The Malik Report

The Free Press’s Helene St. James continues examining the Red Wings’ past 5 drafts with a discussion of the team’s 2016 draft picks. I would suggest that it’s a little early to pass judgment on the Wings’ picks, but kudos to St. James for trying:

D Filip Hronek

Drafted: 53rd.

Draft year doings: Four assists in 40 games with Hradec Kralove in the Czech Extraliga, which is the country’s top hockey league.

Draft day scouting report: On the smaller side, but good skater. Competitive and strong with the puck. Scouts were excited about his upside, and character.

Post-draft doings: Had 14 goals and 47 assists for 61 points in 59 games in 2016-17 with Saginaw (Ontario Hockey League), tying him for fourth among OHL defensemen in scoring. Joined Grand Rapids in spring of 2017 and had two points in 10 games, and made two appearances in the AHL playoffs.

Had 11 goals and 28 assists for 39 points in 67 games with the Griffins in 2017-18, second among AHL rookie defensemen in scoring. Ran one of the power-play units. Had one goal and two assists for the Czechs at the 2018 World Championship.

Next-season doings: Hronek is a candidate to push for a job with the Wings in 2017-18.

Draft assessment: Looks promising.

St. James continues…

The Free Press is about to launch a “contest” pitting 16 players against each other in a voting showdown to determine the “Best Red Wings Player of All Time.”

I know this because the Free Press posted a photo gallery of the 16 players, and I know that it’s the end of the first full week of June, some 3 weeks away from the first round of the draft on June 22nd in Dallas, so it’s the perfect time to launch this kind of thing.

I usually don’t spout off after posting stuff from other sites for a reason–I want you to weigh in and let your opinions be known, and I’m more of a news-oriented person–but to me, this one is easy.

Gordie Howe is the winner for both the player he was and the person he was. Just as other teams’ fans suggest that Wayne Gretzky or Bobby Orr changed the game at their positions, because they did, they are superb human beings, and it’s hard to move away from that triumvirate because goalies (like me) are such ecclectic, weird people.

After that, good luck. The Free Press offers Bob Probert, Nicklas Lidstrom, Steve Yzerman, Sergei Fedorov, Reed Larson, Chris Osgood, Terry Sawchuk, Alex Delvecchio, Brendan Shanahan, Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg, Sid Abel, Norm Ullman and Red Kelly as choices.

You could easily add Vladimir Konstantinov, Black Jack Stewart, Larry Aurie, Marcel Pronovost, Mickey Redmond and others to the mix, and I’d argue that your choices would nearly be arbitrary. I did a “Red Wings Mount Rushmore” for Puck Daddy a couple of years ago, and I went with Howe, Lindsay, Yzerman and Lidstrom (who was still playing at the time, by a hair’s breadth over Fedorov), but the permutations are limited by your fandom’s imagination.

Who are your #2-5, or 2-10?

I wish the Free Press luck with their vote-counting and fan-argument-separating, because it’s going to be an interesting diversion…

But you’ll have to trust me when I say that June has a way of keeping the news flowing. We really don’t get “slow” until the month-long period between mid-July and mid-August when it truly gets quiet…and even then, there’s content to be had.

As CapFriendly noted…

Here is an overview of some of the upcoming important NHL off-season dates: pic.twitter.com/2klHUm9CSs

— CapFriendly (@CapFriendly) June 4, 2018

The Free Press’s George Sipple reports that the Great Lakes Invitiational and Red Wings will host a “triple-header” of hockey on December 31st, 2018:

he second day of the next Great Lakes Invitational is expected to be part of a triple-header of hockey at Little Caesars Arena on Dec. 31, the Free Press has learned.

The Red Wings haven’t yet announced their schedule for the 2018-2019 season. Red Wings general manager Ken Holland said Friday that he expects the Wings to play their traditional New Year’s Eve game, although the NHL schedule hasn’t yet been finalized. The NHL schedule is expected to be released in a couple weeks.

Michigan State announced its 2018-2019 schedule on Wednesday and will play in the Great Lakes Invitational on Dec. 30-31. MSU will meet Lake Superior State in the second semifinal game at 4 p.m. on Dec. 30. Michigan Tech will face U-M in the first game at 1 p.m., according to Michigan Tech’s 2018-2019 hockey schedule.

The Great Lakes Invitational is scheduled for Dec. 30-31.The GLI’s Dec. 31 game times are slated to be 11:30 for the GLI third-place game, 2:30 for the GLI championship game, according to MSU’s hockey schedule.

Continued…

Fox Sports Detroit’s “The Roar 313″ presented a video recalling the Red Wings’ 1998 Stanley Cup win in Washington, which happened just under 20 years ago (on June 16, 1998), as the culmination of the Red Wings’ 1997-98 “Believe” campaign:

 

The Athletic’s Joe Smith penned a column regarding players who’ve taken a while to win the Cup.

Smith focuses on the team he covers, the Tampa Bay Lightning, in discussing Steven Stamkos’ as-yet-unfulfilled quest for the Cup and Dave Andreychuk’s 22-year quest to win a championship in 2004, but Steve Yzerman makes a cameo of sorts in the article, too:

“In ’97, with all the little things, Stevie went above and beyond,” recalled former Red Wings teammate Kris Draper. “He was on the PK, winning faceoffs, blocking shots. I think he felt he had to become a dominant two-way hockey player to give ourselves an opportunity to win the Cup. In that big moment, your best players have to be your best players, and that’s what Steve was for us.

“When you’re sitting there and see your captain blocking an Al MacInnis slapshot and he gets up and is ready to do it again, it’s contagious. You’ve got (Hall of Fame) coach Scotty Bowman looking at you, ‘If Steve Yzerman is blocking shots, you make sure you do.’”

Draper will never forget the gap-toothed smile on Yzerman’s face when he finally was handed the Stanley Cup. “All the doubts, people thinking he should be traded, some people losing confidence in Stevie,” Draper said. “Not within our room. You’re proud to win the Cup with that guy.”

Yzerman said his experience taught him patience, and perspective, keeping him from over-reacting and being too discouraged with the setbacks.

“Over the course of a long career, guys are fortunate just to win it once,” Yzerman said. “You look at a guy like Chris Kunitz, who’s won four of them. That’s unusual. Just try to win it once, so some of these guys play 20 years to win it once. Our goal here is to win more than one, but let’s try to win one. It’s a difficult thing to do, and you have to stick with it. You get knocked down, you get back up and you learn from it and keep moving on.”

Smith continues, (paywall) speaking with Jimmy Devellano and Paul Coffey as well as Stamkos and Andreychuk…

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Of Red Wings-related note this afternoon:

1. According to the Detroit News, the Vegas odds of the Wings winning the Stanley Cup in the 2018-19 season are understandably long…

It’s not an indicator of making the playoffs, but sports betting site Bovada’s opening Stanley Cup odds aren’t kind of the Red Wings, who own 75-1 odds to win their first Stanley Cup since 2007-08.

Sixteen teams make the NHL playoffs. Only three teams — the Arizona Coyotes (80-1), Vancouver Canucks (80-1) and Ottawa Senators (100-1) face longer odds to win the Stanley Cup.

The Tampa Bay Lightning are the favorites, at 9-1. The Washington Capitals, who defeated the expansion Vegas Golden Knights to win their first Stanley Cup, own 14-1 odds, just eighth on Bovada’s list.

2. And the Hockey News’s Jared Clinton offers an in-hindsight selection of players who could have and perhaps should have won the Conn Smythe trophy during their teams’ Cup runs:

SERGEI FEDOROV, DETROIT RED WINGS — 1997
Since the NHL’s original wave of expansion, there are 57 goaltenders who have played at least 20 games in a post-season, and there’s a big gap – a chasm, really – between those netminders in terms of how often they were tested. For example, Tim Thomas faced 849 shots in 25 games during the 2010-11 post-season, but Martin Brodeur was only tested 463 times in 20 games during the 1994-95 playoffs. But Mike Vernon holds the distinction of being the only Conn Smythe-winning netminder to play in at least 20 games while seeing less than 500 shots. The Red Wings goaltender faced only 494 pucks en route to his Conn Smythe win in 1996-97, a run that saw him post a .927 SP and 1.76 GAA.

So, while Vernon’s post-season play was all well and good, it’s difficult to understand how he took the award over Fedorov, who was dynamite for Detroit. Fedorov scored eight goals and 20 points in 20 games for the Red Wings, including four game-winning goals. Better yet, two of Fedorov’s game winners came in the final against the Flyers, and Game 3 against Philadelphia was a monster contest from Fedorov. He finished that game with two goals and four points to help give Detroit to a commanding 3-0 series lead in their eventual sweep of the final.

Continued, and it really was a toss-up between Vernon and Fedorov in 1997.

The Red Wings just posted a video spotlighting the team’s front office as they worked at the NHL’s scouting combine in Buffalo last week:

 

MLive’s Martin Slaghter reports that there will be a screening of The Russian Five tonight in Ann Arbor:

Attention Detroit Red Wings fans: If you didn’t have the chance to check out “The Russian Five” documentary, you are in luck.

The documentary will screen at 7 p.m. Friday, June 8 at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor as part of the Cinetopia Film Festival. Tickets for the documentary are available at the box office only.

“The Russian Five” documents the story of former Red Wings Slava Fetisov, Sergei Fedorov, Igor Larionov, Slava Kozlov and Vladimir Konstantinov, who became the first all-Russian line in the history of the NHL. It documents the journey they took to escape the Soviet Union and become Stanley Cup champions with the Red Wings.

DetroitRedWings.com’s Arthur J. Regner examines Wings prospect Kasper Kotkansalo’s 2017-18 season this morning. Kotkansalo, who played at Boston University this past season, projects to be a middle-pair defenseman of the Kyle Quincey-at-his-best variety, but a physical, two-way defenseman is quite useful.

Regner spoke with Wings director of player development Shawn Horcoff regarding Kotkansalo’s freshman campaign:

Quotable: “He had a great freshman year. Like a lot of freshmen, it took him a few games to get comfortable early on and actually his game really took off and excelled. At the end of the season he probably got a little bit tired and his game fell off a little bit, but that’s just a normal routine, the normal learning curve a player has going to college. It’s no easy step, it’s the first time you’re playing against men. Everyone is older, anywhere from 18 to 24, and sometimes it may take some time to learn that, but Kasper is a guy we’re really excited about. We were really happy with his freshman year. I’d say he’s more of a defender. He’s going to be a guy that’s going to be hard to play against. He is intense, he has really good hockey sense, he has a really good first pass. The offense that he’s going to create is from his passing ability and his hockey sense in general. He’s a guy that we’re going to rely upon hopefully down the road to play against other team’s better players and defend them hard and physical. His overall strength needs to improve, much like every guy his foot speed needs to improve. At the World Juniors this year I think he realized that, we talk to Kasper lots and it’s not that he’s a bad skater, just that if you want to get to the next level you have to defend against guys like (Sidney) Crosby, (Auston) Matthews and (Connor) McDavid, you’ve got to be able to move and you have to be agile. So he’s in the same boat as a lot of young guys in that regard, but BU has an outstanding physical fitness program, one of the better college programs for that, so we know he’s in very good hands out there.” – Shawn Horcoff, Red Wings director of player development

Continued

 

This has nothing to do with hockey, but it matters to me. 1-800-273-TALK is the number of the U.S. Suicide Prevention hotline, and it’s a number that those of us with serious/severe mental illnesses always keep in the backs of our heads.

I woke up this morning to find out that one of my idols, Anthony Bourdain, took his own life today in France, and it’s just devastating to hear that the dark dragon of suicide has taken another life. So needless, so sad.

You are never truly alone in this world, but we often believe that we are on our own, and that’s simply not true. I hope that if you are struggling with mental illness, you are able to seek out help. There is absolutely no shame in suffering from what is a biochemical illness.