Just a reminder that, regardless of whether you live in the Metro Detroit market or not, you need an ESPN Plus and/or hulu subscription to watch tonight’s game between the Red Wings and Dallas Stars (8:30 PM EST start):
The Detroit Red Wings face the Dallas Stars this evening (8:30 PM on ESPN+/hulu only/97.1 the Ticket), and this will be the first meeting between the teams since Jamie Benn raked his stick over the back of Dylan Larkin’s neck off a faceoff, injuring Larkin for the entirety of last summer’s offseason.
I’m wondering what you think might happen to Benn, all 6’2″ and 205 pounds of him, as the Red Wings are simply not built as a team that has many instigators…
But I have this gut feeling that Larkin might do something to let the Stars’ captain know that his Shea Weber moment wasn’t appreciated.
The Athletic’s Corey Pronman is a damn fine evaluator of NHL prospects, but everybody who evaluates prospects makes mistakes in their evaluations, because the art of prospect development often involves a nexus of projections vs. actual players developing above and beyond their performance envelopes.
Moritz Seider, RHD, Detroit: Seider was a unique evaluation in 2019. He played in the Deutsche Eishockey Liga (DEL), not a league many were used to contextualizing top-10 picks in at the time. His club in Mannheim was very strong, and he didn’t receive a ton of ice time or power-play opportunity. You still saw this huge, mobile, competitive defenseman with some puck game and it was clear he was a very good prospect. Whether he had the offensive upside to be a true top-end prospect was the question for myself and a lot of NHL scouts. I rated him as a mid-first-rounder.
There probably wasn’t the evidence at the time to support what he’s done offensively since then, but there was evidence to suggest he was going to be an excellent two-way defenseman. Seider went to the U20 B pool that winter and was the clear best defenseman, helping elevate Germany to the A pool. Even that, while impressive, is not usually indicative of an elite prospect.
His world championship was different. He showed up for Germany versus some of the best players in the world and didn’t look like a fish out of water. It was around that time I started to hear from NHL scouts that this player was for real, and it was here that I erred in not valuing how good he looked for a U18 defenseman at arguably the second-highest level behind the NHL. I don’t think I would with that information have moved him up to a top-five range as he’d go now in a redraft, but he should have been rated as a very reasonable top-10 pick.
Daniel Alfredsson, right wing (sixth year): The former Senators captain could be part of a Swedish invasion with the Sedins in 2022, or he could continue to inch closer to being in “The Hall of Very Good” instead. His 444 goals are 64th all time and his 1,157 points are 54th. He won the Calder Trophy in 1995-96 and won Olympic gold along with the Sedins in 2006, plus a silver in 2014. But he never won another individual award or the Stanley Cup.
Jarome Iginla was enshrined for being a great player and an even better ambassador for the game. Alfredsson fits that description, too.
And you’ve heard of this guy:
Henrik Zetterberg, center (first year): Zetterberg finished his career with 960 points in 1,082 games, including 337 goals. A great two-way forward, he never won a Selke Trophy and was nominated only once. He was second for the Calder in 2002-03 as well. His greatest individual accomplishment was winning the Conn Smythe in the Red Wings’ 2008 Stanley Cup win. That ring earned him Triple Gold Club status, along with championships in the 2006 Olympics and the 2006 world championships with Sweden.
One could argue his former teammate Pavel Datsyuk has a stronger case. One could also argue that Guy Carbonneau’s enshrinement swung the door open for the former Red Wings captain.
Continued (paywall); I really wonder what people would say about Zetterberg if he had a fully healthy career. It turns out that the degenerative disc issue that plagued him during the second half of his career took a lot of pre-game work in order for Zetterberg to simply play through the pain. As good as he was, and he was damn good, he could have been better with a fully healthy back.
Grand Rapids, Mich. – The Grand Rapids Griffins on Tuesday signed left wing Max Humitz and center Brett McKenzie to professional tryouts.
A second-year pro, Humitz will begin his second stint with the Griffins this season. The forward logged one assist in two games this year with Grand Rapids from Nov. 5-6. The Livonia, Mich., native totaled five points (3-2—5) and two penalty minutes in eight appearances with Grand Rapids in 2020-21. Humitz has appeared in six games with the Kalamazoo Wings in the ECHL, recording five goals and one assist.
McKenzie has six AHL games to his name with Providence and Chicago but is yet to record his first point. The fourth-year pro made his AHL debut with the Bruins on Feb. 17, 2019 and last played in the AHL on Oct. 11, 2019 with the Wolves. The former seventh-round draft pick by Vancouver has spent much of his career in the ECHL, splitting time with Atlanta, Fort Wayne and Toledo. McKenzie has amassed 115 points (44-71—115) and 105 penalty minutes in 128 outings in the ECHL. Through 10 games this season with Toledo, the center has 10 points (5-5—10), including a three-point (2-1—3) night on Nov. 3 at Indy.
The Detroit Red Wings dropped a disappointing 5-3 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets on Monday night, and the team has to turn around and learn from its struggles to hold onto their lead as they play the Dallas Stars tonight (8:30 PM EST on ESPN+/hulu/97.1 FM).
MLive’s Ansar Khan and the Free Press’s Helene St. James are out with their morning articles in the wee hours, and Khan took note of coach JeffBlashill’s remarks regarding his team’s defensive deficiencies…
“Our first (period) was good and after that I didn’t think we played good enough hockey,” Blashill said. “I thought we were fortunate to have the lead. We made a couple of mistakes and the next thing you know it slips away. But we’ve got to play better hockey than we’ve been playing. We won a few games in the last little bit that we haven’t been playing quite good enough. We’re giving up too many chances. We have to be a better team defensively if we want to have success.”
The Red Wings (8-7-2) are allowing 3.24 goals per game, which ranks 24th in the NHL. They finished last season 20th in the league in goals against (3.00).
The regression isn’t due to the goaltending tandem of Thomas Greiss, who made 33 saves Monday, and Alex Nedeljkovic.
“Our goaltending’s been there every night,” Larkin said. “We rely on them big-time, but we got to make it easier. We got to find ways when they’re swarming us to get pucks out, find a way to get an offensive-zone shift to give them a breather.”
“You get the lead late, you have to buckle down and at the very least make them earn it,” Blashill said. “Those last two goals, they didn’t really have to earn them. We gave them away. You’re underneath that six minute mark, no way you should walk out of here without at least a point. We’ve got steps to take still. The bigger picture is that in general, we do have to get better defensively. We have to tighten up defensively.”
Lucas Raymond scored the third-period go-ahead goal, but Yegor Chinakhov turned a bouncing puck into a breakaway goal two minutes later, and Zach Werenski flung a puck at the net that eluded Greiss with 1:19 to play. An empty net goal by Alexandre Texier left the Wings packing their gear up and looking to tighten up defensively as their trip continued onto Dallas, Vegas and Arizona.
“We got away with it a little bit,” Blashill said. “We won a few games in the last little bit that we haven’t been playing quite good enough. We’ve talked about learning lessons while we’re winning, but sometimes you have to get slapped in the face. We got slapped in the face.”
Carter Mazur, Denver Freshman Forward Jackson, Mich.
Mazur had the best weekend of his young career, tallying four points in the series and a goal each night to help lead Denver to a sweep of Western Michigan. On Friday, he recorded a career-high three points in a 5-3 win over WMU for his second career multi-point game. The Detroit Red Wings prospect handed out primary assists on DU’s first and third goals, then scored the game-winning goal Friday for his first career game-winner. The next night, Mazur scored Denver’s first goal to tie the game at 1-1 in an eventual 5-2 victory.
Mazur finished the series with two goals, two assists and seven shots on goal, including five on Friday. He also posted a +4 plus/minus in the sweep, going +2 each night. On the season, he now has four goals and seven assists in 10 games.
The Detroit Red Wings won’t have much time to dwell upon their disappointing 5-3 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets on Monday, because the now 8-7-and-2 Red Wings face the Dallas Stars in Dallas on Tuesday evening (8:30 PM EST on ESPN Plus/hulu/97.1 FM).
The 5-6-and-2 Stars are coming off a 5-2 winover the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday, which both snapped a 2-game losing streak and was the Stars’ first win that did not require overtime or a shootout to secure.
According to the Dallas News’s Matthew DeFranks, the Stars’ makeshift lineup, which won for the 2nd time in 8 games on Saturday, is still in flux, as illustrated by Monday’s practice:
The Stars were without Anton Khudobin on Monday morning, as Bowness said Khudobin had a non-COVID-related illness that forced the team to send him home before practice. Bowness said the Stars are hopeful that Khudobin can play Tuesday against the Red Wings.
Dallas is already without Braden Holtby, who missed Saturday’s game with a lower-body injury. Bowness said Holtby would “be out for a couple days,” and should resume skating on Wednesday or Thursday.
That left Jake Oettinger and Ben Bishop as the team’s two goalies at practice Monday. Oettinger backed Khudobin up on Saturday and has not played in an NHL game yet this season. Bishop remains on long-term injured reserve while rehabbing his knee, though he has been at nearly every practice since the start of training camp in mid-September.
Bowness said the Stars have notified Oettinger to be ready to play against Detroit, but “we’ll see what it looks like in the morning.”
Forward Tyler Seguin left practice early on Monday, and Bowness said Seguin is dealing with a lingering lower-body injury that the Stars didn’t want to aggravate in practice.
“Just a lower-body thing that we’re trying to watch a little closer,” Bowness said. “We were off yesterday, clearly, so he went out there to test it. He should be fine tomorrow night.”
Seguin has taken two maintenance days in recent weeks to deal with the injury: Nov. 3 in Calgary and Tuesday in Frisco.
So the Stars’ practice lineup looked like this, per DallasStars.com’s Mike Heika…
The Dallas Stars won for the first time in regulation this season, 5-2 against the Philadelphia Flyers at the American Airlines Center on Saturday.
Dallas (5-6-2) had won three games in overtime and one in a shootout.
“It’s one [game],” Stars forward Joe Pavelski said. “We understand we can’t get it all back in a week. We just have to keep going out there and focus on what we are doing day to day.”
“You don’t want to have 60 shots [against] every game,” Khudobin said. “It’s the bottom line. But if you are, then what else do you have to do? You have to go and stop every shot. If there’s 20 shots, great. It’s kind of your night off.”
According to Natural Stat Trick, Dallas entered the game with an average of 29 scoring chances per game and netted 31 on Saturday. The Stars typically get 10 high danger scoring chances per game and finished with 13 on Saturday.
Those are clearly bumps, but is it enough to explain the goal push? Bowness said he’s not quite sure yet.
“They were just going in,” [Stars coach Rick] Bowness said. “We’ve had those nights before where we’ve had that many shot attempts and shots at the net and quality chances. They just didn’t go in, and tonight they went in.”
Bowness believes the team has created plenty of scoring chances in the past two seasons, and just hasn’t found the poise or the creativity to score. Last season, Dallas ranked 12th in scoring chances and 18th in scoring. This year, Dallas is up about three scoring chances per game, but still ranks middle of the pack.
Dallas averaged 2.79 goals per game last season and is at 2.38 this year.
Now, all of this is a small sample size, but does it speak to the issue of how does the team score more?
Long story long, Dallas is a high-octane team that probably hasn’t scored as much as it would like, and, all things being even, they should at least possess the personnel to be an explosive-scoring team against the Wings, should Detroit’s focus wane.
Absent game previews from the Associated Press or Field Level Media, which won’t post until 4 or 5 AM, I’ll also direct you to Stars coach Rick Bouwness’s 8:48 Monday press conference, per the Stars’ website…
As well as a conversation with former Red Wing Luke Glendening;
Glendening will play his first game against his former team on Tuesday night when the Stars host the Red Wings. Glendening spent the first eight seasons of his NHL career in Detroit before signing a two-year contract in Dallas over the summer.
Save for one year of boarding school, Glendening is a Michigan lifer: born in East Grand Rapids, went to college at Michigan, played for Grand Rapids in the AHL and then Detroit in the NHL.
“I grew up a [Red Wings] fan,” Glendening said. “I got to live out my dream of playing for them for eight years. I have a ton of respect for the people in the organization. It’s a big game for this team. I don’t want to take anything away from that. We need the two points, and that’s the goal for tomorrow.”
Glendening has scored four goals this season, tied for second-most on the team behind Tyler Seguin’s five tallies. He said his relatives “were the biggest Red Wings fans when I was there, but they might be the biggest Dallas Stars fans in Michigan now.”
And there is one more topic that we need to touch upon before all is said and done: this will be the first meeting between these teams since Jamie Benn ended Dylan Larkin’s season and complicated his summer with a nasty cross-check to the back of Larkin’s neck…
So it will be “interesting” to see how the teams respond.
The Detroit Red Wings lost a 5-3 decision to the Columbus Blue Jackets on Monday, and they head to Dallas to battle the Stars on Tuesday night (8:30 PM EST on ESPN+/hulu/97.1 FM), and here’s hoping that the Red Wings take out their frustrations on Dallas, because damn, was Monday’s loss frustrating.
Detroit blew 2-0 and 3-2 leads over the course of this game, and between a bad 2nd period and struggles to hang on in the 3rd, the Wings were growling after Monday’s result…as were the fans.
Which is a good thing. Last year, the Red Wings blowing a 2-goal lead, rallying to take a 3rd-period lead and then losing that lead was disturbingly and deflatingly routine. This season, both the players, the coaching staff and the fans feel that the kind of loss that the Red Wings experienced Monday is below expectations, if not completely unacceptable, and that’s refreshing (albeit in a weird way).
