Keith Petruzzelli nominated for Hobey Baker Award, added to ‘Mike Richter Award Watch List’

Of note regarding Quinnipiac Bobcats senior and Red Wings prospect Keith Petruzzelli, per the Quinnipiac Bobcats’ website:

Quinnipiac men’s ice hockey senior captain Odeen Tufto (Chaska, Minnesota) and senior goaltender Keith Petruzzelli (Wilbraham, Massachusetts) have been nominated for the 2021 Hobey Baker Award, as announced on Monday, Feb. 1.
 
Tufto and Petruzzelli are two of 50 nominees this year for the Hobey Baker Award, and two of just three from ECAC Hockey. This is the 41st year of the Hobey Baker Award, presented annual to the top NCAA Division I Men’s Ice Hockey player.
 
To vote for Tufto and Petruzzelli, visit hobeybaker.com/vote. Votes can be placed once per day.
 
Quinnipiac has had three players in its program history named as finalists for the Hobey Baker Award, most recently Chase Priskie ’19 who reached the Top 10 last season. Reid Cashman ’07 was selected as a Top 10 Finalist in 2005 while Eric Hartzell ’13 was Hobey Hat Trick finalist in 2013, reaching the final three.

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Continue reading Keith Petruzzelli nominated for Hobey Baker Award, added to ‘Mike Richter Award Watch List’

A bit of an update and video interview with Moritz Seider

Red Wings prospect and Rogle BK defenseman Moritz Seider spoke to Rogle’s website on Tuesday afternoon, engaging in a 3:23 English-language interview which accompanies the following update (roughly translated from Swedish);

It is a week ago that Moritz Seider crashed into the rim boards at high speed in the away game against Brynäs. It was a nasty scene, but the huge prospect could finally get up and go out into the dressing room under his own power. It was not as bad as first feared, and on Wednesday, Moritz completed his first workout in the gym on his way back. Rögle-TV met Moritz afterwards who is looking forward to being back on the ice soon.

Seider says that his hit was a hockey play, more or less, and “now the hard part begins” in terms of rehab, but “that’s part of the process, too, and that’s the fun part.”

Seider is asked if he’ll be coming back after the Beijer Hockey Games from February 11th to 14th, as the interviewer has spoken with the team’s physiotherapist, and he says, “It’s hard to say ‘when’ right now.”

Red Wings, Blue Cross Blue Shield team up for kids’ mask-designing competition

Via WILX’s Gabrielle Reed:

On Feb.1, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and the Detroit Red Wings are kicking off the Detroit Red Wings Goalie #MIKidsCan helmet design contest for Michigan kids ages 5-15. The contest ends Sunday, Feb. 28.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan’s #MIKidsCan campaign is an initiative focused on helping kids obtain a healthy lifestyle.

Red Wings goalie Jonathan Bernier will choose the winning design. The design will be graded on the following: creativity, originality and Red Wings theme.

The winning design will be made into a helmet Bernier will wear at a future game in April. A helmet will be autographed and then send to the winning artist. Four other contest finalists will receive a Bernier-autographed item.

For more information and to view the helmet design template, click here.

HSJ in the morning: on the Wings’ desire to ‘do a better job’

The Free Press’s Helene St. James took note of a pain-in-the-ass part of the NHL’s COVID regulations–beat writers are limited to Zoom calls with players and coaches, who are picked at the whim of the teams’ public relations departments–in no small part because the Red Wings appeared to hold a team meeting after Wednesday’s 5-1 loss to Tampa Bay:

“It’s frustrating,” [Luke] Glendening said. “As a group we have to take a look in the mirror and ask ourselves who we are and what we are doing and how we are helping this team. I’ve got to do a better job, we all have to do a better job of doing our jobs and getting it done.”

There was about a 20-minute gap — longer than normal — between the end of the game and the first postgame video interview.

“We’ve talked a lot about it as a group over the past six or seven games, about what we need to do,” Glendening said. “Those are private conversations. Every guy in here is frustrated with the way we have been playing and sometimes the effort we have been giving.”

The Wings don’t have the superstars to match guys like Steven Stamkos and Victor Hedman, but not giving at least a decent effort is tough to excuse — and to explain.

“I don’t have the answer to that,” Blashill said. “If I did, we would have played better. We go out every day, we practice and we try to get better and come out the next day and try to get better. For whatever reason, we got on our heels early and they pushed and they scored every time we gave them a chance.”

Continued (paywall)

Khan’s notebook: on board with the youth movement

MLive’s Ansar Khan posted a subscriber-only notebook article this morning, and he suggested that the Red Wings might be better-served by playing younger players instead of continuing to ride their veterans:

The Red Wings haven’t gotten it done with veterans like Frans Nielsen, Valtteri Filppula and Darren Helm in the lineup. As hopes for better results quickly fade during this abbreviated 56-game season, the Red Wings should provide more opportunities for younger players. Some probably don’t have a future in the organization, but it’s worth a try.

This is why general manager Steve Yzerman’s decision to waive Evgeny Svechnikov, their top pick in 2015, and send him to the Grand Rapids Griffins without giving him a chance this season is puzzling. Perhaps Svechnikov isn’t an NHL player, but why not give him a good, long look?

If the season continues to spiral downward, Yzerman needs to do whatever roster shuffling is required to get as many young players as possible in the lineup, a list that also includes forward Michael Rasmussen and defensemen Dennis Cholowski and Gustav Lindstrom, who were assigned to the Griffins this week.

Continued (paywall)

Kaminski: Griffins’ season will be unpredictable

MLive’s Steve Kaminski filed an article discussing five things that are integral to the Grand Rapids Griffins’ 2020-2021 season, and flexibility may be the most important issue:

The nature of the AHL is a fluid one, but even more so this season since a positive coronavirus test results can change everything. Griffins coach Ben Simon said the players have to be even more ready

“It’s always an ever-evolving puzzle I think in trying to find the right guys in chemistry like that,” Simon said during a Monday Zoom call. “But I think the reality of it is in the American League the roster can change with one phone call. We try not to get set in our ways too much or our hopes too high to lock anything down. Today we did power plays and penalty kills, and we used everyone on the PKs and everyone on the PPs because if there is a phone call that comes and guys are called up, guys have to know what they are doing and what their responsibilities are and just the identity we want to play with.

“We got some ideas what we want, but again, we have to be a little more realistic with the crazy world that we live in right now.”

Continued (paywall)

Wings prospect Kyle Aucoin heads to Muskegon

The Kearney Hub reports that Red Wings prospect Kyle Aucoin will spend the second half of his USHL season a little closer to the team that drafted him:

The Tri-City Storm has completed a transaction with the Muskegon Lumberjacks by trading Kyle Aucoin for a first-round pick in the 2022 USHL Phase II Draft, a fourth-round pick in the 2021 USHL Phase I Draft and future considerations.

The Storm also gave up an eighth-round pick in the 2021 Phase I USHL Draft.

Aucoin, 18, of Hinsdale, Illinois, was selected 156th overall in the sixth round of the 2020 NHL Draft by the Detroit Red Wings. He made his debut for the Storm in the 2019-20 season and was named the 2019-20 USHL Scholar Athlete of the Year. Aucoin was named to the USHL’s All-Academic Team at the conclusion of last season.

Justin Abdelkader’s hockey journey continues

This is a couple days late, but, for the record, via Hockeysverige.se, Justin Abdelkader signed a contract for the rest of the season with EV Zug of the Swiss league:

Zug’s GM, Reto Kläy, claims that Abdelkader’s made his contract budget-friendly because he’s “not playing for the money,” and, as the Swiss league is about 30 games into a 50-game regular season, that’s not hard to believe.

Another season ‘lost season’ of doom and gloom?

As a fan, as well as a would-be pundit, I didn’t want it to be this way.

2-7-and-2, coming off a seventh loss in a row, against the team the Wings can never defeat in the Tampa Bay Lightning, with another game in Tampa to come before back-to-backs against the unbeaten Panthers.

The Red Wings are a team in distress, on the ice, on the bench and behind it, playing “losing hockey” in a big way. A month removed from a training camp so full of promise of at least a season where the team would be “competitive,” as the losses piled up, so full of promise that, this time, the self-inflicted mistakes that cost the team would be the kinds of mistakes made by a learning, growing, younger, faster, stronger and better team, if only incrementally so…

It feels like we’re in for another Lost Season, another season like 2019-2020, which was a season in which the Red Wings’ fans learned that tanking and tanking hard offers no tangible benefit due to a punitive draft lottery that actively seeks to punish the teams most in need of a draft-aided boost.

Continue reading Another season ‘lost season’ of doom and gloom?