Dabura

yes plz

Wait, my bad. I came into the period late. Bowey scored to even it up, Mantha gave us the lead. Currently 2-1.

MANTHA! 1-1!

End of 1st. Wings trail 0-1. meh.

Pretty clear now that Larkin has been holding us back all these years.

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

LGRW! NO INJURIES! F*** THE PENS!

I can definitely imagine things playing out that way. If it does go that way, I hope we get a postseason appearance out of it!

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/

You weren't kidding! TRAP GAME HYPE!

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.

I think he has the potential to be a 2C. Even being a shutdown 3C would mean some good minutes, especially if he's being hard matched against top talent.

No AA tho. lol

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.

Would if I could.

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.

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.

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.

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

I feel Seider's played well enough so far that you can't totally rule anything out yet (aside from him playing on our third pairing, which would be dumb). Maybe DeKeyser-Seider could be a thing. Maybe Seider-Green could be a thing. Just sayin'. Logic and historical precedent suggest Seider will be a Griffin this season, but on the other hand our D corps is thin enough and he's performing well enough that we might actually see an 18-year-old defenseman play his way onto the big club straight out of his first training camp. Cholowski clearly wasn't ready tho and I vaguely recall reading that Yzerman told him he wanted him to work on his defensive game. Nemeth gives us a veteran shutdown guy beyond just DeKeyser and soon-to-be-done Ericsson and Kaski is a no-risk, high-reward investment. With Kronwall retiring and all four of Daley, Green, Ericsson, Bowey on expiring contracts, the potential for massive turnover is very real, so it makes sense that we'd have a number of irons in the fire. Maybe I'm misreading you but I'm getting the sense that you think I'm disagreeing with you about something. I'm in agreement with your general point. I was just kind of expanding on what you were saying, which is that it's nice to want all the top prospects on the team but it's also unrealistic. I'll disagree with you on Rasmussen and Svechnikov tho. Blashill and Yzerman want Rasmussen playing center at this stage of his development and all the local media writers have taken that to mean he's almost definitely headed to Grand Rapids. Physically, he's still getting pushed around all over the ice. That alone is probably enough to doom his roster push. Svechnikov, IMO, hasn't looked especially good in these preseason games and I figure he'll need some time to get back into the swing of things after having missed all of last year. The fact that he doesn't have to pass through waivers if the Wings do decide to send him down probably seals his fate. It seems we're looking at one or *maaaaaaybe* two forward spots being in play, and I'm not expecting Zadina and/or Veleno to claim it/them. But I'm not prepared to count them out just yet.

I'm assuming Jonas is trolling. But I mostly agee with you. While I do feel like sometimes the Wings are a little too elderly-friendly and I do hope all of the kids make the opening night roster, it's hard for me to look at any one of these kids and say, "I see a very clear opening for this player on our roster and I believe that's where he *NEEDS* to be right now and I believe he's proven that he's 1) ready for it and 2) better than all the other viable options." I like the idea of Seider playing on our second pairing, but I dunno that that's what's best for Seider or the team right now. And if he's not playing in the top four, he should be playing in the AHL, where he can be deployed in all situations and log tons of minutes. Same thing with Zadina and Veleno. Is Veleno ready to play on Filppula's/Nielsen's wing? Perhaps. Could he be an upgrade over Glendening/de la Rose in the 4C role right now? Perhaps. Would he be better off being a top-six centerman for the Griffins for 85% of this season? Perhaps. We thought Cholowski was ready last fall. Turned out he wasn't. We thought Rasmussen was ready last fall. Turned out he wasn't. We all love Hronek now, but he didn't start looking and performing like a legit NHL player until late last season, after he'd been demoted to the AHL with some homework assignments and called back up to prove that he was finally ready to take the next step. Of course, on the other side of the coin, there's a case like 2015 training camp Larkin. We thought he was ready at that time and he was. (Albeit as one of Zetterberg's wingers. Nice work if you can get it.) We'll see. Still got six games left.

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

I'm 100% willing to eat crow on Zadina if it comes to that. In the here and now, I think Zadina looks like a good prospect who's fairly close to putting it all together but not close enough that he should make the team out of camp if everyone's healthy. He's probably going to need another full season on the farm. Disappointing, but it is what it is. Seider has looked solid. As Blashill pointed out in his presser, Seider did make a number of mistakes last night. Personally, I want to see him in a few more games against NHLish lineups before I jump on the "Seider needs to be on the opening night roster" train. Ultimately, I think the big takeaway is that it doesn't even really matter where he starts this season; it looks like he's going to be a very good NHL defenseman and it looks like we won't have to wait as long as we might've feared (i.e. he's not really "a project"). I liked everything about that sequence. But, yeah, Hronek is a stud. If we can get our power play straightened out (and a lot of that is on Hronek, to be fair), he's going to pile up points.