Kulfan’s notebook: Ill-timed penalties damning Wings

The Detroit Red Wings aren’t taking a ton of penalties thus far, but when they do take bad penalties–the kinds of penalties where they’re committing infractions far away from their own goal, or suffering at the hands of chintzy calls–the Wings are affording their opposition easy goals on their struggling penalties.

As a result, the Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan’s pre-game notebook focuses on these penalty issues:

[On Saturday] a growing Wings’ issue, taking penalties, surfaced. Three consecutive whistles against them, all in the offensive zone, put Montreal in control. The Canadiens waltzed to a 6-1 win.

“We had good energy, we were on top of them, we were playing good hockey,” coach Jeff Blashill said. “We score on the power play. We took three offensive-zone penalties, and that’s something that’s plagued us here throughout the early part of the season. We’ve taken too many penalties. We’ve talked about it. We have to stay out of the box and be more disciplined in those areas.”

Gustav Lindstrom and Danny DeKeyser had tripping calls, and Filip Zadina, a high-sticking infraction during that stretch. Montreal scored twice in that span, once on the power play and another goal shortly after a power play expired.

The Wings couldn’t recover. Detroit is averaging just under six penalties per game, tied for second most in the NHL.

“Sometimes there are good penalties, and you need to take them out of desperation to maybe stop a scoring chance,” defenseman Marc Staal said. “We’re not taking those type of penalties. We’re taking stick penalties and tripping, kind of needless penalties away from the play and those will hurt you.”

The Wings can’t have sustained success playing shorthanded so often.

“I’ve addressed it with our team,” Blashill said. “At the end of the night, we can’t expect to take this many penalties and expect to win.”

Continued

Prospect round-up, North America: Bednar named 3rd star in shootout loss

Of prospect-related note in North America on Sunday:

In the QMJHL, Oscar Plandowski finished at -1 with 2 shots in the Charlottetown Islanders’ 7-5 win over Val-d’Or;

And Jan Bednar stopped 34 of 37 shots, but neither of 2 shootout shooters, in the Acadie-Bathurst Titan’s 4-3 shootout loss to Saint John. Bednar was named the game’s third star.

Hawks morning skate news: Kane iffy for tonight, Gustafsson Carpenter out of COVID protocols

The Detroit Red Wings face the Chicago Blackhawks this evening (7 PM EDT on Bally Sports Detroit/NBC Sports Chicago/Sportsnet One/NHL Network/97.1 FM), and there is still a possibility that Patrick Kane will play in tonight’s game, as will Erik Gustafsson and Ryan Carpenter:

.gif of note from IceHockeyGifs: Elmer Soderblom’s blossoming in Sweden

Red Wings prospect Elmer Soderblom stands at 6’8″ and 237 pounds, and IceHockeyGifs posted a fine clip of Soderblom’s fine start in Sweden with Frolunda HC:

Elmer Söderblom (#25), drafted in the 6th round of the 2019 NHL Draft.

20-21 season: 5 points in 28 games.
21-22 season: 9 points in 14 games.

Here’s a recap of Söderblom’s start of the season #LGRW pic.twitter.com/8xafBcTqdE— IcehockeyGifs (@IcehockeyG) October 24, 2021

Soderblom presently projects to be a bigger version of Michael Rasmussen, albeit as a winger–i.e. a middle-six forward as opposed to the next coming of Johan Franzen–but you never know until they come over.

The Wings’ sked ahead is condensed soup

The NHL schedule is the NHL schedule; there’s not much that you can do about it, so there’s no sense in complaining about its inequities.

That being said, the Red Wings are wrapping up a stretch of 3 games played in 3 different cities over the course of 4 nights tonight vs. Chicago, and, as the Free Press’s Andrew Hammond notes this morning, that schedule will repeat itself this week:

The Red Wings play their first back-to-back of the regular season [tonight]. Sunday’s game begins a four-games-in-seven-days stretch, withthree (Chicago, Washington, and Toronto) on the road while squeezing in a home game vs. the Florida Panthers.

The Red Wings at least get two days off before the Wednesday-Friday-Saturday stretch at Washington, home vs. Florida, and at Toronto…

But the Wings repeat it again in the first full week of November, playing 3 games in 3 different road cities in 5 nights…

And, over the course of the November 2nd to November 20th, the Wings play 11 games in 8 locations (including a 4-game home stand) over the course of November 19 nights.

This year’s schedule is condensed for the Olympic break’s sake, but the Wings are playing 15 games in 28 total nights, two two-day breaks included, and that is a lot of hockey to be played over a short period of time.

Chop off tonight’s game, and it’s 14 games in 24 days, which is a game every 1.71 days, which is just…Not necessary.

Between now and November 20th, the Wings are going to suffer losses and are going to suffer injuries due to the wear and tear of playing too many games in too short a period of time, and that’s just not cool.

Khan in the morning: Wings’ defense, forwards weren’t good enough vs. Habs

MLive’s Ansar Khan penned an early-morning article discussing the Red Wings’ difficult 6-1 loss to the Montreal Canadiens, and the Wings’ need to perform much better lest they drop a decision to the Chicago Blackhawks this evening (7 PM EDT start on Bally Sports Detroit/NBC Sports Chicago/NHL Network/97.1 FM).

The Wings finished at an ugly -26 collectively over the course of yesterday night’s loss, and the Wings’ defense was an ugly -10. Coach Jeff Blashill told Khan that the Wings’ blueline was its weak link on Saturday night, and that he believes the Wigns’ forwards can improve as well:

“When we had opportunities to buy space and make plays underneath, it was good. And then there’s times you just got to make a hard play and battle to get it out,” he said. “I don’t think we had enough guys. I think there’s still more from our group of forwards especially. There’s still more from a number of guys. We need guys playing at their ‘A’ game.”

Defenseman Filip Hronek hasn’t been playing his ‘A’ game, which is why he was scratched, replaced by Troy Stecher, who made his season debut. Blashill said it was a coach’s decision. Hronek and Marc Staal were the only Red Wings to play every game since the start of last season.

“I made the decision to put Stech in,” Blashill said. “Somebody has to come out.”

Staal blamed this game on a lack of execution, not effort.

“We got chippy with the puck, and we were just kind of throwing it without a purpose and they just kept countering us,” he said. “It was like an avalanche. That’s a tough hole to dig out of. It’s different playing on the road in these environments and we need to handle that better. It’s about managing that momentum. It’s about weathering that storm and then counter-punching. We’re going into another tough environment in Chicago. We got to turn this thing around quickly.”

Continued; the Wings’ defense may not have been good at getting the puck out of trouble, but I felt that the Wings’ forwards were very guilty of cheating toward offense, yielding a significant amount of 3-on-2’s and 4-on-2’s for the Canadiens’ forwards.

The line of Givani Smith, Mitchell Stephens and Carter Rowney was also -3 (for a three-player total of -9), so the Wings’ fourth line may need some renovations.

Tonight’s opponent is 0-4-and-1, and may be without Patrick Kane due to some COVID-related issues, but the Wings can’t take the Blackhawks for granted. Chicago has won 10 of the last 13 games between the historic rivals, and Marc-Andre Fleury is 9-and-3 of late vs. Detroit, so the Wings have an uphill battle to fight tonight.

Roughly translated: Swedes’ World Junior team won’t include Lucas Raymond, who’s been ‘too good early’ in the NHL

Swedish national junior team coach Tomas Monten didn’t include Lucas Raymond on this past summer’s World Junior Summer Showcase roster, raising some eyebrows in the hockey world, but Monten argued that Raymond probably wouldn’t be made available to the Swedish WJC team as he would be making his debut with the Red Wings.

Monten will be naming his country’s team for the Four Nations Cup in Sweden this November, and he tells HockeyNews.se’s Henrik Sjoberg this morning that neither Raymond nor William Eklund will be part of the Swedish team heading to the World Junior Championship warm-up. What follows is roughly translated from Swedish:

William Eklund has taken a spot in San Jose, and posted 3 assists in 4 games, while Lucas Raymond plays on Detroit’s first line and the right-handed playmaker has met all expectations as he plays a leading role directly on the team’s offensive game.

“I saw the first game in its entirety and then I’ve seen the highlights and other clips and he looks very good. He gets to play in the right environment to contribute with what he has to work with,” says Monten.

He has already counted Raymond out of games at the World Junior Championship.

“He plays higher up and more power play time than he did in Frolunda,” says Monten. “He looks stronger, the young guys do it automatically, but it really seems that there has been a change. We don’t count on him [to play for us] and that’s always the case. Adam Boqvist didn’t play last year, and Rasmus Dahlin didn’t play his last two years. These guys have been too good early.”

Continued; Monten is more optimistic about New Jersey Devils forward Alexander Holtz, who’s playing in the AHL at present, but he’s probably going to omit all of Eklund, Raymond and Holtz from his WJC roster.

Duff discusses Filip Hronek’s absence from the Wings’ lineup

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I don’t know if Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff caught the Bally Sports Detroit broadcast last night, because Trevor Thompson explained that Troy Stecher was in the lineup instead of Filip Hronek for Saturday’s loss to Montreal only; Thompson said that coach Jeff Blashill would be giving Jordan Oesterle a chance to play today vs. Chicago.

In any case, Duff wrote a very good article discussing Filip Hronek’s absence from the lineup due to a “coach’s decision,” and, as Duff suggests, it’s hard to believe that the Red Wings’ coach was doing anything less than sending a message by scratching the team’s #1 defenseman:

“Coach’s decision,”Blashill said of Hronek’s absence from the lineup. “Just a decision. I said we got 8 D that I think are NHL defensemen. I made the decision to put Stech (Troy Stecher) in. Somebody has to come out.”

That the somebody who came out was a clear message from the that what Hronek has been offering the team through the fist four games of the 2021-22 NHL season wasn’t good enough.

Last year, Hronek led the Wings in scored with 26 points. He joined Paul Coffey as the only defensemen to lead the team in scoring in a single season in franchise history. For his performance, the Czech defender, a restricted free agent, was rewarded with a new contract. He signed a three-year deal worth $4.4 million.

However, with that kind of pact comes an increase in expectations and it’s evident that Hronek wasn’t delivering the goods. Through four games, his stats ledger was showing a solitary assist, even though he was logging a team-high 23:03 in ice time per game. Hronek’s Corsi of 37.1 rates the worst among Red Wings blueliners.

Minus Hronek, Blashill shuffled two of his three defense pairings against Montreal. Marc Staal played with Stecher. Gustav Lindstrom, who was skating in tandem with Staal, slid into Hronek’s vacated spot alongside Danny DeKeyser.

If I may be honest, I’d argue that Staal, Lindstrom and Moritz Seider have been the Wings’ best defensmen thus far. Staal has had some bad luck in terms of pucks going off him into the goal (see: two of last night’s six goals), but he’s at least been working hard;

Lindstrom has been a bit of a revelation as someone who finally looks ready for “prime time,” despite the occasional hiccup, and Seider has obviously been very good.

DeKeyser’s been downright Hronek-level shaky thus far, Stecher didn’t look good vs. Vancouver (though he had company in that department), and Nick Leddy has been good overall, but he had a particularly bad night vs. the Habs.

A Red Wings blog