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What you've been talking about is him cheating for offense all the time and being terrible defensively. What we've seen is him not cheating for offense and not being terrible defensively and Blashill consistently refusing to criticize any aspect of his defensive game because there really isn't much there to criticize. If I end up eating crow on Zadina, it'll be for @ChristopherReevesLegs, who's made some valid points about potential areas of concern with Zadina's game. What's holding Zadina back right now, IMO, is that he's struggling to set up and steer multi-part plays in the o-zone. He's good at entering the o-zone with possession and he's decent enough at helping a perimeter cycle along from the half-wall, but he really has to work on finding high-percentage ways to turn those good entries and perimeter possession into sustained pressure and goals against NHL players. NHLers and their systems are much better at neutralizing his off-wing shots than I think he'd anticipated and it's going to take some more time for him to figure out how to work around that and become a player who can threaten in multiple ways. Working on give-and-gos will help and I think Blashill and Yzerman are correct in believing that's what he should be focusing on. Finding someone with a pass, finding a soft spot in coverage to slip into -- this is stuff that's second nature to him as a CHL player but needs to be re-learned at the pro level.

That's a lot of righties on D. No injuries pls

I wouldn't. Blashill has no problem with criticizing any player's defensive game in public. "He's not going to criticize a #6 pick's defensive game" is not a thing. He also has no problem with criticizing any player's offensive game in public, and he's doing that with Zadina. Because there's actual stuff in Zadina's offensive game that's worth criticizing. You're lost rhetorically. I saw the sequence. I've also seen all the other minutes he's played where he was fine defensively. Additionally, I've seen every player in the history of forever give the puck away and get burned for it. Add some new tricks to your troll act. It's gotten incredibly stale. Long-term, I'm not overly concerned about him. I'm just talking about the here & now. Right now he's not ready for big NHL minutes, IMO.

I wouldn't mind seeing something like this for the better part of this season... Bertuzzi - Larkin - Mantha Hirose - Filppula - Athanasiou Erne - Nielsen - Kuffner Abdelkader - Glendening - Helm Ehn / de la Rose DeKeyser - Green Nemeth - Hronek Daley - Bowey Ericsson Howard Bernier Terry - Veleno - Zadina Svechnikov - Rasmussen - Puempel Smith - Turgeon - MacLeod Pope - Pearson - Lukosevicius Elson / Ford Cholowski - Seider Hicketts - Kaski Lashoff / McIlrath - Lindstrom Saarijarvi Larsson Pickard It would certainly be a painful season in Detroit, but a fun season in Grand Rapids, while our top prospects continue to develop and gain chemistry in a winning environment. I would definitely watch a lot of Griffins games if they dressed a roster close to this. It would also ensure another top pick in next year's draft...

If we wanna have a hype season: Veleno and Seider make the team and we all get to edge ourselves for a full season. If we wanna have a smart season: Yzerman sends everyone down, they develop properly and we get another high draft selection that we need. My heart says #1 one but my brain says #2 I want credit for Zadina sucking and Seider being amazing and no one ever gets to question my opinions again. But in all seriousness about Zadina, and to relate this to handegg, he's a WR, and if he's gonna be successful he needs a QB who knows how to throw to him. I personally don't see this kid as a RB who's gonna create offense on his own. He needs a VERY high level QB who can feed him offense and who's gonna distract defenses while he sets up. Even if I'm wrong, Zadina should DEFINITELY stay in the AHL this season. Veleno is ahead of him at this point.

Nah, I've got no problem with his attitude or mentalty or anything like that. It's just the simple fact that he continues to get pushed around and pushed down and tripped up over his own two feet. Doesn't seem to be much of an issue when he's hanging around the goalie's kitchen, which is good, but everywhere else he still looks like he isn't able to consistently win those battles that we need him to consistently win. He's put on some muscle, but I'm not sure sheer strength is even the issue. I think it's just learning the ropes of physical play against opponents who are fully capable of knocking you on your ass, as opposed to scrawny teenagers who are incapable of truly testing your physical mettle. Mantha faced a similar learning curve in that department. A lot of really big kids do.

Rasmussen struggled mightily last season. A lot of that was a physical thing; he's used to being much bigger and much stronger than his opponents and not having to battle hard for time and space and possession, let alone against NHLers. Based on what I'm seeing in preseason, he's still struggling on that front, still getting outmuscled all over the ice. On top of that, Blashill and Yzerman have come out and said they see him as -- or rather, would ideally like him to become -- a shutdown centerman, and to that end they want him playing center this season. Rasmussen isn't going to displace Larkin as our 1C (not yet anyway) and I honestly don't have any confidence that he'd be an upgrade over Filppula or Nielsen. Maybe he'd be an upgrade over Glendening/de la Rose, but he's not going to get a whole lot of ice time as our 4C and he really needs to be playing big minutes. If he's a Griffin, he's likely the 1C, which means tons of minutes. Zadina looks to me like a player who did very little work over the summer and is at least half a season away from being ready for prime time. I hate to say that, but it's my honest assessment. Blashill said he talked to Yzerman about Zadina and they feel he's trying to do too much by himself (something Blashill mentioned last season as well) and that he needs to work on his give-and-go game. That's not really something you say about a player who's ready to win tough matchups every night in the NHL. It's something you say about a prospect who's trying to put it all together and take the next step. Zadina's playing frustrated, nervy, largely unproductive hockey. If nothing else, hold him back because you don't want to burn an ELC year when the kid hasn't even scored a single goal through an entire prospect tournament and multiple preseason games. The thing Zadina has going for him is our lack of natural goal-scorers. Top line is set and it's a good one. Second line will be Athanasiou, Filppula/Nielsen, and probably Hirose, who's looking really good right now. Bottom six is shaping up to be an offensive black hole. Do you put Zadina in there? I can think of good arguments for it and good arguments against it. In all likelihood, he'll be starting in Grand Rapids. IMO, that would be the right call. Veleno's an interesting case. I figure they want him playing center this season and I figure he's in pretty much the same boat as Rasmussen on that front. At the same time, if he'd be the 2C in Grand Rapids and our bottom six is sorely lacking some scoring punch, maybe you feel his skating and two-way play would be a good fit on our third line as a winger or maybe even the centerman. Hell, maybe you give him the 4C job and try to roll four lines. Personally, I dunno. I think he's making a pretty good case for himself but not so good that he's embarrassing the veterans whose jobs he's trying to take by force. In all honesty, I'm not sure there's much of a difference between Helm and Veleno right now. In a year or two? Sure. Right now? I dunno. Ask me again at the end of training camp. Last but not least: Seider. He's been impressive. I feel he's threatening to go from a nice feel-good story to an actual legit job-stealer. But, to me, he's not quite there yet. If I look at our projected top four (DeKeyser-Hronek, Nemeth-Green), I don't see Seider as an obvious upgrade to that group. More importantly, there's the development side of it. Even if he makes the lineup, is he getting juicy power play minutes? Is he on the first PK unit? Is he going up against the other team's top talent every night? If he's in Grand Rapids, the answer to those questions is very likely yes. If he's in Detroit, the answer is very likely no. Which isn't to say being the #1 or #2 defenseman in Grand Rapids is necessarily better for him than being the #3 or #4 defenseman in Detroit. If Seider plays himself into the discussion for a second-pairing role on the Wings' blue line, it's gonna be a tough call. tl;dr the kids are good and the future looks bright but it's not clear that any one of them is truly ready to play really meaningful minutes in the NHL -- and even if one of them is ready, maybe that's not actually what's best for his development

HYPE! LGRW!

Hmmm it wasn't til he joined the team that we started missing the playoffs...

Pens take the lead. Ye olde trap hast snareth thine Wings. Alas!

That sweet sound of Ken and Mick calling the game 1-0 pens I kid you not.

last season we were hit hard with the injury bug and couldn´t replace our already not so good d-men, which has cost us, apart of a few points, some flow to play a decent season. This year we have players in the system to cope with stuff like that. Further I think we have players who are fed up of losing, who have to play for spots and contracts. Than there is Yzerman, who, instead of coming in and shaking up big time, is calmly putting pressure on everyone on the team, vets and prospects, they all know they have to proof they belong to the Wings future. As much as I would love another high pick, I believe we end up at around 85-90 points and pick between #10-15, unless we are finally lucky in the lottery

On a positive note: I've been really pleased with Hirose. He looked good in the Prospect Tournament and he's looked even better in preseason action. He still has a lot to prove, but at the moment he's starting to look like someone who could end up being counted among our young leaders (Larkin, Mantha, Bertuzzi, Athanasiou) by the end of this season. So, basically, Holland might've added a Nyquist-caliber young forward for free. One reason why I'm bullish on Hirose: It seems the Hirose we saw last season wasn't even his final form... https://www.freep.com/story/sports/nhl/red-wings/2019/09/19/detroit-red-wings-taro-hirose/2373478001/

It's a tough situation. Yzerman is definitely going to do what he feels he has to do to maintain the winning culture that the Wings are known for; there will be no actively trying to lose under Yzerman's watch, just as there was no actively trying to lose under Holland's watch. At the same time, Yzerman, like Holland of the past few years, is going to do what he feels he has to do to set the team up for success in the hopefully-not-too-distant future. It's a tricky balancing act and I can't say I envy any GM who's charged with pulling it off and producing a perennial contender. There's also a bit of a balancing act for some fans. Personally? My heart wants the Wings to make the playoffs this season and go on a Cinderella postseason run...while my head says the rebuild effort could really, really use one of Lafreniere, Byfield, Raymond, Holtz, Lundell, et al. (Yzerman is on record saying he believes what we have in the system right now is not enough.)

I don't think he'll have much trouble establishing himself as a good/great 1st PP unit net-front guy, even if the rest of his game doesn't really pan out like we'd hoped it would. So, at the very least, we probably have that to look forward to. And, honestly, that alone would be a pretty big boost. Our PP has been garbage for years now and it's really hurt us.

Id be stoked with shutdown 3C and net front 2nd pp unit guy.

Larkin playing tonight

Pens line-up is all bottom-sixers and AHL players. Hope Detroit brings something more exciting. Word is Larkin is playing so HYPE!

We still need elite talent. This is shaping up to be one of the deepest drafts we've seen in years, maybe ever... I'd bet anything we draft in the top 10, and likely even top 5 in next year's draft. Yzerman is going to want to turn things around fairly quickly, but it's not going to happen over night (in one season)...

It's almost like he's a legit top6er in NJ already, weird

I have zero worries about 27. 3rd line center for 15 years straight with 2nd unit pp time. He will develop into a consistent 15G, 15A player for us that takes care of a lot of minutes we dont want Larkin handling.

I know we were all thinking at this tme last year that 2019-20 would be the start of the turnaround. Unfortunately, it's looking like we're in much the same position right now. We've seen Larkin, Mantha, Bertuzzi, and Athanasiou take over, which is great, but it's safe to say it'll be at least one more year before the team is overflowing with really good young players who are legitimate impact players at the NHL level. The good news is that these kids we're talking about appear to be pretty close and it's entirely possible that our first pick in the 2020 draft is going to fetch us a player so good that he immediately becomes our top prospect. What we have in the system right now will not be enough, and Yzerman has straight-up said as much. So, in that sense, it doesn't really matter who does or doesn't make the team out of camp this season.

Agreed on Ras and Svech. Zadina and Veleno are not yet good enough to get top 6 minutes in Detroit. Until they are, they'll be better developed in GR. Seider is probably good enough to make the Wings, but not 20 minutes a game good. Put him on the top pair in GR until Daley and or Green get traded at the TDL. He should be ripe by then.

Unless u move Hronek or Green to the left side, Seider would be on the 3rd pair. Would rather play him with Cholowski as the top pair in GR. The Nemeth signing would have more to do with a kid not getting a spot than either of Daley or Green. They were already here, and Kronners retirement should have opened the door for Cholowski. Bringing in Nemeth after the acquisition of Kaski and then the drafting of Seider was a head scratcher for me. As for F, I don't see an issue here. I expect Moose and Svech to make the roster. Zadina and Veleno in GR logging top minutes makes more sense to me than playing behind Bert, Larkin, Mantha, AA, Hirose, Flip, Moose, and Nielsen on the big roster. Are any of Kuffner, Ehn, or Turgeon better than Helm, Abby, Glendening, or Nielsen? I dont think so. So would getting rid of them improve the team now or in the future?

https://dobberprospects.com/prospect-ramblings-preseason-overreactions-edition/