Johnson’s daughter, Carson, used the moment to confront the NHL about its views on CTE. To date, the league has refused to acknowledge a link between repeated brain trauma and the disease.

“I had no idea what CTE even stood for when my dad took his life,” Carson said in a statement released by the Boston-based Concussion Legacy Foundation. “Now understanding that the hits he endured throughout his hockey career damaged his brain, I want all athletes to understand the risks and I want the NHL to start acknowledging it exists and do more to protect its players so other daughters don’t have to lose their fathers.”

Johnson, who was born in Thunder Bay, Ont., was 48 when he died on July 7, 2019, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Rochester, Mich.

Dr. Ann McKee, director of the Boston University CTE Center, diagnosed Johnson with CTE, but was unable to definitively stage it due to the manner of death.

“This diagnosis took my breath away,” Kristin, Johnson’s wife of 22 years, said in a statement. “Greg’s death shattered our world, and we never once thought this disease was something he struggled with. He experienced very few symptoms that we knew of, but he spoke of his concussions often. I remember the exact moment he told me his heart condition forcing him to retire was a blessing because he couldn’t take another hit. He knew his hockey career had a profound impact on his brain.”

Continued; this is obviously awful news…

And if you ever feel like you’re struggling mentally, there is always help via the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.

DetroitRedWings.com’s Jonathan Mills provides one more article which discusses Patrick Kane’s comments made to the media on Monday:

Kane, who spent his first 16 NHL seasons and won three Stanley Cup championships with the Chicago Blackhawks, said that Red Wings fans quickly helped Detroit feel like home.

“I love the fans,” Kane said. “I thought the fans really embraced me too. You never really know what to expect, especially me being in Chicago for so long and coming to Detroit. I know that’s a huge rivalry, but just the embrace of the fans was incredible.”

But Kane was no stranger to Detroit prior to joining the Red Wings last season.

In 2003, Kane moved from his hometown Buffalo, N.Y., to play youth hockey in the metro area, where he lived with former Red Wings forward Pat Verbeek in Birmingham, Mich. Kane also played two seasons (2004-06) with the U.S. National Team Development Program, which was based in Ann Arbor at the time.

Kane said off-ice comfortability factored into his decision to re-sign with the Red Wings.

“I think the suburbs in Detroit are unbelievable,” Kane said. “I lived there when I was 14 but when I came back, I didn’t realize how nice they were and what a great spot it is to live and raise a family. You have a lot of options, whether it’s playing hockey or the schools at your disposal. I really like how (Little Caesars Arena) is set up with the practice rink and the game rink all in one venue. I think the organization treats you first class, so there’s a lot of good things going if you’re a free agent or a player and you want to come to the Red Wings.”

Continued; it’s still a little strange to see Kane in a Red Wings uniform, but I’m not surprised that Kane’s praising the Metro Detroit area as a good place to raise a family, or the Red Wings’ facilities as state-of-the-art. There’s a reason that so many players who come here toward the end of their careers end up retiring here.

The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn discusses the improvements made (or the lack thereof) by every one of the NHL’s 32 teams over the course of the summer (thus far).

We all know that Luszczyszyn is particularly tough on the Red Wings, and this morning, he argues that the Wings have dropped 9 spots from their end-of-season ranking due to a lack of offseason improvements:

23. Detroit Red Wings

Net Rating added: -9
Salary added: -$5 million

Key Additions: Vladimir Tarasenko, Tyler Motte, Erik Gustafsson, Cam Talbot

Key Departures: David Perron, Daniel Sprong, Robby Fabbri, Shayne Gostisbehere, Jake Walman

There seem to be a lot of Red Wings fans out there who believe Detroit did enough to jump into the playoffs. I am of the opposite opinion — it feels like the Red Wings got worse in an already difficult conference that got even harder.

Let’s go line-by-line. Vladimir Tarasenko offers more offense than David Perron, but it comes at the expense of defense. That might be a wash.

Tyler Motte is probably a downgrade from Robby Fabbri and there’s no adequate replacement for Daniel Sprong and the depth offense he brought.

I like Erik Gustafsson more than any reasonable person should, but he’s still just an off-brand Shayne Gostisbehere. No Jake Walman means more Justin Holl too. The team’s already weak defense probably got worse.

And while Cam Talbot had an excellent season with the Kings, I’m not sure he will repeat that at his age with this team. He’s likely more of the same as what the Red Wings already have in Alex Lyon and Ville Husso.

Continued (paywall); I don’t believe that the Red Wings got worse, though it does feel as if the Wings are treading water, and need to add a dynamic right-shot defenseman to bolster the defensive corps.

I think that Vladimir Tarasenko is an upgrade on Perron because he’s speedier and a little less gritty, which means fewer penalties taken due to slow foot speed or temper;

Tyler Motte isn’t Robby Fabbri–he’s a checking-line and PK forward who feels better-slotted to playing in the “bottom six”;

Losing Walman definitely hurts, and again, I feel that the Wings need to add a defenseman to help out Moritz Seider, Simon Edvinsson and Albert Johansson.

And while Erik Gustafsson is not going to produce as much as Shayne Gostisbehere, whose loss definitely hurts, he’s going to be better defensively, especially at even strength.

As I’ve gotten older myself, I’ve also continued to root for the old guys, and if Cam Talbot can push the Wings’ save percentage up a couple of percent, and be at least a steady presence in a Red Wings crease that’s been in a state of turmoil over the past couple of seasons, I’ll be very happy with his addition.

All in all, considering that Daniel Sprong is also gone and that the Wings’ remaining cap space is likely to go to re-signing Jonatan Berggren, Joe Veleno, Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider…

Yee Wings are going to have to improve from within to contend for a playoff spot, but that’s the whole damn point of player development, isn’t it?

I still feel that the Wings are at least ahead of the Senators, Sabres and Canadiens, if only by a nose, and I’m not certain that the Capitals or Islanders did enough to push themselves ahead of Detroit, either.

Ultimately, yes, I could see that the Wings end up having to battle for a playoff spot down to the wire again, but that’s whole lot better than things used to be around here. Detroit’s in year 7 or so of a 10-year rebuild, and that’s just where the team is at.

MLive’s Ansar Khan posted a subscriber-only article which discusses Red Wings prospect Nate Danielson’s expectations for his first campaign as a professional hockey player. Danielson’s level of self-confidence is off the charts, but he faces long odds in terms of making the Red Wings’ roster out of training camp:

Danielson likely will need at least one season in Grand Rapids to continue developing. He made his pro debut last spring in two playoff games with the Griffins, after his junior club, Portland, was eliminated in the WHL Championship by Moose Jaw.

“It was a good experience, making that jump to pro next year and just kind of knowing the speed of the game,” Danielson said. “Obviously, everyone’s older, bigger, heavier, and stronger.

“Just feeling how much guys are stronger on pucks and things like that, it definitely kind of gives you a little extra motivation to be in the gym and really work on that aspect of it.”

Danielson tallied 24 goals and 67 points in 54 games split between Brandon and Portland last season. He led the Winterhawks’ playoff push with seven goals and 24 points in 18 postseason games.

Continued (paywall) with comments from Red Wings assistant director of player development Dan Cleary;

Danielson is only 19, and he’s highly likely to play an AHL campaign at the very least before vying for an NHL job, but he’s borderline cocky, and at his age, that’s a positive quality.