Abel to Yzerman

Abel to Yzerman

The Draft And The New Goalie In Town

07/23/2021 at 5:12am EDT

from Ted Kulfan of the Detroit News,

"It's going to be an interesting day and an interesting weekend," general manager Steve Yzerman said Thursday....

"In some cases you're talking about players that didn't play this year," Yzerman said. "For our scouting staff, it was a challenge for them to see some of the players and travel to get to certain locations was challenging, interesting.

"But Kris (Draper, the Wings' director of amateur scouting) and his staff have been very diligent and thorough and done the best they could. Ultimately, this draft class, moving forward, is the most unpredictable, generally, of a very unpredictable process."...

The Wings have been linked with Swedish forward William Eklund, Michigan forward Kent Johnson, junior forward Mason McTavish, or defensemen such as Luke Hughes (United States National Team Development Team) or Simon Edvinsson (Sweden).

And the pool of players who could go to the Wings at 22 is even wider and deeper.

Yzerman and his scouting staff are ready.

"I don't want to say we have no clue (of how things will shake out), we have somewhat of a clue, but that remains to be seen," Yzerman said. "It's going to be very unpredictable. I don't know what other teams, what their lists, are (like)."

With the Wings still in the midst of a rebuild, expect them to go after the best player available, and not for need at a particular position.

more (paid)

from Ansar Khan of Mlive,

Trading a young goaltender with a terrific track record, albeit a smaller sample size, is rare in the NHL. It’s even more unusual when he was a finalist for rookie of the year honors less than one month ago.

Acquiring Alex Nedeljkovic Thursday was a brilliant move by Detroit Red Wings general manager Steve Yzerman – and a puzzling decision by the Carolina Hurricanes....

“We have high hopes for Alex based on his performance this year in Carolina, a younger guy we feel had a lot of upside,” Yzerman said. “We’re pretty excited about it. Everyone in our organization is familiar with him from his local ties. We know his character, his work ethic, his competitiveness. Watching him play this year we felt it was a good opportunity to get somewhat of a younger goaltender with still some upside and can help us win more games.”...

“The kids in our system are probably a ways off from playing in the NHL and we thought with Thomas Greiss under contract for one more season, we tried to bring in a younger goaltender that has potential to be our starter for a number of years,” Yzerman said. “He’s relatively inexperienced at the NHL level but we think he’s got real good potential.

“He can play for a long time. Prime years. We think he’s at a good age that he can develop with us, our core of young players and be a good goaltender for a long time.”

more

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Welcome to Abel to Yzerman, a Red Wing blog since 1977. No other site on the internet has better-researched, fact-laden and better prepared discussions than A2Y. Re-phrase: we do little research, find facts and stats highly overrated and claim little to no preparation. There are 19 readers of A2Y. No more, no less. All of them, except maybe one, are juvenile in nature. Reminding them of that in the comment section will only encourage them to prove that.

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