The Detroit Red Wings attempted to earn their 4th straight win while taking on the Washington Capitals on Thursday night.

The game turned over the course of only 10 seconds of play, in which Washington scored 2 goals on the Red Wings, and after that, it was the Zach Fucale and the Washington Defense show, as Fucale pitched a 21-save shutout, Washington blocked 15 Red Wings attempts, and Detroit was shut out 2-0.

Detroit drops to 7-6-and-2 heading into Saturday’s home stand finale vs. the Montreal Canadiens. The Red Wings are now halfway through their stretch of 11 games to be played over the course of 17 nights.

Both teams’ lineups were in flux prior to the game, so warm-ups resolved the personnel issues:

Via Red Wings prospect and Vancouver Giants defenseman Alex Cotton on Twitter comes this news regarding Red Wings prospect Kienan Draper:

NEWS: Kienan Draper commits to Michigan Wolverines

? https://t.co/hre0hlAbrA #ChwkChiefs pic.twitter.com/BFUusKFDiQ

— Chilliwack Chiefs (@Chiefs_Hockey) November 12, 2021

Per the Chilliwack Chiefs:

Chilliwack Chief Kienan Draper has secured his NCAA future. After finishing out the 2021-22 BCHL season with the Chilliwack Chiefs, the 19-year-old will be heading to his home state of Michigan to join the University of Michigan Wolverines.

“It will definitely be nice to be close to home, and my sister is a senior there,” Draper said before practice on Tuesday (Nov. 9). “It’s pretty awesome for me and I’m very excited.”

Draper’s ties to the Great Lakes State run deep. He was born and raised in Michigan and played his youth hockey with the Little Caesar’s program. Dad Kris Draper played 16 seasons and 1000-plus National Hockey League games in Detroit, winning four Stanley Cups with the Red Wings.

Kienan himself is a Red Wings draft pick, selected in the seventh round (187th overall) of the 2020 entry draft.

It seems pre-ordained that he was going to end up heading home. The only question was whether it was going to be Michigan or Michigan State.

“I don’t think Coach (Brian) Maloney likes the choice all that much, because he’s a Michigan State alum, but it’s an all-round great school,” Kienan said. “I’ve been to some hockey games and football games, and it’s an unbelievable environment there. I think there will be some extra chirping now between me and coach, but he did tell me it’s a great spot.”

Sportsnet’s Rory Boylen posted a set of power rankings today, examining each team’s most complicated contract situation, and he feels that the Red Wings might be questioning whether they ought to trade Vladislav Namestnikov:

22. Detroit Red Wings: 7-5-2

A first-round pick in 2011, Vladislav Namestnikov has been inconsistent as a player and his career-best 22 goals and 48 points from 2017-18 seemed a distant memory. He scored eight times in 53 games with the Wings last season and is already one off that total in 2021-22. He’s bound to slow down somewhat as he’s outshot his expected goal rate (and it’s hard to visualize him as a 40-goal scorer anyway) but he’s filling a third-line role and producing for this young team, which could either be a decent and relatively cheap piece to move forward with if the Wings extend him, or perhaps more likely, a pretty good trade chip for teams seeking scoring depth at the deadline. How that plays out either way will depend on what level Namestnikov can keep producing at this season.

Continued; it’s too early for me to think about disassembling the team.

Detroit Hockey Now’s Kevin Allen posted a subscriber-only article in which he grades the Red Wings’ defensemen after 14 games of play:

Moritz Seider A

Expectations were high, and yet he has exceeded them. He is third on the team in scoring with 11 points in 14 games. He leads Detroit’s defense in plus-minus (+4) and Corsi (48.7%). At 20, Seider has an aura — the Detroit Red Wings seem more in control when he’s on the ice. He still make defensive mistakes, but probably fewer than you would expect for a player his age. When you consider all the ways he can help a team, he probably is the team’s most important player.

Filip Hronek  C+

He’s been better since he was scratched for a couple of games. His Corsi is 42.5%, worst among the blue line regulars. Hronek’s offensive performance has picked up. Hronek has plenty of ability, but the consistency just isn’t there. He has seven points now while logging more than 23 minutes per game. He plays more than every other defensemen, even Seider. Filip Hronek is a key player in the Red Wings’ rebuild. The Detroit Red Wings want a little more now.

Continued (paywall)

Sports Illustrated’s Tony Ferrari is Art Regner’s guest on the latest episode of The Red and White Authority, the Red Wings’ podcast:

Former Red Wings GM Ken Holland will be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame on Monday in Toronto, and he spoke with the Toronto Sun’s Steve Simmons about the honor:

“This all feels so surreal,” said Holland in a lengthy telephone conversation. “I was a guy who barely made it. I was a minor-league player. And I had a job at the liquor store in Vernon, B.C., when my career ended and Jimmy Devellano and Neil Smith called and offered me a job as the western Canadian junior scout for the Wings. Bill Dineen (his AHL coach) had recommended me. I’d never scouted before.

“Neil had to come out and show me. He showed me where the scout’s entrance was in buildings, where the scouting room was where you picked up the lineups. I didn’t know a thing.”

But he just kept going to work, driving the prairies through snowstorms. That sounds like a cliche, but anyone who has made those treks understands the challenge.

“You go to work every day, and you keep looking for players and then you get a better job and you to work and you’re still trying to find players. And one day turns into a week and a week turns into a month and a month turns into a year and then, one day, you get a call from Lanny McDonald (a former Medicine Hat Tiger himself) telling you you’re going to the Hall of Fame. It’s surreal. It’s more than surreal. I’m very honoured. I’m overwhelmed, really. The Hall of Fame has never been on my radar screen. I still can’t believe this is happening.”

Continued

Ken Kal and Daniella Bruce discuss the Red Wings-Capitals game in a 14-minute video:

Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff discusses the Red Wings’ attempts to stop Alex Ovechkin from lighting up the scoresheet this evening:

Certainly, McDavid and Ovechkin present a challenge to opposing defensive structure. However, each is a unqiue challenge all its own.

“They’re different, him and Connor McDavid,” Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill said. “Connor McDavid, you have to be aware of his speed. You have to really start defending him in the O-zone.

The Detroit Red Wings are going from Connor McDavid to Alex Ovechkin. Is that out of the frying pan and into the fire, or vice versa?

“Where I think with Alex, it’s more once you enter your own zone you have to know where he’s at on the ice all of the time. You can’t give him a millisecond, or otherwise he’s getting his shot off and every shot has a chance to go in.”

In 28 career games against the Red Wings, Ovechkin has netted 20 goals. He scored in his first career game against the Red Wings on December 9, 2005. Ovi also netted a tally in their most recent meeting on October 27th.

Continued

The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan filed a notebook article this afternoon, discussing the Red Wings’ relative luxury of having a (borderline) full lineup of players to utilize over the course of the team’s 3-game winning streak:

You can almost hear the coaching staff knocking on wood, but the Red Wings, heading into Thursday night’s game, essentially had a whole lineup.

Defenseman Troy Stecher is out with an undisclosed injury, but Stecher was alternating into the lineup, and hasn’t been a regular.

With Dylan Larkin returning from his family emergency, and Tyler Bertuzzi squarely into the lineup since there are no games in Canada (Bertuzzi is unvaccinated), the Red Wings can place personnel in the lineup where Blashill feels they’re most effective, and not have to slot players into roles that aren’t entirely comfortable or productive.

“When you are shorthanded you’re asking a lot of players at times to move up lineups and spots where they’re not ready for,” Blashill said. “When you have a full lineup, you can slot people into matchups where it allows them to be successful. It allows you to slot everyone in the right slots.”

Continued; the Red Wings play 6 more games over the course of the next 10 days, so the lineup has to stay healthy…

Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff posted a notebook article which discusses Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill’s update on defenseman Troy Stecher’s undisclosed injury:

“Stech has a number of options and one of which I think is that he’s gonna kind of go through the next couple of weeks and see how the injury reacts,” Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill expained. “He’s hoping that it becomes a pain tolerance thing.”

A week has already passed since Stecher’s injury was suffered during a 5-1 loss to the Boston Bruins. He’ll be missing from the lineup for a fourth straight game as the Wings are tangling with the Washington Capitals on Thursday at Little Caesars Arena.

One thing about the injury – it can’t get any worse. The question for the time being is apparently whether it’s already to the point where it’s bad enough that Stecher can’t perform effectively.

“It’s not something that he can hurt further,” Blashill said. “If it doesn’t react right, he’s either going to have to take significant time off, or have surgery. The other choice – that’s two of them – the third choice is give it a couple of days here and see if he can play through the pain and if the pain will subside at all. We’ll just keep taking it day by day.”

Continued; in this type of situation, I’m guessing that going for surgery might yield the least time for Stecher to recover.