Tyler Bertuzzi recalled... Vanek to LTIR

[brett 1,029]

one of the gambles with vanek.. fragile 

Edited November 8, 2016 by brett

[chaps80 1,591]

Haha I didn't say Bert should be up instead of Mantha. I'd like to see Mantha up. I was just going by what Blashill said about him and Bert respectively after camp. I figured Bert would get first call and he did.

15 hours ago, krsmith17 said:

 

So you take stock into NHL pre-season where most of the players are AHLers, but you don't take any stock into the AHL? I'm sick of hearing the Pulkkinen comparison. Pulkkinen and Mantha are not even close to being the same player. Pulkkinen is small and not a great skater, Mantha is huge and a very good skater. Mantha has an NHL body, and in my opinion has already proven that he is NHL ready.

 

Wasn't comparing the two. Was talking about goal scoring. Pulks won the AHL scoring title, then couldn't do much of anything in the NHL. Mantha is obv the better player, but just cause he's doing well in GR, doesn't mean he'll come up and make a huge impact. He's a better player than Bert too, but they wanted Bert first for some reason. Mantha will be up eventually i'm sure. Blash isn't completely retarded, he knows what he has.

[chaps80 1,591]

And here's why Bert got the call over Mantha, from Blashill:

 

The slumping Red Wings have cited the need to shoot more pucks and get more traffic in front.

There are few things – if any – that Tyler Bertuzzi does better.

The 21-year-old forward was called up to Detroit on Tuesday from the AHL Grand Rapids Griffins after the Wings placed Thomas Vanek on long-term injured reserve. Bertuzzi will make his NHL debut Tuesday night against the Philadelphia Flyers.

“When he’s playing well he’s a guy who’s on the puck a lot,” said coach Jeff Blashill after practice on Monday morning. “He’s got a good reach and stick on pucks so he creates turnovers. He finds a way to hard areas of the ice. He can shoot the puck from in-tight areas, finds a way to score in those tight areas and gets to the net hard.

“As a team, the one thing we’ve talked about is we need to do a better job of getting to the net front, we need to do a better job of shooting the puck and I think he does those two things.”

The Red Wings have lost five straight games, scoring just nine goals over that stretch. On the season, they’ve averaged just 28.1 shots per game, the third-lowest mark in the league. To create more offense and snap out of their funk, numerous players have stressed the importance of scoring “dirty” goals.

Bertuzzi is more than capable of filling that need.

“Again, when he’s playing really well – and he’s done this for me, he’s done it for Nelly (Griffins coach Todd Nelson) – he’s a guy who finds a way to greasy-type goals,” Blashill said. “Sometimes it doesn’t look pretty but he’s got that in him. We need more of that and we’re hoping he can bring that tomorrow night.”

In choosing between Bertuzzi and the highly-regraded Anthony Mantha to take Vanek’s place on the roster, the Wings felt Bertuzzi’s hard-nosed style of play was what they needed most.

Mantha has seven goals and an assist in nine games with the Griffins this season, including a four-game goal-scoring streak to start the year. Bertuzzi had two goals and two assists in the same amount of action. At the time of his call-up, he and Mantha were tied for the team lead with 28 shots a piece.

“I’ve had conversations with everybody involved that’s watched the team and they’re both playing excellent, they’re both playing really good hockey,” Blashill said. “We think they’re both real good prospects. As we talked about it, we debated it a little bit last night – ‘debated’ isn’t the right word –  we discussed it last night, and we just decided this time we’re going to go with Bert.”

 

Edited November 9, 2016 by chaps80

[krsmith17 7,191]

9 hours ago, chaps80 said:

Haha I didn't say Bert should be up instead of Mantha. I'd like to see Mantha up. I was just going by what Blashill said about him and Bert respectively after camp. I figured Bert would get first call and he did.

Wasn't comparing the two. Was talking about goal scoring. Pulks won the AHL scoring title, then couldn't do much of anything in the NHL. Mantha is obv the better player, but just cause he's doing well in GR, doesn't mean he'll come up and make a huge impact. He's a better player than Bert too, but they wanted Bert first for some reason. Mantha will be up eventually i'm sure. Blash isn't completely retarded, he knows what he has.

Bringing up Pulkkinen when talking about Mantha is a comparison, and there's no comparison to be made. I'm well aware that there are a TON of players that produce in junior and in the minors, but amount to nothing at the NHL level. However, for the most part, those are the players that are small, skilled guys that don't have the body to keep up at the highest level, against the best players in the world. That appears to be the case for Pulkkinen, but won't at all be the case for Mantha. I'm fully confident that he is NHL ready, and not just based on what I've seen of him in Grand Rapids, but more so what I seen from him last year in Detroit, and how much his game has grown since then. I obviously don't expect him to score at the same rate as he has been in the AHL, but I wouldn't be surprised if his game is better suited for the NHL game...

Bert had a strong game last night. He didn't factor in the scoring but generated chances and was strong defensively. Great to see him up with the big club, now if we could just waive Miller and / or Ott and call up Mantha... and scratch Marchenko and insert Sproul...

Tatar - Nielsen - Mantha

Nyquist - Zetterberg - Abdelkader

Athanasiou - Larkin - Helm

Sheahan - Glendening - Bertuzzi

DeKeyser - Green

Kronwall - Smith

Ericsson - Sproul

All of a sudden that's a much better looking lineup... in my opinion...

[joesuffP 1,746]

I thought he played well. He did his job and knew why he was in the lineup that was good to see. Didn't have much time with the puck but the ol eye ball test conceded he never got much ice time? I'm not sure. Ott needs to sit

[toby91_ca 620]

53 minutes ago, krsmith17 said:

Bringing up Pulkkinen when talking about Mantha is a comparison, and there's no comparison to be made. I'm well aware that there are a TON of players that produce in junior and in the minors, but amount to nothing at the NHL level. However, for the most part, those are the players that are small, skilled guys that don't have the body to keep up at the highest level, against the best players in the world.

I don't think this is true at all.  Perhaps 20 years ago, but not today.  The biggest difference between the AHL and NHL is speed of the game and that doesn't just mean ability to skate faster, it's doing everything faster.  That's really always been the case, but more recently, there is less of an issue with smaller/quicker guys being able to be effective in the NHL.

The bigger guys will still have some advantages, but the guys that produce in the AHL, but can't make the jump are not mostly players that are small and skilled.

I think the separation really comes down to:

  - overall skill (basic)

  - skating ability

I've seen and known guys that have all of the skill, would be at the high end in terms of NHL ability (shot for example), but skating ability was below par...comparatively speaking when talking NHL level.  Size is a non issue here.  The other would be guys that have size, can skate, but don't have NHL level skill....these guys actually might have a better shot of making it and filling some specialized role though.

[krsmith17 7,191]

I absolutely agree that skating ability is a huge factor, and size isn't as much of a factor it was maybe 10-20 years ago, but it's still a factor. And like I mentioned in my previous post, skating ability is also a major strength for Mantha and weakness for Pulkkinen. Point still remains, these two guys are apples and oranges when it comes to virtually every part of their individual games, so to bring up the fact that Pulkkinen's game hasn't and probably won't translate to the NHL is silly to me...