Hronek played 27 minutes last night, including almost 3:30 on the PK. That’s how it should be over the last 15 odd games. Zadina also played 18 minutes. He looked great beyond the goal. Get that kid on Larkin’s line to finish his stay here. He’s earning the opportunity.
He’s been really good the last couple games I think. He’ll look even better playing with a center who drives his line better and can create him more space. As you mentioned I’d like to see him with Larkin for a couple games before he hits his 9 game max for the season.
Heading into the spring, my current top 10 prospects: 1. Filip Zadina 2. Joe Veleno 3. Filip Hronek 4. Dennis Cholowski 5. Jared McIssac 6. Evgeny Svechnikov 7. Jonatan Berggren 8. Gustav Lindstrom 9. Filip Larsson 10. Givani Smith I am not counting Rasmussen since he has been with the big club all season. - Zadina is a firm #1. He will be in our top 6 next fall. - Veleno is scoring at such an outrageous pace that being a #3 center is now his floor. I think he could become a 50-60 point center in the NHL. He will likely be in GR next year, but he will get a cup of coffee in Detroit sometime next season. - Flip a coin on Hronek and Cholowski. They are at worst 4’s, and at best, 2’s. They are top four D and that’s the main thing. Both guys should be on the roster next fall. - McIssac is also scoring at a crazy rate. He is still two years away from Detroit, but his offensive improvement has drastically increased his projection. He’s another guy who could be a top 4. - Svech will play for the Griffs in the playoffs, which is great. He’s now waiver eligible so he will be on the roster next year. The talent is there; we will see if he can put it together. - Berggren has missed a ton of time but his talent is undeniable. He needs to stay healthy next year, but assuming he does, he will skyrocket up the list. - Lindstrom by all accounts has been steady. He isn’t going to wow people but he compliments our other prospects well. I think he is going to be in GR next year and he could make it to Detroit if there are injuries. - Larsson still has the highest upside of all our goalies. He’s been solid his first year in Denver. Hopefully he gets more time next year. Health is key for him. - Smith was not good in GR this season but that isn’t totally surprising. If he struggles next year, he won’t be on any top 10 list. With all that said, my current guess for next years opening night roster (without predicting any actual additions) Bertuzzi - Larkin - Mantha Zadina - Nielsen - Athanasiou Rasmussen - ??? - Svechnikov Abdelkader - Glendening - Helm/De La Rose/Ehn Cholowski - Green DeKeyser - Hronek Ericsson - Daley Bowey Howard Bernier - We cannot bring Kronwall back. It would fuck our D up so badly. - I assume our third line C will be some type of acquisition. - That is another really bad team.
Is there anyone that's valuable that could get poached in the expansion draft? All I remember seeing was Lindstrom a couple places, which okay.
I was thinking we would be a playoff team next year. Having second thoughts after seeing those projected lines. Yikes Maybe if we get Hughes/Kakko and line one defenseman. You can’t have Choblowski as a first pair defenseman.
Also keep the name Otto Kivenmaki in your back pocket. We took him in the 7th round last year. He’s super skilled, but he is also like 5’8”, 140 lbs. He’s back in the Finnish senior league where he has 11 points his last 9 games. This is the same league Kakko currently plays in. Not sure what will happen to him, but he’s showing insane potential.
Athletic article on AA's trial at center. It's smart to give it a go for an extended period of time to see what you have. I will be surprised if it sticks however. Spoiler The stakes of the Andreas Athanasiou experiment at center By Max Bultman 38m ago 3 It’s three games in now, this experiment meant to run until the end of the season. It was Jeff Blashill’s opening message, on the day of the NHL trade deadline last week, that Andreas Athanasiou would finish out the season at center — a move that shook up the Red Wings’ lineup substantially. At first blush, the stakes of that trial may not seem massively high, because not much in this particular Red Wings season is. But they’re not negligible, either. Detroit is hoping to unearth another top-six center, and is starting with perhaps the only player on its current roster capable of being one into the future (depending on one’s thoughts on Michael Rasmussen). Athanasiou is second on the team only to Dylan Larkin in high-danger chances per 60 minutes at even strength this year (10.87), a stat which shouldn’t really be a surprise considering his propensity to get himself one-on-one with a goalie. And when you consider the value of a center versus a wing, it’s not hard to understand why this move makes sense in theory. From a roster construction standpoint, look around at what happened at this year’s trade deadline. Two good, productive wingers in Gustav Nyquist and Mats Zuccarello were dealt for second- and third-round picks. Those are two valuable players and, as we saw, players who contenders want on their rosters come playoff time. But the return may have been illustrative of a broader truth: When you need a productive winger, you can usually find one without breaking the bank. Down the middle, though, that cost goes up. Winnipeg had to part with a first rounder to get Kevin Hayes. Ditto, plus more, for Columbus with Matt Duchene. And there really weren’t that many available anyway, even if a team was willing to pay. Those players were all rentals, which isn’t itself relevant to the Red Wings, but the point is that Athanasiou may have an opportunity right now to alter his importance to the franchise. Production is production, and the Red Wings need it from whatever position they can get it — but there’d be major value, for a team still building, in being able to slot one of their most productive players in at center on one of their top two lines. The question underlying this whole experiment, then, is whether Athanasiou can become the latter while staying the former. “Ultimately if AA can be an elite-level center, that will help us in our organization,” Blashill said. “So we’re going to see if that’s the case. … He’s going to go out and play against hard matchups and play good minutes and ultimately see if we’re a better team with him at that position.” He expressed confidence that he had seen Athanasiou be a “great center” in the American Hockey League — that he had the speed, smarts and distribution ability to do the job well. Now, Detroit will see whether he can do it at the NHL level. It’s too soon to meaningfully assess the returns, especially considering the relative lopsidedness of the Red Wings’ first couple of games after the trade deadline. But, just for the sake of understanding, here’s what it has looked like by at least one measure. Throughout the year, Athanasiou’s average game score — a metric developed by colleague Dom Luszczyszyn and catalogued on a game-by-game basis by Cole Palmer on the website hockeystatcards.com — has been 0.58. Based on the legend Dom provided for another story back in January, that would classify him as a solid second-line player. That’s good, especially for a former fourth-round pick. The last three games, in order, though? Athanasiou’s game scores have been -0.74, -0.30 and -0.29. Again, those numbers are inherently going to look worse than they are, because the Red Wings got lit up by Montreal and because no Red Wing other than Jimmy Howard played particularly well against the Coyotes. But it’s still worth noting the drop-off. And it’s going to be important to watch that going forward, as the sample increases. Athanasiou should probably be expected to drop off some relative to his season averages, because his new position has new responsibilities. But if the difference in impact is the equivalent of him being a third-line center versus a legit top-six winger … that’s probably too substantial a trade-off to justify. It’s not that hard to find third-line centers to sacrifice a massive scoring threat elsewhere in the lineup. But that’s also part of the significance of this test run being so prolonged: The first three or five or even 10 games were probably going to be clunky. Can it get better the more time he has to adjust? One of the most intriguing elements about the decision to begin with was that it came just a few days after Blashill shared some really interesting insight behind the logic of putting Athanasiou on the wing of Luke Glendening for the better part of the past couple months. Glendening, a noted shutdown center without tons of offense in his game, starts a whopping 66 percent of his shifts in the defensive zone — the 21st-highest percentage in the league among skaters with at least 45 games played. For Athanasiou, that number is a couple ticks above 40. But while the decision to pair the two could have been understood as having Glendening help cover for Athanasiou in that end, there was more to it than that. “I think on the surface lots of people think that if you start in the o-zone it’s going to lead to more offense, where really a lot of chances are based on transition in the NHL today, which isn’t the o-zone starts all the time,” Blashill said, noting that live changes may skew the numbers as well. “But being able to start in the d-zone or being able to build that speed game of his in transition, he’s mega dangerous. How many times have we been playing d-zone coverage and next thing you know he’s got a breakaway? He’s just mega dangerous. He’s unique in that ability.” He also raised some points about the need to not get good offensive players stuck playing defense, but the underlying point was that there are very few players in Athanasiou’s speed bracket in the NHL — players like Connor McDavid and Dylan Larkin. The vast majority who are, though, play center. And while those players can match Athanasiou’s sheer wheels, their positions seldom allowed them to leak out into the neutral zone and create the kind of stretch pass chances Athanasiou has created seemingly at will this season. And he did that even playing with a less-than-natural playmaker in Glendening. “(Assistant coach Doug) Houda said I have the easiest job on the team; I just throw the puck up to him and he’s on a breakaway,” Glendening said a couple weeks back. There are defensive advantages to that pairing, of course — if a fixture of the game plan is Athanasiou leaking into the neutral zone, it makes sense to have a particularly responsible centerman to help cover. But it also underscores the overall threat level Athanasiou can help drive on the wing, and that the Red Wings were tapping into ways to best utilize him. And by extension, it highlights the significant trade-offs in trying him at center. After the first of these games in the middle — against Montreal, a game in which no Red Wing looked good — Blashill emphasized the need for any center to play great defense. It’s about stopping and starting, and sprinting to spots, he said. Wingers can produce without playing all-around games. Centers cannot. Perhaps that’s why Glendening has once again made his way onto Athanasiou’s line with Filip Zadina — or why Glendening took 12 faceoffs to Athanasiou’s three Tuesday against the Avalanche. Both of those developments could be read two ways. The easy, knee-jerk reaction would be that it’s an indicator this experiment won’t stand the test of time. The other is that those are good-faith efforts to lighten the load just a little bit for a player who deserves not just raw opportunity, but the chance to actually succeed in a new role. And sometimes, the latter means taking over responsibilities gradually. In either case, Athanasiou’s performance over this next stretch might be the most significant non-Zadina-related storyline of the season’s final month. If he can adapt, it’s a win for the organization and could reshape the depth chart. If not, he’ll go back to the wing, where he’s still a good player, just at a position of less need. Are they high stakes? No. But are they consequential? Absolutely.
AA isn’t reliable enough at both ends to stick at C, but I get it for sure. We have nothing to lose trying him there.
At this point just give Larkin as much rest as needed. Without him and Green, I can't see us winning many more games. Only downside is I would have liked Zadina to play a few games on a line with Larkin.
We totally outclassed New York tonight. Not a shock, we have been due a good game. We will see what happens in OT, but I expect a W. We can’t lose them all sadly.
This is fucking ridiculous. The Wings support so many worthless fucks they signed to terrible contracts or let be in the front office for no reason. Vladdie's family begging for assistance is terrible. Give him a fake job and pay for this bullshit.
We have had Ehn, Helm and Nielsen out there in 3 on 3 and still have outplayed them in OT. Rangers have looked pretty bad
I get we can't lose them all, but we keep picking up these points in losses that is the difference in the standings now. We have the least amount of ROW in the NHL, but 10 (and could be 11) OT losses have picked us up points that put us as 3rd worse
If that doesn’t hit the goal +++ it’ll be disappointing and it would be really disappointing if the Wings don’t at least match it
Hopefully we move on from Howard. We can do better than a 35 year old goalie, on downside of his career.
Ansar KhanVerified account @AnsarKhanMLive 18s18 seconds ago #RedWings have signed LW Ryan Kuffner (6-1, 195), free agent from Princeton, age 22, to 2-year entry-level contract. Spent four years there, 22 goals, 22 assists in 31 games this season.
I’ve seen him play quite a bit. He has great instincts. I just worry about his size and the pace he plays at.
He’s on the older side but he isn’t crazy overaged. I could see him slotting nicely next to Veleno in GR next season.
It’s a no brainer to take some shots on these guys. There is no risk at all. Positives: - One or both hit and they could fill a spot on 3rd/4th line. Hirose a possible PP guy as well - More 2-5 round draft picks to trade bc the farm system is filled out - Fills GR with some more talent for a Veleno or other prospects to play with instead of AHL journeymen It has to be a big selling point that they will get a chance to play in Detroit this season
You’d be happy if one turns into a DeKeyser type player. They just need to be better about giving good money/long term deals out to average players