Ken Holland discusses Red Wings’ moves on Day 1 of free agency
By @MichaelCaples –
Less than an hour after the NHL free agency period opened, Ken Holland was on the phone with members of the media to discuss his team’s moves.
Those moves? Veteran additions to a team in the midst of a youth movement.
The three headliners from the Red Wings’ free-agency moves are Mike Green, Thomas Vanek and Jonathan Bernier.
Green returns after spending the last two seasons with the Wings; Vanek returns after spending the majority of the 2016-17 season with Detroit.
Bernier is the lone ‘new face’ as the Wings needed to fill the back-up goaltender position left empty from the Petr Mrazek trade.
What are Holland’s expectations for the upcoming season? Here’s what he had to say.
“The hope is that we can hang in. The longer that we can hang in, the better the environment is for everybody – our fans, our players, especially our young players – but ultimately my focus as the manager is probably on this team a little bit down the road. I don’t want it to be way down the road, but a little bit down the road. Hopefully we can surprise, hopefully we can hang in, and be in the playoff race. In order for that to happen, some of the young people who were on the team last year that took a step, they need to take another step, and we need some of the veteran players to come in and play at the same level or play a touch better.
“Hopefully between Jimmy Howard and Jonathan Bernier, we get some great goaltending, that’s a real key piece to be competitive is getting good goaltending. I think we’ve brought in some people who have done it before, we’ve got some young people – how good can Rasmussen be, how good can Zadina be, how good can Bertuzzi be, what does Mantha do this year, what does Dylan Larkin do this year, what does Athanasiou do this year? When you’re dealing with young people, there’s no track record. If all those young people I just mentioned can take a little bit of a step, we can be relevant, we can try to hang in a playoff race. If not enough of those players take a step forward, if some take a step backward, it’s going to affect our ability to compete.
“We’re going into an unknown, but I’m trying to juggle veterans and young players, create opportunities for our young players and have them be around players who we think are good veteran players, but at the same time, obviously you see by the term we’ve signed these players, as we go forward, there is more and more opportunity going forward for the young players on our team to grab bigger roles and bigger responsibilities.”
While the free-agent signings of Green and Vanek take up roster spots many fans wanted to see used for prospects in the Wings’ system, Holland insists that youngsters are still the focus of the club moving forward.
“As we go into training camp, players I want to see – Michael Rasmussen, Zadina, Svechnikov, Dom Turgeon played well last year and got up a little bit. On defense, Sulak, Hronek, Cholowski, Hicketts, hopefully I haven’t missed anybody, but we’re going to give a lot of young players a long look in preseason and the plan is, the hope is, that kids crack our line-up, but they have to be ready. I don’t believe you just put them on the team. You have to be ready. The message that we’ve talked to these players is obviously, Rasmussen and Zadina were just here at our Development Camp, and the message to those players is that you have to come in and win a job. We’re going to give them every opportunity.”
He also wanted to remind people that just because certain players may not be on the Opening Night roster come October, it doesn’t mean they won’t be making the drive from Grand Rapids to Detroit shortly thereafter.
“These kids have to come in, there’s that fine line between just putting them on the team, what do they have to accomplish to just be put on the team, and what do they have to accomplish, what do they have to do to win a job. That’s what we’re going to judge as we get into training camp. Again, we’re going to end up with two or three kids on our team, two or three young players. Who are they going to be? We’re going to decide after we go to Traverse City for training camp and preseason and then we’ll sit down with Jeff Blashill a couple of days prior to the season start to get our Opening Day roster.
“If they don’t make the roster opening day, it doesn’t mean they’re not up two weeks later. I look at Anthony Mantha a year and a half ago, we sent him down and then he scored I think eight goals in 11 games to start the AHL season and we called him up in early to mid-November. Everybody obviously always focuses in on opening day but it’s a six-month season and lots happens. In order to crack the line-up opening day, they have to come in and grab it. We think we’re going to be in a position where we can put two or three guys on the team, if two young defensemen can make our team maybe we’ll carry eight defensemen, maybe we’ll go 13 and eight, maybe we’ll go 14 and seven, we want to get to training camp and watch and see what these players do.”
He also likes the idea of having Vanek, a proven point-producer, playing with some of the Wings’ blue-chip prospects during the upcoming season.
“The reasons for bringing back Thomas, I think there are a lot of reasons. When we had him before…he was very popular in the locker room, the players looked up to him. The thing I was impressed upon was that we signed him to score goals but he’s as good a playmaker as he is a goal-scorer. He’s a big body, he’s going to be good on the power play, and I think that when Jeff Blashill makes up his line combinations, certainly, I thought Vanek, there was a while there while he was here that there was a nice line of Vanek, Nielsen and Athanasiou and AA was scoring some goals.
“He wants to be here, he enjoyed his time here, we talked about signing him a year ago and ultimately we didn’t have enough cap space and he went to Vancouver. We’re excited to have Thomas signed to a one-year contract, we think he gives us some more depth up front and he’ll help, when he does play on a line with those young players that we’re hoping and planning to have make our team, he’ll create some scoring chances and help them feel good about themselves and get some points and maybe score some goals.”