I don't know why anyone would trade for those guys. There have to be similarly talented guys on waivers or on the street.
With Lalonde saying he wants to be more aggressive on the PK, I really like getting Larkin and Copp out there together.
Fifty Thirty Eight has us projected to get 79 points, which would be 3rd worst in NHL. That would be pretty bad for year 4 of Yzerman. I would say anything less than 90 points would be huge disappointment this season.
I’d be absolutely shocked if we only get 79 points. We improved our roster by a decent margin. Tampa didn’t get better, only got older. Florida got worse. Boston is missing a ton of production for a long period of time. Montreal is a dumpster, possibly the worst in the league.
Lalonde interview on Spittin' Chiclets was a good listen. He's got a really good hockey personality/interesting guy.
I'm not expecting a miracle, but pushing for a playoff spot and the young guys getting better and playing well is goal for the season for me
I get peoples concerns about setting the team back by trading Larkin, but giving him over 9 mil a year can also set the team back. Going to be a very intriguing situation.
Red wings fans : I expect this team to start competing soon Also Wings fans : let's trade our consistently two best forwards who are both at the start of their prime
https://theathletic.com/3600922/2022/10/14/nhl-99-henrik-zetterberg?source=user-shared-article Spoiler On the day Henrik Zetterberg called it a career, the venerable captain of the Detroit Red Wings stood in the corner of an ice rink in Traverse City, Mich., wearing a pale yellow hat and his trademark beard. He was asked, just minutes after the news of his back injury-induced retirement had been announced, what he was most proud of looking back. His first reaction was a half-whispered, “Wow.” Zetterberg let out a sigh before saying he wasn’t sure, but then he began his answer: “I think I didn’t see myself last(ing) this long, probably.” The Red Wings captain had been a seventh-round pick in 1999, hearing 209 names called before his own. In the end, only two of them — his Swedish countrymen Daniel and Henrik Sedin — managed to play more than the 1,082 regular-season NHL games Zetterberg did. And as good as he was in all of them, his playoff career made him an era-defining player for one of the league’s most iconic franchises. In 137 postseason games, Zetterberg amassed 120 points, driven by his all-world processor of a brain. “Zetterberg was such a smart hockey player, one of the smartest I played with,” Hockey Hall of Famer Marian Hossa told The Athletic. “His hockey IQ was really high. It doesn’t matter if he was on offense or defense, he knew what was right, at the right moment, to do.” The hockey brain is less visible, to fans and observers, than the blistering speed or bruising physicality many of the sport’s other legends have possessed. Zetterberg’s on-ice brilliance and savvy, though, are the biggest reasons he lands at No. 97 on The Athletic’s list of the 100 greatest players of the post-1967 expansion era NHL. Fitting for a player whose legacy includes retiring as captain, many of Zetterberg’s greatest accomplishments are remembered as collective. He is a member of the hallowed “Triple Gold” club as a player who has won a World Championship, Olympic gold and the Stanley Cup. He also won the 2015 King Clancy Memorial Trophy as “the player who best exemplifies leadership qualities on and off the ice and who has made a noteworthy humanitarian contribution in his community.” His most famous honor, however, was the one that accompanied his 2008 Stanley Cup, when Zetterberg was given the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP. He had dominated those playoffs offensively for Detroit, scoring 27 points in 22 games — a figure that alone may well have been good enough to win him the award. But as with Zetterberg’s career as a whole, the real magic of that run was in the finer, less flashy details. “Everybody knows how good he was,” said former Red Wings assistant GM Jim Nill. “But I don’t know if people really realize how good he really was.” The turn of the millennium Red Wings were a machine. A core including five Hall of Famers who led the team to back-to-back Stanley Cup championships in 1997 and 1998, stayed intact into the 2000s and just kept on growing. The addition of four more Hall of Famers paved the way for another title in 2002. If ever there was a team that didn’t need to rely on the arrival of new prospects, that era’s Red Wings was it. But Detroit, with famed European scout Håkan Andersson, continued to find them anyway, even in the late rounds of the draft. By the time the team reported for camp in 2002, Detroit’s management team was already beginning to suspect it had another one. Zetterberg had played his way onto Sweden’s World Junior Championship team just months after Detroit plucked him in the NHL Draft’s seventh round, and a season later he made the cut for the World Championships. In February 2002, at just 21, he was picked to represent Sweden at the Olympics. “Once he made that,” Nill recalled, “we said, ‘You know what, there’s something special here.’ At that age, to do what he was doing, that doesn’t happen very often.” When Zetterberg arrived in Detroit that fall, with the Red Wings coming off their third Stanley Cup championship in six seasons, his new teammates were at least aware of him. But they didn’t really know him until they stepped on the ice with him. “He didn’t play at that top speed,” teammate Kris Draper remembered. “But you’re always watching him carry the puck, no one could get the puck off him. Like that was the one thing — it was unreal watching it. He was so smart, his body position, where he put the puck, how he handled the puck — he used a long stick, knew how to use that. So you just knew that a guy like that, kind of the way that he got around the ice, that his hockey sense and skill was going to be his biggest asset.” What was revealed as time went on, though, was another asset — one that Detroit’s machine seemed to be adept at both finding and cultivating: “He is so competitive, man,” teammate Dan Cleary said. “He’s my ultra, No. 1 gamer.” Perhaps at no time was that so clear as May 31, 2008, in Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final. By that point, Zetterberg had blossomed into one of the top players in the league. He scored 43 goals and had 92 points that year and finished 10th in MVP voting, third for the Selke Trophy and was named a second-team NHL All-Star. And when he took the ice in Pittsburgh for Game 4, he and the Red Wings were just two wins away from a championship. This was early in the careers of Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin — Pittsburgh’s two era-defining icons — but both were already among the best in the sport. Crosby was the reigning MVP, and Malkin finished as the 2007-08 runner-up. On defense, Sergei Gonchar was still among the very best at his position. And at that year’s trade deadline, the Penguins acquired one of the sport’s top two-way forwards in Marian Hossa. The veteran Red Wings had dizzied Pittsburgh in the first two games of the Final, jumping out to a 2-0 series lead at home by a combined score of 7-0. “We were almost like a deer in headlights there in Detroit, especially the first game with just the system, we just felt like we didn’t have any speed,” recalled Pittsburgh’s Ryan Malone. But the Penguins found their footing in Game 3, picking up a 3-2 win, and Game 4 was still very much up in the air in the third period. Detroit led 2-1, but at the midpoint of the third period, the Red Wings took two quick penalties — setting up the Penguins for a lengthy 5-on-3. Crosby, Malkin, Hossa, Gonchar and Malone hopped over the boards for Pittsburgh. “That year especially,” Malone said, “I felt every time we stepped on the ice as a power-play unit, with Gonch and Sid, we’re like, ‘We’re going to score.’” If they did, it very well could have swung the momentum enough for the Penguins to tie the series and supercharge their confidence going forward. “I think every good run, every good attempt at a championship — or else a championship — has defining moments,” said former Red Wings assistant coach Todd McLellan. “And a 5-on-3 penalty kill, third period, on the road in Game 4 — a swing game — certainly would be one of them.” Detroit countered the Penguins’ super-group with its own franchise legends, with Chris Osgood in net and a blue line duo the Red Wings referred to as “Senior and Junior” — Hall of Famer and captain Nicklas Lidstrom on one side, and his younger, hard-hitting counterpart Niklas Kronwall on the other. Up front, they turned to Zetterberg as their lone forward on the kill. “Him being there on the ice, you could see how much they trusted him,” Gonchar said. “He had a great feel for those situations,” Nill said. “He just kind of rose to those occasions, kind of cherished those occasions. It was kind of like the underdog role, and he was going to go out there and make sure they weren’t going to score. He had that in him.” “We overuse ‘preparation,’ we overuse ‘commitment,’ those words are thrown around like they’re candies now,” McLellan said. “But Zetterberg had a focus, he studied the game. The questions that he asked and the approach to his game was different than a lot of players. … He practiced moments that were going to happen in the game, so that he could use them.” With a minute and 27 seconds on the 5-on-3 clock, the kill began. Pittsburgh took possession off the faceoff and set up quickly — Hossa, Gonchar, Malkin and Crosby around the perimeter with Malone at the net. Zetterberg started on the right side of the defensive structure, in front of Gonchar and his big shot. His presence in the lane was enough to seemingly coax Gonchar out of firing a shot about 10 seconds in, but after Malkin sent one wide of the net and around the boards, Gonchar corralled it and wound up again. This time, he uncorked a blast, and Zetterberg stood in and ate it. Malkin helped keep the ensuing ricochet in the zone, and the Penguins reset, with Gonchar faking another shot before sending a pass to Hossa at the goal line. At that moment, the Penguins had what they wanted. Hossa himself wasn’t at a great angle to shoot, but he had a passing lane, and waiting across the crease at the back post was Crosby. In Detroit’s 5-on-3 setup, Cleary recalled that it was the forward’s responsibility to take the back door. That meant Zetterberg had to get to Crosby before a pass did. With an eye on Hossa the whole way, Zetterberg slowly drifted down toward the back post as Hossa sent the puck across. Despite a breakup attempt by Lidstrom, it got through — and as Osgood moved from post to post, Crosby was going to have a lot of net to shoot at. “Sid’s incredibly strong,” Cleary said. “One of the strongest, best players on that position.” But as the puck got to him, so did Zetterberg, who not only locked up Crosby’s stick in the instant the puck arrived, but stayed on him through the play — his skate stopping a secondary attempt by Crosby as he drove him to the ground. “If he’s a fraction late, it’s in no matter where his stick goes,” McLellan said. “And if he’s a fraction too early, Sid’s going to react and do something different.” “And he held it,” Cleary said. “He had to hold that stick. Not easy, especially the way he was positioned.” “It was the will and determination of not letting that thing go in,” Draper said. Even when Zetterberg was finally able to come off the ice for a change — not long after he had made another subtle, key play by denying a Malkin zone-entry — his rest lasted just 10 seconds of game time. And when he hopped back over the boards, he continued to cement the 5-on-3 penalty kill shift in history. Off a neutral-zone faceoff, Malkin sent a pass across the ice and Zetterberg reached out his stick and picked it off, taking it the other way against Gonchar. “What a shift for him!” proclaimed NBC play-by-play announcer Mike “Doc” Emrick on the broadcast. Zetterberg brought the puck in, turned and fired a backhand toward the goal, and even when it ended up behind the net, the Swede was somehow the first man on it. “A Conn Smythe shift,” Emrick said on the call — an allusion to the league’s playoff MVP trophy, for which Zetterberg was moment-by-moment bolstering his candidacy. That trophy is awarded at the end of the playoffs, though, and right away, the Penguins were once again off in transition, with Detroit needing to recover. Zetterberg got back, broke up a cross-slot pass by Crosby with two seconds remaining in the first penalty, getting Kirk Maltby out of the box and into the kill. From there, it was a matter of survival with just over 30 seconds left short-handed. The Penguins maintained possession in the zone, and at one point, the goal light momentarily flashed on after a Malkin one-timer. Even after the second penalty expired, Pittsburgh kept the pressure on at 5-on-5 for an excruciating 20 extra seconds. But finally, Kronwall got a clear and Zetterberg was able to exit the ice, having averted a crisis — and turned in a performance that would embody so many of his greatest attributes. “Those qualities — the commitment away from the puck, the hockey sense and the brain to anticipate where it was going in that situation, the sellout of the body to block a shot, is who Henrik Zetterberg is,” McLellan said. “And what he stands for.” “That just sums up what he is,” Draper said. “Putting him out there in that situation and him rising to the occasion in the biggest moment in hockey, in the Stanley Cup Finals.” The phrase Emrick coined, the “Conn Smythe Shift,” grew to become legend in Detroit when the Red Wings, on the back of that massive 5-on-3 kill, held on to their narrow Game 4 lead and ultimately won the series in six games. “That’s what I would consider him as, just sort of a winner,” said former Penguins assistant coach Mike Yeo. “And winners recognize just how important every single play is in every game. And obviously, there’s times where you need those guys to come through in the clutch and create offense for you, but winners know every faceoff can be the difference in the game. They recognize that defensive play — obviously not scoring in a 5-on-3 in a situation like that — the amount of momentum that that gives to your team, and frustration and sort of bad feelings it gives to the other team. That kind of stuff is invaluable.” “Just one of my favorite players of all time,” Cleary said. “Just a tremendous competitor. His will. He’s a gamer, big-time gamer. Hall of Famer for me.”
Its great that Larkin is our best forward but you don’t pay people because they are the best player on your team. He is not a 9 mil a year player IMO. In fact, I would trade Larkin for Barzal in a heartbeat so the idea of paying Larkin the same, or even more, is crazy to me.
Statistically they are likely at the peak of their prime right now and will only trend downward from here. Bertuzzi moreso because of his style of play and size.
Being our best forwards at the moment doesn't mean we hamstring the future. I want to win as bad as everyone else and compete now, but I want Cups, not first round exits. Also, fuck Bertuzzi.
They signed Olkinuora and I think probably want to play him some in GR. It was an awkward year for Cossa, gains nothing in juniors but probably not quite ready to hand the reigns in GR. I'd guess a lot of ECHL starts with intermittent call ups to GR to start some games there and full time GR if he plays well.
If you can get back somebody like Seider or Raymond for Larkin you gotta do the deal. And then spend the savings in FA.
Yep I agree. And then we can complain about having to pay that player in three years when they are past their ELC.
It has nothing to do with not wanting to pay players. It’s about properly setting value for your players so you’re not in cap hell when you’re ready to compete. Yes, Detroit is fine right now. But go pay Larkin 9+ mil today and in five years when you’re wanting to do long term deals for your next wave of guys, you’re going to regret the extra mil you gave him simply because he was the best player on a bad team. Larkin is a good player. Doesn’t mean you pay him like a great one.
Do you guys think paying Larkin $1 million more per year puts the team in salary cap hell in future years? Not being sarcastic…honest question. 8x8 is fair/bargain 8x9 and he needs to be traded I think as a player Larkin is in a very similar pool to guys like Barzal, Kyrou, Hertl who signed $8-9 per year deals. I’m not gonna lose sleep if they have to pay him $9 per year. If they make the decision to trade him that’s fine too. I just don’t think you are forced to trade him over $1 million in salary per year.
The last thing you want is to be Vancouver where you’re paying a punch of good players like they are great and you’re up against the Cap and barely a Playoff team. Every mil counts.
I don’t think the pending free agent Larkin contract in 2022 is such a tent pole event that impacts what you will be forced to pay Seider or Raymond in 2024-25 when they are still under team control. Seems like I’m clearly in the minority on that here.
That’s for him to figure out. He has a NMC so we are going to be limited in his suitors to begin with, but someone will make an offer I am sure.
Montreal sucks but this team already seems wayyyyy better than last year. Mostly dominating a shitty team is a nice change of pace.