The Malik Report

Red Wings prospect Joe Veleno spoke with Johan “Mr. Madhawk” Svensson after his first practice with the SHL’s Malmo Redhawks this morning, speaking with Kvallsposten regarding his adjustments to European hockey. What follows is roughly translated from Swedish:

Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman appeared on 97.1 the Ticket’s Stoney and Jansen show this morning, and Yzerman was asked to-the-point questions regarding the team’s draft haul, free agents, its loaned prospects in Europe and the team’s direction heading into the 20-21 season. The interview’s particularly insightful, and it’s a relief to hear Yzerman suggest that the Mantha and Bertuzzi contracts will get done:

Update: Here are some quotes from the interview, via 97.1 the Ticket’s Will Burtchfield:

“There are a lot of changes,” Yzerman told 97.1 The Ticket on Monday. “It takes a little bit of time usually for everybody to fit in and figure out where everybody plays and who they play with, but I think we’re an improved team.

“I can’t tell you if it’s five wins, 10 wins, 20 wins, but I think it’s an improved team, a quicker team. A little bit more skill up front with Namestnikov and Bobby Ryan in the lineup. Our D was a little bit older and banged-up last year, and I’m hoping that with Marc Staal, Jon Merrill and Stetcher we’re a little bit younger, maybe a little bigger even, but a little bit more energy on the backend now.”

The Red Wings can also count on improvement from within. On the backend, Yzerman is expecting 22-year-old Filip Hronek to continue the ascent he began last season, and hoping 21-year-old Gustav Lindstrom can secure a full-time role in Detroit. Among the forwards, he’s eyeing further growth from 20-year-old Filip Zadina and bigger contributions from Dylan Larkin, Anthony Mantha and Tyler Bertuzzi.

“I expect us to be better,” Yzerman said. “I expect Filip Hronek to take a step. Does Gustav Lindstrom, who played a little bit for us last year, is he able to hang on to a full-time job and play regularly? I think Dylan, Anthony and Tyler are just going into their prime years. Filip Zadina unfortunately got hurt (toward the end of last season). He really showed signs that he was becoming an NHL-er with an ability to make plays and score goals, so I look to have him in there.”

Mantha and Bertuzzi are both restricted free agents in need of new contracts, but Yzerman has no worries about getting that done.

“We’ll sign Anthony and Tyler. I’m pretty certain we’ll get them signed,” he said. “It’s a question, is it one year, is it five years, is it four years? … Each year as our young guys’ contracts expire, a year from now Filip Hronek’s up and we’ll extend his contract. But we’re hoping we can move our younger players in, one or two every year for the next two, three, four years.”

FYI:

Just a few days away until the @JDanielsFund Roasts & toasts the one and only Scotty Bowman. There will be star-studded appearances from your favorite professional athletes, celebrities and comedians. Tune in Wednesday at 8 p.m.

To donate, visit: https://t.co/Op8R3VV94w pic.twitter.com/4UzzbvndK2— FOX Sports Detroit (@FOXSportsDet) October 12, 2020

Make sure to tune into @FOXSportsDet or stream the show online Wednesday! Streaming information will be available via https://t.co/FIsVN6BkMJ https://t.co/PYhKbQZLyB— Jamie Daniels Foundation (@JDanielsFund) October 12, 2020

The Athletic’s Max Bultman wrote an article this morning which discusses the impacts of the Red Wings’ free agents upon the Wings’ organization from the prospects developing elsewhere to the Wings’ current depth chart:

Whenever the Red Wings finally get together for a formal 2020-21 training camp, an orientation might be in order. Because after a busy first weekend of free agency, in which five free agents signed with Detroit, the Red Wings’ locker room is going to be full of new faces.

More importantly, all five of those players project as meaningful upgrades for the NHL’s last-place team last season. Not to a degree that will drastically alter Detroit’s trajectory, but after a season that featured more than its fair share of miserable losses, the Red Wings got better this offseason. At least on paper.

Now the question is: How do all these new pieces fit together? Detroit still has some major RFA business to accomplish, namely signing top-line forwards Anthony Mantha and Tyler Bertuzzi, but once it comes to terms with those two and Dmytro Timashov, the picture at both forward and defense will be pretty crowded.

So, with the caveat that the offseason is not yet over, here’s an updated projection of the Red Wings’ organizational depth chart.

Continued (paywall)

Red Wings director of amateur scouting Kris Draper spoke with 97.1 the Ticket’s Mike Stone on Friday, speaking about the 2020 draft for over 15 minutes. This one slid under the radar, but here’s the MP3 of the interview.

This morning’s interview with Steve Yzerman from 97.1 the Ticket will be posted later today.

Red Wings defenseman Moritz Seider spoke with Helsingborgs Dagblad’s Mattias Hjalm regarding his status as most likely to make his SHL debut with Rogle BK on Thursday, but the damn article is a subscriber-only piece, so the most I can give you from it is this picture of Seider sitting in the stands during Rogle’s game on Saturday. The photo was taken by HD.se’s Niclas Jonsson:

Update: Seider practiced with the team on Monday, per Rogle’s Instagram account:

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Bilder från måndagens ispass! ??? Hoppas alla får en fantastisk start på veckan! ? #roglebk

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I can’t embed it, but Joe Veleno spoke with the Malmo Redhawks’ website after practicing with the team this morning, and the interview is two-and-a-half minutes long. Veleno is very insightful.

Former Red Wing Drew Miller spoke with the Scotland Herald’s Craig Anderson regarding his stint with the English Ice Hockey League’s Braehead Clan (now the Glasgow Clan) during the 2012-2013 lockout:

“It got to a point where I just wanted to play and be ready for the season resuming. The best way to do that was to play games,” Miller recalled. “Playing for the Clan turned out to be a great thing for me. It got me out of the house, it got me on the ice and my wife and I called our time in Scotland our second honeymoon.

“The lockout itself was frustrating. There were endless talks and you had to stand firm about what you were fighting for and getting that fair deal. The owners are trying to get to get as much money as they can and as a player, all you wanted was what was right.

“You only had a certain amount of time to be a player so you want to maximise it as much as possible before your body and mind start to tell you differently so to miss out on half a season was tough. Throughout the summer, I’d been skating with the boys in Detroit, getting ready for the new season. With the lockout, all you could do was skate and train. It got boring after a while.”

Miller stayed until January 2013 when an agreement was reached in the dispute, having scored 17 goals and 16 assists in his 26 games under Jordan Krestanovich, as well as earning a Wall of Fame banner for his contribution.

Continued

This isn’t necessarily Red Wings-related per se, but I feel that it’s important to talk about: the Toronto Star’s Kevin McGran notes that NHL teams have lent 145 players to European teams, but, due to the coronavirus situation, most North American developmental and minor pro leagues are scheduled to begin play in December or January–if they have a start date at all.

As a result, the Red Wings and every other team find themselves scrambling to find places in which to give their top prospects places to play, and each and every one of the NHL’s 31 teams find themselves in the same boat:

As the best teenage hockey players in the world heard their names called during the NHL’s virtual draft last week, there was a question hanging over the proceedings that couldn’t really be answered.

What’s next?

A lot of these prospects — some of whom will form the backbone of the teams that selected them — won’t have a place to play, or will have limited playing time, or might only have a spot until the coronavirus has something to say about it.

Any way you slice it, an important year of development could be lost or compromised.

“One of the things we have to accept is that, certainly, development is going to be different,” Maple Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas said.

“That’s the biggest unknown,” echoed San Jose GM Doug Wilson. “Depending on when we start, it’s going to be a long period of time before when we ramp back up again.”

Continued; it’s not the Red Wings’ NHL players who I’m worried about when it comes to the 10-month layoff that they’ll have had between the end of the NHL’s regular season and the start of the 20-21 campaign; it’s the Red Wings’ AHL players, from Taro Hirose, Dennis Cholowski and Evgeny Svechnikov to Givani Smith and even Joe Hicketts, whose development seriously concerns me right now.

The Red Wings’ mid-level and longshot NHL prospects have more or less been left to their own devices for the last 10 months, as have the Wings’ North American-playing draft picks, and that has to hurt their on-ice development as they’ve not been able to play competitive hockey. That’s scary in terms of what kinds of detrimental effects might befall their games.

Via Paul Kukla of Abel to Yzerman: Six of NHL.com’s beat writers discussed the influence that the NHL’s game of musical chairs at the goaltending position will have upon goalies’ new teams, and Thomas Greiss earned a nod from NHL.com’s Tim Campbell:

Thomas Greiss, Detroit Red Wings

The default answer to this roundtable should be [Anton] Khudobin, but since he didn’t change teams, I’m going to go with Greiss. You can argue that there are flaws in just about every goalie who has changed teams, from evidence of decline or inconsistency in their game, but in my opinion, the two who rise slightly above the field are [Jacob] Markstrom and Greiss. The Red Wings were the team that needed an upgrade at goalie the most after allowing a League-worst 265 goals last season (.894 save percentage as a team), so this was a much-needed signing. Greiss was 16-9-4 with a 2.74 GAA and a .913 save percentage in 31 games (29 starts) with the New York Islanders last season, and 2-2 with a 2.02 GAA and .929 save percentage in four playoff games (three starts). The work Greiss put in during his five seasons with the Islanders was above average, and his .915 career save percentage says that although he may not solve all the issues for the Red Wings, he will improve the situation at goalie. — Tim Campbell, staff writer

Continued; I find it interesting that the six NHL.com writers picked six different goalies.