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Morning Notes: Red Wings, Stenberg, Funck

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The biggest training camp storyline for the Red Wings will be who begins the season as their top line left wing next to Dylan Larkin and Lucas Raymond. They’ve had a revolving door there for the first four years of the latter’s career, and it doesn’t look like that will be changing anytime soon.

To that end, Max Bultman of The Athletic explored that topic today. Their most frequent linemate last season was youngster Marco Kasper, but with his development more apt in filling a much-needed second-line center role for the Wings, that’s where Bultman anticipates him staying to open the season.

If not Kasper, it’s a rather uninspiring list for a unit expected to be Detroit’s most productive. The leading contender might be a swap of who Kasper replaced down the middle late last year. Veteran Andrew Copp has played exclusively down the middle since signing with the Wings three years ago, but could slot in on Larkin’s wing to “bring some of the same heaviness and defensive elements Kasper did to that line,” Bultman writes.

Copp is arguably the leading contender because of Detroit’s relatively quiet offseason, leaving them with uninspiring top-line options in the likely scenario they keep wingers Alex DeBrincat and Patrick Kane as their second-line anchors. Other names in the mix, Bultman writes, will be free agent pickup James van Riemsdyk and the towering young Elmer Söderblom. The former was more productive last season with 36 points in 71 games for the Blue Jackets, but only averaged 12:24 per night.

Here’s more from around the hockey world today:

  • It’ll take a miracle to unseat phenom Gavin McKenna from first overall on anyone’s draft board by the time next June rolls around, but the No. 2 slot is still up for grabs. While the consensus preseason opinion there is big-bodied defender Keaton Verheoff, Scott Wheeler of The Athletic opines that his average skating gives the edge to Swedish winger Ivar Stenberg, whom he opines is a slam-dunk first-line winger. His production in under-20 play with Frölunda last season jumps off the page – 53 points in 27 games – and he just won a bronze medal at the Hlinka Gretzky Cup while contributing a tournament-leading four goals and 10 points in five games. He’s primed for a full-time role in the pros in the SHL this season, but his early birthday for the class (Sep. 30) means he’s further along in his development than most of his peers.
  • After being drafted out of his native Sweden, Avalanche defense prospect Linus Funck is making the jump to North America. The 2025 fourth-rounder will suit up for the OHL’s London Knights this season, the team announced. The 6’3″, 186-lb righty had a 5-23–28 scoring line in 48 games for Luleå’s U-20 squad last season but was not part of Sweden’s contingent for this month’s Hlinka Grezky tournament.

Red Wings Sign Travis Hamonic

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The Red Wings signed right-shot defenseman Travis Hamonic to a one-year, one-way contract. The Manitoba native will earn $1MM with no potential performance bonuses, as he missed the age cutoff for a 35+ contract by a few weeks.

Hamonic, who turns 35 tomorrow, was a second-round pick of the Islanders in 2008. While he was a top-four fixture out of the gate for them, subsequent stops with the Flames, Canucks, and Senators since his departure from New York in 2017 have seen his game slowly trail off as he aged.

That was especially true over the last two seasons. Ottawa had acquired Hamonic from Vancouver near the 2022 trade deadline and inked him to a two-year, $2.2MM contract in the summer of 2023 after his first full season in the Canadian capital saw him produce 21 points in 75 games while averaging 18:34 of ice time per night.

Immediately after signing the deal, though, Hamonic’s game dropped below replacement level. Over the life of the deal, during which a no-movement clause prohibited the Sens from waiving him, he played 107 games with 13 points, a -26 rating, and averaged only 16 minutes per game. His possession impacts, particularly in 2023-24, were among the worst in the league. That year, he had a -10% relative Corsi impact at even strength despite starting the majority of his shifts in the offensive zone. In total, Ottawa was outscored 77-44 and outchanced 787-635 with Hamonic on the ice at 5-on-5 in the last two years.

Given the Red Wings’ possession struggles, that makes Hamonic a peculiar fit, particularly on a guaranteed deal with a seven-figure cap hit when he was likely approaching PTO territory. Jack Johnson, a veteran lefty with similarly underwhelming impacts in a similar role, recently settled for a tryout with the Wild.

Detroit already has a wealth of No. 5-7 caliber veterans on its roster, including Erik Gustafsson and Justin Holl. Right-shot depth was a bit of a concern for them with Holl and Jacob Bernard-Docker as their only experienced options behind core piece Moritz Seider, but Hamonic presumably slots in behind both of them on their depth chart as he battles for a roster spot in camp. It’s worth noting his $1MM cap hit is below the maximum buriable threshold, so he wouldn’t carry a cap penalty for the Wings if they placed him on waivers for assignment to AHL Grand Rapids.

The wild card on Detroit’s right side is 2023 first-rounder Axel Sandin-Pellikka. The offensive-minded righty will be playing in North America this season, but whether his development would be best served by some AHL time or immediate top-four deployment in the NHL remains to be seen. He’s still only 20 years old and had one assist and a -3 rating in five regular-season and playoff games for Grand Rapids at the end of last season, but given their lack of other top-four capable options, they might not have much of a choice.

Detroit has four standard contract slots remaining after signing Hamonic.

Image courtesy of Timothy T. Ludwig-Imagn Images.

Red Wings' Were Preparing Substantial Offer For Ekblad

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Still, it’s well known that Ekblad especially turned down some serious money to return to the only organization he’s ever known. In a new mailbag with James Mirtle of The Athletic, Mirtle claims that the Detroit Red Wings were ready and willing to give Ekblad a notable payday to move north for likely the remaining years of his professional career. While that may be true, we’ll never know what the Red Wings were willing to offer Ekblad since he never reached unrestricted free agency; therefore, he couldn’t negotiate with other teams.

Mirtle argued that Ekblad’s situation might be different due to his strong affection for the Panthers organization. However, most top-tier free agents are reluctant to sign with Detroit, as the team has not made the postseason since the 2015-16 season and has not won a playoff series since the lockout-shortened 2012-13 campaign. Still, the Red Wings will enter the 2025-26 season with the seventh-most cap space of any team, and will have even more for what is shaping up to be a loaded free agent class next summer.

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Pavel Datsyuk Calls Out Red Wings' Top Players

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On a press run for his upcoming “Magic Game” in his hometown of Yekaterinburg, Russia, Detroit Red Wings legend Pavel Datsyuk made a surprisingly bold claim about his former team in a recent interview with Sergey Demidov of RG Media. Throughout his playing career, Datsyuk was a prototypical hockey player when it came to conversations with the media, making only plain statements if he chose to speak with them, which makes his recent comments seem somewhat out of character.

The comment raises concerns about how effectively Dylan Larkin, Alex DeBrincat, and Patrick Kane are guiding the Red Wings in the right direction. This uncertainty may also extend to the next generation of Detroit’s stars, including Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider.

Datsyuk certainly has a leg to stand on when it comes to the leadership required for sustained success at the NHL level. His career began during the 2001-02 season on a Red Wings team that boasted 10 future Hall of Famers at the time, and he was a part of the most recent Detroit team to qualify for the postseason during the 2015-16 season.

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Snapshots: Tkachuk, Cozens, Red Wings

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The Tkachuk family has dominated late-summer headlines, leading to plenty of opportunities for the three NHL players – retired pro Keith Tkachuk, Florida Panthers star Matthew Tkachuk, and Ottawa Senators star Brady Tkachuk – to sit down with media from across the hockey world. The one throughline from each conversation has been Brady’s desire to stick with the Ottawa Senators. He told as much to ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski, sharing that the team’s push into the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs went far towards proving what the young core is capable of.

The Senators entered the 2024-25 season with one of the youngest rosters in the league – eighth-youngest, to be exact. They blazed through an incredibly successful season despite that, finishing the year with the top Eastern Conference Wild Card and just one point behind the eventual Cup-winning Panthers. Ottawa’s surge was spearheaded by young studs like Tim Stutzle, Drake Batherson, and Jake Sanderson. Those three were the only ones to score more than Tkachuk’s 29 goals and 55 points in 72 regular season games. But Tkachuk showed his importance to the squad when he led the team with four goals and seven points in six postseason games. Ottawa will return a fairly similar squad next season, and with a bode of confidence from their captain, may be able to find their way out of Wild Card standing or beyond the first round.

Other notes from around the league:

  • A key focus of the Senators’ 2025-26 season will be the performance of second-line center Dylan Cozens, who the team acquired from the Buffalo Sabres in a swap for Joshua Norris last Spring. Julian McKenzie of The Athletic shares that Cozens only needs to reach 20 goals, and maintain his all-around impact, to earn find a successful season. Cozens has only crossed the 20-goal mark once in his career – when he pushed for 31 goals and 68 points in the 2022-23 season. But he’s come close at other points, with 18 goals in 2023-24 and 16 goals last year. In fact, Cozens’ five goals in 21 games with the Senators perfectly paces him for a 20-goal performance across 82 games. That should be an achievable step for the 24-year-old centerman, though his goal will certainly be to further prove he can return to the heights of his 2023 scoring. Doing so could give Ottawa an ace up their sleeves as they look to one-up their performance from last year.
  • Years of stocking the prospect pool should begin to pay off for the Detroit Red Wings next season. They can expect three key prospects to emerge in the NHL per Max Bultman of The Athletic, who names forwards Nate Danielson and Carter Mazur, and goaltender Sebastian Cossa, as the young guns likely to break into the Detroit lineup next season. That should be an easy feat for Mazur and Cossa, who have both continuously shown their might at the AHL level. Mazur finished an injury-shortened season with 15 points in 20 AHL games, to go along with 37 points in 60 games in 2023-24. His hard-nosed style caught the eyes of Detroit’s top brass, but a freak injury cut his season down before he could play through a full NHL game. While he returns to the lineup, Cossa will aim to finally make the full-time jump, after serving as a pillar of consistency in the minor-leagues. He posted a .911 save percentage in 41 games last season, well in-line with the .913 save percentage he posted in 40 AHL games in 2023-24, and again in 46 ECHL in 2022-23. Among the bunch, it will be frail playmaker Nate Danielson who will have to show he can pop. Danielson played his first pro season last year, and scored an encouraging 39 points in 71 games. But on a Red Wings roster pushing for all they can get, he’ll need to show he can hold up to increasingly-challenging roles.

Carl-Otto Magnusson Invited To Rookie Camp

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  • The Red Wings will be inviting defenseman Carl-Otto Magnusson to rookie camp next month, relays Hockey Sverige’s Rasmus Kagstrom. The 19-year-old spent last season in Frolunda’s system, playing primarily at their junior level where he had eight points in 44 games and also got into three contests in the SHL.  However, the six-foot-seven defender will suit up in North America this season after being a second-round pick by QMJHL Moncton in the CHL Import Draft.

Unlikely Sandin-Pellikka Starts With Red Wings

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  • While Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman hasn’t ruled out prospect Axel Sandin-Pellikka from breaking camp with Detroit in a couple of months, MLive’s Ansar Khan suggests that outcome is unlikely. The 20-year-old was a first-round pick back in 2023 (17th overall) and had a strong season in Sweden last year, picking up 12 goals and 17 assists in 46 games with SHL Skelleftea.  He also was one of the top scorers at the World Juniors and got his feet wet with five games with AHL Grand Rapids (including playoffs) in the spring.  But Detroit tends to favor slow-playing the development of their top prospects, allowing them to work on some things with the Griffins before giving them a real NHL look.  Between that and not opening up any spots on the back end this summer, Sandin-Pellikka seems likely to continue that trend.

ECHL's Toledo Walleye Hire Chaz Reddekopp As Assistant Coach

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On the second day of free agency, along with signing defenseman Kaedan Korczak to a four-year contract, we had reported that the Vegas Golden Knights had also signed defenseman Jeremy Davies to a two-year deal. As it turns out, the staff at PuckPedia has informed us that Davies’ two-year contract is with the Golden Knights AHL affiliate, the Henderson Silver Knights, which is an AHL contract.

It makes sense, given that Davies has not played in an NHL contest since the 2022-23 season. Even though Davies only appeared in one game for the Buffalo Sabres, he spent most of his time with their AHL affiliate, the Rochester Americans.

Since his last NHL game, Davies has excelled as a defenseman in the AHL. In his last year with the AHL Americans during the 2023-24 season, he scored 12 goals and 35 points in 66 games. Last season, while playing for the Belleville Senators, the AHL affiliate of the Ottawa Senators, he scored 11 goals and recorded a total of 48 points in 72 games. He finished the season with a +9 rating, which placed him first on the team in scoring among defensemen, with a margin of 25 points ahead of the next player. For context, the Silver Knights were led in defensemen scoring by Calen Addison and Robert Hagg, each of which have moved on this summer.

Other snapshots:

  • A few days ago, it was reported that New York Islanders’ prospect Calum Ritchie had every intention of making the Islanders’ opening night roster. In a new report from Stefen Rosner of The Hockey News, we now know that he’ll be given every opportunity to do so. Citing Jeff Marek on his podcast, The Sheet, Rosner shared a quote from New York’s General Manager, Mathieu Darche, saying, If Calum comes to training camp and he outplays everyone, I’ll make room for him on the roster.”
  • In a new report out of Toledo, the ECHL’s Toledo Walleye have announced that Chaz Reddekopp will stay with the team as an assistant coach for the 2025-26 season, while also informally confirming his retirement. Reddekopp was selected 187th overall in the 2015 NHL Draft by the Los Angeles Kings, largely appearing in the ECHL throughout his professional playing career. He finished with 10 goals and 52 points in 201 ECHL contests, and one goal and 13 points in 92 AHL appearances.

Latest On Mason McTavish

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The Ducks haven’t been actively shopping the signing rights to restricted free agent Mason McTavish, but that hasn’t stopped teams from expressing trade interest, as the center remains without a contract. Fervent interest will presumably be helped along by his essentially dominating the market for young centers. Wild RFA Marco Rossi’s talks have all but dried up with little to no interest league-wide in the long-term contract he desires. The Canadiens, Hurricanes, and Red Wings have all shown serious interest – the last club chief among them, James Murphy of RG writes.

Without much talk of an offer sheet, a notion sources told Murphy to dispel with Anaheim having ample space to match, McTavish has little control over his destiny. Speculation has indicated he’s concerned about his long-term role with the Ducks after their offseason shopping spree added needed depth to their forward group, but there’s little to no appetite from the Ducks’ end to facilitate a trade unless he outright refuses to sign a contract.

All the teams interested have a clear need for a second-line center. Unlike in SoCal, where there’s still a small chance for him to compete with Leo Carlsson for long-term 1C duties, there wouldn’t be that upward mobility there for him with Nick Suzuki in Montreal and Sebastian Aho in Carolina not vacating their posts anytime soon. The Wings have the weakest top pivot out of the group in Dylan Larkin, but he still wouldn’t be walking into Day 1 first-line duties there if that’s his goal.

While McTavish may have the standard profile of a high-motor but not hugely offensively untapped 2C, his performance last season shows there could be more to behold. The 22-year-old posted a team-leading 22 goals in 76 games, and his 52 points finished three back of Troy Terry for the team lead. That’s highly impressive production in an offensively stifled system under outgoing head coach Greg Cronin, and with his 12.2% shooting rate remaining projectable, there’s significant 65-to-75-point breakout potential for him this season as the team presumably adopts a more aggressive style under Joel Quenneville.

If Anaheim begins entertaining offers for the 6’1″ pivot’s signing rights, though, they’ll be looking for a blue-chip right-shot defense prospect as the principal point of the return, Murphy reports. That means names like 2023 first-rounders Axel Sandin-Pellikka would need to be in play in Detroit’s case, or that year’s No. 5 pick David Reinbacher in Montreal’s. Draft-capital-wise, it’s logical from the Ducks’ perspective after using the No. 3 overall pick on McTavish in 2021.

Red Wings' Rudy Guimond Commits To Harvard University

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  • Despite being drafted 169th overall by the Detroit Red Wings back in the 2023 NHL Draft, netminder Rudy Guimond has finally committed to a collegiate program for the upcoming season. Guimond announced on his Instagram that he will be attending Harvard University this fall, after playing the last two years with the USHL’s Cedar Rapids RoughRiders and the QMJHL’s Moncton Wildcats. He had an outstanding season in Moncton last year, finishing with a perfect 16-0-0 record in 16 games, a .940 SV%, a 1.73 GAA, and three shutouts.

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