Russian Machine Never Breaks’ Chris Cerullo noted that Red Wings forward and former Washington Capital Jakub Vrana held a charity hockey game to benefit his youth hockey team, HC Letci Lethany, which turned 20 this week.

Vrana’s friend, Vitek Vanecek, was part of the festivities, as were players like David Pastrnak, Jakub Voracek, Jan Rutta and Filip Zadina (among others). Vrana, wearing his old #33, scored 5 goals as the “HC Letci” team took advantage of the fact that the All-Stars team only had 12 skaters.

Because HC Letci is located in Prague, Vrana and his friends gave a ton of interviews, speaking with iDnes.cz, Hokej.cz (including a 3-minute video report from the game), iSport, Sport.cz and Prazsky Denik, which is my preferred interview to try and translate.

It turns out that Vrana apparently spent some time sleeping at the rink (in the ice cream shop, no less) when he was a little kid, and he stayed with HC Letci until he was 15:

Here’s what Vrana and company had to say to Prazsky Denik’s Filip Ardon:

Pastrnak, Vrana and other stars celebrated the anniversary with summer hockey

The Letani [a part of Prague] hockey team celebrated its 20-year anniversary, and they prepared a great program for hockey fans. In an exhibition game, the Airmen’s cadets, led by Jakub Vrana, played against Czech stars, led by David Pastrnak. The packed ice arena saw a total of 19 goals, and the visitors shared interesting hockey artifacts, which were placed into a raffle.

The game itself, which featured the leading stars of Czech hockey, was preceded by a great team honor. Twelve legends of summer hockey received awards on the ice, and three of them received an even greater honor. Frantisek Kuchera, his brother Votjtek, and Zbynek Zavadil looked on as flags with their names were raised to the ceiling of the rink, where they will hang from now on.’

“Goose. I was here every day, so I saw all of them quite a lot. They did well,” praised the Airmen’s most famous student, Jakub Vrana.”

Yes, the translation and the original article said “Goose!”

Continue reading Roughly translated: Jakub Vrana takes part in a charity game for his youth hockey team →

Red Wings forward Dominik Kubalik turns 27 today, and this is the time of year when Czechia’s players take part in exhibition hockey games for charity, so Kubalik spoke with NHL.cz’s Pavel Mandat at a charity game. Here’s a rough translation of their conversation:

Kubalik enjoyed the exhibition game. Detroit? “It put new blood in my veins,” he says.

Dominik Kubalik was one of the big starts of a charity game held in Zdar nad Sazavou. the Detroit forward praised the event after it ended.

“I think it was very successful, and everyone enjoyed it. I really didn’t expect it to be sold out here,” he confides.

Thanks to the strong backdrop of spectators, the hockey players played through a lot of heat, something that’s not usual for the sport. “It was noticeable from the beginning, and you had to get used to it. But gradually it got better and better. Moreover, everyone had the same thing [to deal with],” says Kubalik.

A new challenge awaits the famous scorer for the new season. He’s one of the Red Wings’ recent acquisitions, and he’ll meet other Czech players there.

Continue reading Roughly translated: Birthday boy Dominik Kubalik hopes to ‘repay their trust’ in Detroit →

The Hockey News’s Steven Ellis compiled a list of his top 20 players from the 2022 World Junior Championship, and, just as Simon Edvinsson is due a little criticism for an up-and-down outing, Carter Mazur’s performance merits praise:

Carter Mazur, LW (USA, Detroit): Mazur has quickly developed into an incredible find for the Detroit Red Wings after getting selected 70th overall in 2021. Mazur had five goals and seven points in five outings for the Americans, becoming an integral piece of the team’s scoring core.

Continued; I’ve said my piece on Mazur, and I’ll suggest that he was less than an incredible find given that the Red Wings’ director of amateur scouting, Kris Draper, happened to coach Mazur on Little Caesars’ Under-12 team at one point.

Red Wings prospect Donovan Sebrango certainly played like a leader among men at the World Junior Championship, finishing a tournament for 18-to-20-year-olds with 2 assists, a +7 and 19:58 in average ice time over the course of 7 Gold Medal-winning games.

As it turns out, Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff also reports that Sebrango was the oldest player to win a World Junior Championship, thanks to the fact that the 2022 World Juniors were re-held in Edmonton this summer after being cancelled last December due to COVID concerns:

Born on January 12, 2002, at 20 years, 220 days of age, Sebrango is the oldest player ever to win a world junior title. Since players from the postponed December World Junior tourney were still considered eligible for the August rescheduled event, Sebrango was able to make his mark on tournament lore.

Sebrango wasn’t about to let anyone label him an old man, however.

“Kind of being around the same age group, you kind of go back,” Sebrango said. “You get that feeling like you’re back in junior. But I mean I guess I kind of feel like a veteran here but I still feel pretty young and I am pretty young.

“Maybe I feel a little older than these guys. When you’re around guys the same age, you kind of bond a little quicker.”

Continued; not a bad record to have.

Part of the reason I chose to spend early Sunday morning writing a summary of the 9 Red Wings World Junior Championship participants‘ tournaments is because due criticism is coming toward some of them, and, as Red Wings fans are wont to panic when the prospect experts criticize the Red Wings, well…

Sometimes you have to “get out ahead of the story.”

The Athletic’s Corey Pronman, their prospect guru, wrote a fine article in which he praises the World Junior Championship’s “standouts” and discusses the “disappointments,” and, as you might expect, his final prospect is a disappointing Swedish defenseman:

Simon Edvinsson, LHD, Detroit: Edvinsson was one of the standouts of the December tournament, but it’s fair to say he didn’t have the week he expected. Part of that was due to being injured in the pre-tournament game and getting food poisoning mid-week, but even with that in mind he didn’t do a ton to help Sweden win games. He’s a great player coming off a great season, and there aren’t very many players in hockey with his combination of size, skating and skill, but he coughed up a lot of pucks this week when the games got quicker and it was hard to say he looked NHL-ready.

Continued; no, Edvinsson did not look NHL-ready. Edvinsson struggled mightily at times, and, regardless of whether that was due to the exhibition game injury and/or food poisoning and/or the planet Mercury being in retrograde…

He wasn’t good enough for the Swedes to win, and there’s no doubt about that. As I said in my own article, there is no doubt that this tournament casts doubt as to whether Edvinsson will step right into the NHL out of training camp…

But we have to see how a more comfortable Edvinsson plays in the prospect tournament, training camp and the exhibition season before presuming that he will be banished to Grand Rapids forever and ever.

Rogle BK’s website’s Peter Ekholm wrote an article in which he spoke with the SHL team’s 5 World Junior Championship participants, all of whom won a Bronze Medal with Team Sweden on Saturday night.

Two of those participants were Red Wings prospects–Theodor Niederbach and William Wallinder–so here’s a rough translation of the article:

Sjodin the scorer–WJC bronze for the Junior Crowns

Five Rogle players helped Sweden to World Junior Championship Bronze in Canada. Linus Sjodin scored one of the goals in the Junior Crowns’ 3-1 victory against the Czech Republic overnight Sunday.

“I got in a good position and then it was just a matter of hitting it there,” says Sjodin.

When the bronze game between Sweden and the Czech Republic was stood and weighed at the end of the third period, Sjodin stepped forward. The Rogle forward took off on the right wing, drove into William Wallinder’s precise chip-in and put the puck hard over the goaltender’s right shoulder. That goal meant 3-1 to Sweden, a lead that the Junior Crowns did not relinquish.

“Wallinder got the puck in his own zone and stepped up. I felt like I could go past their defenseman, and Walle puts a perfect chip up to me. I got in a good position and then it was just a matter of slamming it there. It was really nice,” says Sjodin.

Continue reading Roughly translated: Niederbach, Wallinder among the ‘Rogle quintet’ →

I’m gonna be honest: I don’t know the effing rules as to who qualifies for to potentially play in the World Junior Championship in Halfiax and Moncton this December.

The 2023 World Junior Championship will include several Red Wings prospects, and, thankfully, the Sporting News’s Bryan Murphy explains the format to us:

Who can return to play in the 2023 World Juniors?

The tournament, which is classified as U20, allows only certain players to participate. The easiest way to figure out who is eligible for any of the World Juniors is to take the year of the tournament and subtract 20. For example, at the 2023 tournament, any player who was born in 2003 or later can play at the games.

So, which Red Wings prospects qualify?

• Red Savage, Team USA
• Simon Edvinsson, Team Sweden

That’s probably welcome news to both the former, who fell short of the medal round, and the latter, who fell short of expectations.

The 2022 World Junior Championship in Edmonton is over. Canada won Gold in a wild 3-2 overtime victory over Finland; Sweden won Bronze via 3-1 over Czechia.

Way back on August 8th, which feels like a lot longer than 12 days ago, I wrote an article discussing what to expect from the Red Wings’ 9 World Junior Championship participants.

Things changed over the last 12 days, and some players had better tournaments than others.

Now this is all about competitive hockey in August between players under 20 years of age, but the World Juniors definitely serve as a bit of a developmental milestone.

For the Red Wings’ 5 prospects who will take part in the fall prospect tournament and main training camp (Sebastian Cossa, Donovan Sebrango, Eemil Viro, Simon Edvinsson and Jan Bednar), he WJC will have served as some “runway” with which for the players to sharpen themselves for the competitive hockey in September, where jobs will be on the line and spots in exhibition games may or may not determine where players like Sebastian Cossa end up this fall.

Let’s look at the 9 participants, examine how they performed, and where they stand going forward:

Continue reading Red Wings at the WJC: Wrapping up the tournament from a Detroit prospect perspective →

Team Canada battled Finland for the Gold Medal at the World Junior Championship, concluding the belated 2022 tournament in Edmonton.

Prior to the game, Donovan Sebrango told TSN’s Mark Masters that he was “ready to win gold,” and the Canadians brought that level of confidence into the game against the pesky, trapping Finns.

Team Canada won 3-2 in overtime on a goal from Kent Johnson at 3:03, from Logan Stankoven.

THE GOLDEN GOAL! 🇨🇦🚨🥇#WorldJuniors | @19kjohnson pic.twitter.com/VfhZrvVBpS— Hockey Canada (@HockeyCanada) August 21, 2022

In terms of Red Wings players playing the game…

Donovan Sebrango: Sebrango played on Canada’s top defensive pairing, alongside Olen Zellweger. Sebrango finished at +1 in 17:55 played, earning a lot less ice time than usual due to Canada’s half-dozen power plays. The Canadians were human at times against the Finns, Sebrango included, but he played marvelously well all tournament long as a shut-down defenseman who afforded Zellweger room to roam. Great tournament for Sebrango.

Sebastian Cossa: Cossa was the back-up to Dylan Garand, the more senior goaltender on the team. He finished with 1 win and, a 2.00 goals-against average and a .916 save percentage. At 19 going on 20 this November, Cossa is still an elite goaltending prospect–he just didn’t out-duel the incumbent starter in Garand, who had earned his coach’s confidence, and that happens during short tournaments. He’ll take part in the prospect tournament and main training camp, and may get an exhibition season start or two before heading back to the Edmonton Oil Kings, one of the best teams in the WHL.

Eemil Viro: Viro played on the second defensive pairing, alongside Aleksi Heimosalmi. Viro finished even with an assist, a penalty taken and 23:19 played. This was his best game of a good tournament, in which the 6,’ 165-pound defenseman pushed the Canadians around like a professional hockey player, he earned a lovely assist on Aleksi Heimosalmi’s 2-1 goal, and he was just superbly solid and sometimes explosive offensively. This was great for his growth as he’ll be more ready for North American hockey this fall.

In terms of the game’s narrative…

Continue reading Red Wings at the WJC: Canada wins Gold in overtime, 3-2; Viro 1A in 23:19; Sebrango +1 in 17:55. →

Team Sweden and Czechia battled for Bronze at the World Junior Championship on Saturday.

Team Sweden won bronze by a 3-1 score, with Niederbach and Wallinder getting assists on the 2-1 and 3-1 goals.

In terms of Red Wings prospects playing in the game…

Simon Edvinsson: Edvinsson played on the Swedes’ top defensive pair, alongside Helge Grans. Edvinsson looked his most comfortable in terms of the entire tournament in today’s game, finishing with 1 shot, a +1 and a penalty taken in 25:54 played, and, wearing a pair of Warrior gloves, he finally displayed a combination of tremendous skill and some surprising grit as the smooth-skating defenseman was a wild stallion out there, occasionally sliding out of position to chase hits (he made a couple of boomers) and tie up opponents, but overall, he finally looked strong on the blueline.

Theodor Niederbach: Niederbach centered the Swedes’ second line, between Oskar Olausson and Isak Rosen. He finished with that 2-1 goal assist and a +1 in 18:01 played, and Niederbach, throughout the tournament, was smart and solid, working hard to forecheck with his surprisingly strong skating and grind out pucks in all three zones as a skilled center with an edge. He didn’t win as many faceoffs later in the tournament as he did early on, but he was a real snarl machine out there, and he was productive.

William Wallinder: Wallinder worked on the Swedes’ third defensive pair, alongside Emil Andrae. He finished with an assist and a +2 in 16:10 played, and Wallinder is just no-frills strong and solid as a 2nd pair defenseman. He doesn’t wander, he doesn’t lurk, he doesn’t possess top-notch offensive skills, either, but he’s just supremely smooth and easy to play alongside. Smart, smart, smart.

Jan Bednar: Bednar didn’t dress for the Czechs. He finished the tournament with a 4.00 goals-against average and a .865 save percentage, but I wouldn’t fault him completely for the Czechs’ struggles early on in the tournament, and I felt that he was okay during the tournament. Yes, his maddening inconsistency flared its ugly head, but he’s heading back to Acadie-Bathurst of the QMJHL to work on reigning in his game as a 20-year-old. This is his “contract year,” so it will be important for him to find consistent form.

In terms of the game’s narrative..

Continue reading Red Wings at the WJC: Sweden wins Bronze over Czechia; Niederbach 1A, Wallinder 1A, Edvinsson 25:54 played →