The Malik Report

According to iDnes.cz’s Petr Bilek, Rytíři Kladno owner and player Jaromir Jagr headed to Riga, Latvia to take in Nikola Jokic’s performance at the “EuroBasket” game between the Czechs and Portugal, on Wednesday.

Jagr was able to squeeze in the game on Wednesday, between two preseason games, via taking his team’s ownership’s private plane to and from Riga, and as Jagr was in Latvia, his friend, Red Wings free agent signing Eduards Tralmaks, made the game arrangements for Jagr and his girlfriend.

Here’s a picture of Jagr enjoying the game from the sidelines:

“Eddie” Tralmaks is 28, and he earned a 1-year, 2-way contract from the Red Wings after the 6’4,” 209-pound winger led the Czech Extraliga in scoring with 23 goals and 28 assists for 51 points in 48 games played.

Tralmaks also posted 3 goals and 4 assists in 7 games played for the Latvian national team during the World Championship.

That, and he’s tight with Jaromir Jagr, so there’s that.

The NHL’s regular season schedule will expand from 82 to 84 games during the 2026-2027 season, and as such, MLive’s Ansar Khan looks back to Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman’s post-free agency press conference to get the GM’s take on the situation:

The NHL’s new Collective Bargaining Agreement that goes into effect in September 2026 features a couple of slight alterations in the schedule. The regular season will increase from 82 games to 84 games and the season will start in September instead of early October.

NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly confirmed the earlier start to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman and Kyle Bukauskas at the NHL/NHL Players’ Association European Player Media Tour last week in Italy.

“It (84-game schedule) should allow us to start the season earlier so we’re not extending the overall schedule,” Daly told Friedman and Bukauskas. “The 2026–27 season may be shorter (in days). We’ll see how that plays out.”

Red Wings general manager Steve Yzerman said last month that an 84-game season “makes perfect sense.”

“I think it’ll give more balance to divisional games,” Yzerman said. “I’m not exactly sure what the matrix is going to be as far as divisional games and whatnot, but it seemed to make sense to us.”

Where GM SY isn’t so sold is upon the concept that teams will play only 4 preseason games instead of 6 to 8:

“I think the four preseason games … it’s a bit of a challenge,” Yzerman said. “You’re always weighing how many games your veteran players need to play. The guys that are really knocking on the door, the guys that you can consider call-ups and then those players that are here trying to push to make the team. It’s going to be hard to get everybody in a reasonable number of games with four. That’s the downside to it, but we’ll manage it.”

The Kronen Zeitung posted a subscriber-only article about Red Wings forward Marco Kasper’s summer in Carinthia, Austria. Only the first three paragraphs are available:

Detroit’s playoff-less streak to be defeated

All of Detroit hopes that Marco Kasper and company will defeat the playoff-less streak in the NHL next season. Currently the ice hockey ace from Klagenfurt is relaxing at home on the beloved Worthersee. Curiously, in Sweden, the hobby golfer is recognized most often.

Summer, sun and turquoise water! Ice hockey star Marco Kasper is still looking to enjoy a few days at home in Klagenfurt on Lake Worthersee. Before he returns to his NHL team the Detroit Red Wings in North America in mid-September. But summertime does not mean spending the rest of the whole day in the deck chair for a player from the best league in the world.

“Of course, I also take timeouts, but I do train for several hours a day. Especially as a young player, this almost has to be–I want to improve myself physically,” says the 21-year-old, whose plans are of course in agreement with Detroit.

That’s as far as the article goes before the paywall hits…But it’s good to know that Kasper’s still balancing his summertime recovery with workouts and, as his Sunshine Hockey League participation indicated, skating on the rink as well.

Per the Detroit Red Wings on Twitter:

New guys, new numbers! pic.twitter.com/JwRS11Ts9w

— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) August 28, 2025

The Score’s John Matisz is ranking NHL teams by “tiers,” from 1-8, and he assesses the Red Wings to be in the 5th tier, which he describes as being in “Standings purgatory,” suggesting that it will take “the stars aligning” for the teams in Tier 5 to make the playoff cut:

Detroit Red Wings

This is a massive season for the Red Wings, who haven’t competed in a playoff game since 2016. Fans have grown impatient with GM Steve Yzerman.

It’s true, the so-called Yzerplan has involved a long list of questionable transactions, especially over the past few years. But June’s acquisition of John Gibson from Anaheim was a win. A Gibson-Cam Talbot tandem should make goaltending a tangible strength for a club that’s banking on sizable jumps from early-20s skaters like Lucas Raymond, Moritz Seider, Marco Kasper, and Simon Edvinsson in order to snatch one of the East wild cards.

Todd McLellan, who’s entering his first full season in Detroit, is a solid coach. Bonus: Yzerman has $12 million in cap space to spend on reinforcements.

Continued; it certainly doesn’t appear that the Red Wings will make any offseason acquisitions, given the high prices for tradable assets, but my hope is that the Wings use that extra cap space over the course of the regular season, leading up to the 2026 trade deadline.

EliteProspects’ Cam Robinson and Ryan Lambert discuss the “stock” of various participants in the 2025 U.S. Olympic orientation camp, which wraps up today in Plymouth, Michigan. They feel that Dylan Larkin is a “probable” candidate…

We also agree that another probable is Dylan Larkin, as well as our first entrant who was snubbed from Four Nations: Tage Thompson. Talk about missing goalscoring in a critical moment, and especially when deferring to some guys who packed very little punch at either end of the ice, makes his omission a mistake the US won’t make twice.

And they offer this “debate” as to whether Alex DeBrincat should have attended the orientation camp:

Debate No. 6: Alex DeBrincat

RL: The only thing I can think here is that they just figured the left wing is so loaded they can’t make space for him. I don’t buy that, and the only thing I can think of here is that he didn’t make the Four Nations team, and didn’t play at the World Championships. If there’s any one player on our snubs list that could play their way onto the Olympic team, I think it’s DeBrincat and I don’t think it’s really all that close. He’s only 25 or so games of shooting 19 percent away from making an emphatic case.

CR: This debate is no debate. DeBrincat should’ve at least earned an invite.

Continued (paywall); Larkin’s versatility will earn him a spot on the team, and DeBrincat can definitely shoot his way onto the team, but Patrick Kane just isn’t mentioned at all, and I’m not certain as to why he’s omitted…

The Grand Rapids Griffins signed Alex Kannok Leipert to an AHL contract on July 10th, and Detroit Hockey Now’s Tim Robinson posted a story about the Thai-born Kannok Leipert‘s unique hockey background:

Kannok Leipert, a defenseman who recently signed with the Grand Rapids Griffins comes to Western Michigan from Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand, where he was born in 2000.  Or, as the crow flies, about 8,500 miles.

His father, Tim, was a Canadian living in Thailand teaching English when he got married, and Alex lived there until moving to Regina, Saskatchewan, when he was five. But the hockey bug had bitten him before that.

”We visited Canada when I was two and a half,” Kannock Leipert said. “We went to a Regina Pats game and I just fell in love with it; I said I wanted to play hockey and that was it,” he told abbotsford.canucks.com. 

Robinson also spoke with Grand Rapids Griffins coach Dan Watson about Kannok Leipert’s hockey chops, as well as his Muay Thai training:

Continue reading Meet Alex Kannok Leipert, a Thai-born Griffin

Bleacher Report’s Lyle Richardson suggests that Lucas Raymond is the Red Wings’ best forward going into the 2025-2026 season, and that Raymond is the 23rd-best forward in the NHL overall:

23. Detroit Red Wings: Lucas Raymond

Chosen fourth overall in the 2020 NHL Draft, Lucas Raymond has steadily worked his way into becoming the best forward on the Detroit Red Wings. While the rebuilding club struggled to end a franchise-worst nine-year playoff drought, the 23-year-old winger tallied a career-best, team-leading 80 points last season.

A talented, smart, swift-skating play-maker, Raymond made significant strides during his previous four NHL seasons, sitting second among Red Wings scorers with 254 total points. That includes a career-best 31 goals in 2023-24 along with last season’s career high in points.

Entering his fifth NHL campaign, Raymond has yet to reach his full potential as a scoring winger. He could reach 90 points, which could help lift the Wings into the playoffs for the first time since 2016.

Continued; Raymond, Dylan Larkin and Alex DeBrincat would all be good choices here…

ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski attempts to determine the best draft picks at every draft position from 1 to 224, and the Red Wings draft picks earn 10 mentions on his list:

2. Marcel Dionne, C, Detroit Red Wings (1971)

Determining the best No. 2 overall pick is just as ferocious as pick the No. 1 first overall pick. Retired star forwards like Brendan Shanahan (Devils, 1987), Patrick Marleau (Sharks, 1997) and Daniel Sedin (Canucks, 1999). Current star forwards in Aleksander Barkov (Panthers, 2013), Gabriel Landeskog (Avalanche, 2011) and Jack Eichel (Sabres, 2015). Legendary defensemen like Chris Pronger (Whalers, 1993), Drew Doughty (Kings, 2008) and Victor Hedman (Lightning, 2009).

In the end, this came down to Evgeni Malkin (Penguins, 2004) vs. Dionne. The case for Malkin is that he scored his 1,346 points in 1,213 games and that he earned more hardware (Calder, Conn Smythe, Hart, two scoring titles) than Dionne. But the former Kings star had 1,771 points in 1,348 games, including the sixth-highest goal total (731) ever in his Hall of Fame career — and at a time when being a Kings star didn’t exactly work in his favor from a legacy perspective. There are a lot of right answers here. Dionne, we think, is the rightest one at No. 2, but it’s extremely close when adjusted for eras.

4. Steve Yzerman, C, Detroit Red Wings (1983)

He didn’t have the goals total of Mike Gartner (708), who was drafted fourth overall in 1979 by the Capitals, or the point total of Ron Francis (1,798), who was taken in 1981 by the Whalers. But Yzerman is seventh in career points (1,755) and 10th in career goals (692) while leading the Red Wings to three Stanley Cups — earning playoff MVP honors in 1998.

The other two were great players. Yzerman was an icon. But 10 years from now, will Yzerman concede this spot to Cale Makar (Avalanche, 2017)?

Continue reading 10 Red Wings draft picks earn best-ever nominations from ESPN’s Wyshynski

MLive’s Ansar Khan examines the Red Wings’ potential pairings on defense for this upcoming season, placing Ben Chiarot with Moritz Seider, Simon Edvinsson with Albert Johansson, and Erik Gustafsson with Travis Hamonic. I’m interested in the bottom pairing because there’s going to be significant shuffling of the Wings’ bottom four defensemen:

3. Erik Gustafsson-Travis Hamonic

Gustafsson’s ability to man the point on the second power play unit gives him the edge in the competition for a third pair spot, but he doesn’t have a firm grip on it. He needs to be better defensively and provide a little more offense (two goals, 18 points in 60 games). The 15-year veteran Hamonic does the dirty work (physical play, shot-blocking) that the Red Wings need.

Extras: Jacob Bernard-Docker, Justin Holl

Bernard-Docker is looking to establish himself after appearing in only 144 games over parts of five seasons with Ottawa and Buffalo. The Red Wings opted not to buy out Holl, who is entering the final season of his three-year, $10.2 million contract, because cap space is not an issue and there is always a need for experienced depth defensemen. But if everyone on defense is healthy, they might opt to waive Holl like they did before last season, and send him to Grand Rapids if he clears, rather than carry eight defensemen.

Continued; Khan doesn’t believe that Axel Sandin Pellikka’s quite ready for the NHL, barring a “spectacular” training camp.