Grand Rapids Griffins coach Todd Nelson appeared on ESPN 96.1 FM on Tuesday, speaking with “Big Drew and Jim” regarding this week’s Griffins games (at Texas tonight, at San Antonio on Thursday and at home vs. Cleveland), the return of Jared Coreau, Nelson’s desire to fold in some players that haven’t have played of late and while still attempting to win the Central Division:
Listen to “Todd Nelson – Grand Rapids Griffins Head Coach (4/10/18)” on Spreaker.
In mid-July, this story would be a welcome beacon of Wings talk in what’s usually the quietest portion of the summer, but for now, this story is something of an outlier:
According to the Associated Press’s Larry Lage, the NHL is already testing technologies which track players’ skating and shooting speeds, lengths, trajectories, etc., and there is some significant debate on the league-wide, team-by-team and player-by-player levels as to whether making such data public would be a good thing or a bad thing:
Even in the Detroit Red Wings’ dressing room, there wasn’t a consensus.
“If you track players and show how fast you’re skating, I think fans will be able to appreciate it and it will look cool on TV,” Red Wings center Dylan Larkin said .
Detroit captain Henrik Zetterberg provided another perspective.
“I’m not a big fan of that because eventually that will be used as a disadvantage for players,” Zetterberg said. “Even though they say it won’t be, it will be in contracts and it will be used against players in all different areas with management and coaching issues.”
[NHL deputy commissioner Bill] Daly insisted he doesn’t buy that argument.
“Our experience with enhanced statistics is entirely the opposite,” Daly said. “Players and agents have historically and virtually without exception been able to use enhanced statistics and analytics to their individual benefit. That’s just a fact.”
Lage continues…what do you think about the concept of making this data publicly available, and/or promoting it as part of a game’s statistical and broadcast package?
In playoff action, in the OHL, Givani Smith finished at -1 on 5 shots as his Kitchener Rangers lost 4-1 to the Sarnia Sting.
Sarnia leads the teams’ second-round series 2 games to 1;
In the WHL, Dennis Cholowski continued his scoring surge, but his Portland Winterhawks are trending in the wrong direction. Cholowski scored a goal on 4 shots, but finished at -3 in Portland’s 6-2 loss to Everett.
Everett now leads the teams’ second-round series 2 games to 1, and Cholowski has posted 5 goals and 2 assists for 7 points in 10 games played, but he’s also -7;
Finally, Michael Rasmussen continues to impress. In a wild game, the Tri-City Americans won 6-5 over the Victoria Royals, and Rasmussen’s empty-net goal ended up being the game-winner as Tri-City nearly blew 5-0 and 6-4 leads en route to their victory.
The lead is restored to two as @mrasmussen16 gets the empty-net goal! #VICvsTC #WHLPlayoffs pic.twitter.com/L7x7hCviCx
— The WHL (@TheWHL) April 11, 2018
Rasmussen also registered 3 assists and a +4 on 6 shots, going 2-for-2 on faceoffs (he hasn’t taken many faceoffs since his wrist surgery, but boy, has he scored); if you’re keeping score at home, Rasmussen now has 10 goals and 13 assists for 23 points (and a +13) in 7 games played.
The wrist surgery hampered Rasmussen’s regular-season output significantly (31 goals and 28 assists for 59 points in 47 games played), but the incredibly-serious Rasmussen been lights-out since he returned.
Fellow Wings prospect Lane Zablocki had a goal and an assist for Victoria, finishing even on 2 shots and going 7-for-13 in the faceoff circle.
Cue the comeback? @LZablocki12 makes it a 5-3 game late. #VICvsTC #WHLPlayoffs pic.twitter.com/KeWCZBAHor
— The WHL (@TheWHL) April 11, 2018
Rasmussen’s Americans now lead their second-round series 3 2 games to 0.
The Russian Five film will premiere at the Free Press Film Festival tonight at the Filmore Detroit, and this morning, the Free Press’s Mitch Albom pays tribute to the real thing:
I was lucky enough to be there when they all joined the Red Wings — and mad professor Scotty Bowman had the idea of playing them all at the same time.
In truth, there had been a “Russian Five” unit before, in Russia, actually, in the 1980s, with Fetisov and Larionov part of the group. They played together on Soviet national teams as well as for CSKA Moscow.
Then the NHL widened its doors for Russian players. And one by one, these men made the pilgrimage from one corner of the world to the next. It wasn’t easy. They waited years, or they defected. One, Konstantinov, even faked like he was dying to get out of his Soviet obligations.
But once assembled, their collected greatness was an inevitability. And it happened in Detroit uniforms. When Bowman sent those five over the boards together — on Oct. 27, 1995, in the Calgary Saddledome, during the 10th game of the season and just a few days after Larionov had joined the team — thunder clapped, the history books flung open, and a new chapter in NHL history was penned.
The Wings won that game, 3-0. The Russian unit scored two of thee goals. More importantly, Bowman was rewarded for his trust in the savvy leadership of the older Larionov and Fetisov, blended with the youthful mix of speed, finesse and muscle that Fedorov, Kozlov and Konstantinov represented.
“It was just beautiful to watch,” Jim Devellano, then the Wings’ GM, told Keith Gave in his fine book on the subject, “The Russian Five: A story of espionage, defection, bribery and courage.” “Every pass was tape to tape. They knew where everybody else was. They showed us the pride of the Russians.”
Albom continues, and the Russian 5, in person? They made Zetterberg and Datsyuk’s chemistry look second-rate.
The Detroit News’s Gregg Krupa and John Niyo have weighed in on the comments made during locker room clean-out day, and Krupa focused on the “state of the rebuild,” which Krupa suggests is plain old stuck–at least in fans’ eyes…
Not all fans are convinced. They might well have tolerated 50 losses in regulation this season better than the Red Wings’ 39 losses, if they could have perceived a clearer path forward.
If the Wings had played younger players more, Joe Hicketts, Dominic Turgeon and Evgeny Svechnikov, and introduced Filip Hronek to the lineup later in the season, when they finally brought up Hicketts and quickly won three games, the rebuild would be farther along.
And if more losses had resulted, the Wings would have improved their odds of drafting Rasmus Dahlin, the most desired player in the draft, touted as a supremely talented puck-moving defenseman likely to have an immediate impact in the NHL.
Instead, in a season in which few, other than the Red Wings, thought they could possibly qualify for the playoffs, they both missed the post-season and failed to hasten rebuilding.
It is the way many rebuilds are accomplished in the NHL.
The Red Wings two great rivals from their recent Stanley Cup years, the Avalanche and the Devils, both made the playoffs this season. Although they started rebuilding sooner because they stopped winning Stanley Cups earlier, some critical moments of judgment allowed them to seize the opportunity to get worse so they could get better.
The Wings are late to those decisions. Holland sounds like he is ready, now.
Krupa continues at length, and Niyo offers a wrinkle in the theory by suggesting that ownership could lend Mr. Holland a hand:
And if ownership is as serious about this rebuild as it claims to be about the family’s other pro sports franchise, there’s no time like the present to show it. The Tigers have made a big to-do about upgrading their scouting and player development operations, investing millions in an analytics department and so on. But with the Wings, even at this critical juncture, it still feels like it’s less action and more talk.
“We’re discussing every day how we can be better,” Holland said.
That discussion includes Ilitch, who took part in the team’s midseason scouting summit in Las Vegas back in January and also spent time with Holland and his staff watching some of this year’s top draft prospects at the Five Nations Tournament in Plymouth in February. But where all that talk leads remains to be seen.
The team added Bryan Campbell as its director of statistical analysis and hockey administration a few years ago, but the Wings still lag behind others on the analytics front. Holland did say Tuesday he has tasked assistant video coach Jeff Weintraub with an analytics project involving the top 10 players in this year’s draft. (“We haven’t done that before,” he said.)
They’ve embraced new ideas in other areas, too, with Shawn Horcoff, the team’s director of player development, incorporating the Power Edge Pro system used by the Nashville Predators, among others, into the preseason training regimen at the AHL and NHL level.
“So we’re trying to do things a little bit differently,” Holland said.
Frankly, they have no choice if they want to make this work. The days of unearthing European gems others don’t see are long gone, and the big-market payroll advantage is no more.
“Forget anything that happened before 2005,” Holland said. “That was a different world.”
Niyo also continues, and
Hockeybuzz’s Bob Duff wonders whether the blame for the Red Wings’ two substandard seasons is best dissipated instead of shouldered by Ken Holland or Jeff Blashill:
It’s Blashill himself who likes to point out that he works in a results-based profession. In the NHL, you don’t get paid for trying hard. You get rewarded for winning, the thing the Wings haven’t done enough of the past two seasons.
According to ownership, this isn’t the fault of the guy in charge of picking the players. According to the GM, it isn’t the fault of the guy who’s teaching the players, which leads to a perplexing concern.
If that’s the case, then who’s to blame for the mess that this organization has become?
Blashill did allow that the work of the team’s staff was under scrutiny.
“We’re evaluating everything in terms of how can we be better?” Blashill said. “When we talked to the team today, we’ve all got to be a little bit better. I’ll certainly evaluate our staff and see if there’s anything that makes sense for us.”
The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan filed a notebook article which discusses several disparate topics, including this headliner:
[Anthony] Mantha, Dylan Larkin and Andreas Athanasiou are three restricted free agents that Holland will have to deal with this summer. [Ken] Holland said each deal is unique, and he’ll look for an agreement that benefits both the individual player and the team.
Each player was optimistic a deal can be worked out before training camp
“One year, or eight years, I’m happy to be a Red Wing and I appreciate everything the Ilitches do for us,” Larkin said. “We haven’t really talked numbers, and there’s no rush. It has to make sense for the team as well. I don’t want to be a burden on the cap.”
Mantha said he’d likely be more agreeable to a shortert-term contract, believing there’s more to his game, and the potential for even a more profitable contract down the line.
Athanasiou, who held out until into late October because of no contract, was hopeful negotiations aren’t going to be as rocky this time around.
“It’s part of the game, so however it long it takes, it’ll run its course,” Athanasiou said.
Red Wings GM Ken Holland wrapped up his Tuesday workday with about seven minutes’ worth of conversation with WJR’s Mitch Albom, and…Had WJR posted this clip, you and I wouldn’t have needed to listen to today’s quips and quotes.
Cliches flowed while he declined to buy into Albom’s suggestion that the Red Wings need to follow the young-players-and-only-young-players model:
Meanwhile…
The Red Wings cleaned out their lockers in early April for the second straight year.
“The Stanley Cups, the great players… as a young player in this organization, I want that,” Dylan Larkin said. pic.twitter.com/vzTXRbO9Kk
— Brad Galli (@BradGalli) April 10, 2018
When I start getting frustrated with the GM’s rhetoric (he’s not my favorite person, nor is his managerial style my favorite method, but I respect the dude), it’s been a long day…
And if I have a locker room clean-out day message, it’s pretty simple: the rhetoric has to meet the road over the next couple of months.
As the Free Press’s Helene St. James notes, the Red Wings are planning on asking Anthony Mantha to work with a boxing coach this summer to push his competitive limits. St. James notes that the Red Wings’ expectations for Mantha match the player’s desire to meet them:
Mantha had a team-leading 24 goals. There are those in the organization, including Chris Chelios, who see Mantha developing into a 40-goal scorer. Mantha himself wants to be a go-to guy, and this season has seen his relationship with Blashill develop. One key date was Jan. 22 in New Jersey, when the two had a heart-to-heart that led to a show-and-tell video.
“We took the 10 best shifts of my season and the 10 worst and we compared those,” Mantha said. “There is a big difference when I am actually competing or when I am not. That’s a learning thing I did this year.“We talked about it again this morning. He knows I could be an impact player on this team and that’s his goal — he wants me to be like the best player, a superstar. He really wants me to focus on a couple details and sometimes the way he thinks he needs to reach out is by calling me out.”Blashill coached Mantha his first year of pro hockey, in 2014-15, in Grand Rapids.“My job is to get the very most out of each individual player that I can,” Blashill said. “Part of that job is to figure out the right buttons to push. And sometimes those buttons change. I’ve had Anthony a long time. It’s not like this is just a new growth process. Those buttons can change as people mature.“One of the biggest thing in getting the best out of people is finding ways to connect with them. If the player gets to a realization where they understand what you are trying to do it get the very best out of them, that you’re not picking on them, when they understand that, there can be real growth.”
#RedWings Mantha on world championships: I would play for sure if they’d (Team Canada) call me but right now there’s no news.
— Dana Wakiji (@Dwakiji) April 10, 2018
MLive’s Ansar Khan penned a locker room clean-out day article which focuses on the comments made by Ken Holland, Jeff Blashill and Henrik Zetterberg regarding the Wings’ official rebuild…
But Khan also lets some hints drop regarding the Wings’ offseason player personnel plans:
The Red Wings aren’t likely to be too active in a free-agent market that’s becoming increasingly thin. They would like to re-sign defenseman Mike Green, preferably for two years. He’s coming off neck surgery and will be ready for the start of training camp. They need to sign a goaltender to either back-up Jimmy Howard or compete for the starting job. Carter Hutton of St. Louis is on their radar.
No player on the current roster was acquired through trade, but Holland said he’d “love to do a value for value deal.”
Also, regarding the youth movement:
Holland said 6-foot-6 center Michael Rasmussen, their 2017 top pick who is dominating in the WHL playoffs for Tri-City (nine goals, 19 points in six games), has a chance to make the team next season. Evgeny Svechnikov, their 2015 top pick, also will be competing for a spot.
They are not as deep on defense, on their roster and in the system. They hope one of Joe Hicketts or Filip Hronek makes the jump from AHL Grand Rapids to the NHL at the start of the season.
“I’m hoping and expecting that minimum of two, maybe four or five kids between the ages of 19 and 22 are on the roster next year that weren’t on the team to start this year,” Holland said. “I want to get those young people onto this roster when I think that they can help us be competitive.”
