from Ted Kulfan of the Detroit News,

In typical Yzerman fashion, he plans on working behind the scenes at the under-20 World Junior Championships in the Czech Republic, trying to lay the foundation for the kind of successful playoff runs Red Wings fans were accustomed to before this year’s dramatic drop into last place in the standings.

Sunday’s game will give fans in Hockeytown a glimpse of what an Yzerman-built team and organization might look like and how his reliance on the NHL draft to accumulate top-notch players like Hart Trophy winner Nikita Kucherov and Vezina Trophy winner Alexei Vasilevskiy — as well as undervalued players like Brayden Point and Ondrej Palat — offers hope for one of Detroit’s four floundering franchises.

“Steve has a clear vision of the type of team he wants,” said Julien BriseBois, who worked with Yzerman for eight years as assistant GM, then last year as general manager when Yzerman stepped down to take a senior advisor role.

“He wants a skilled, fast team with guys who can play with pace, who have a foundation of skill, skating and hockey sense. It doesn’t matter if you’re big or small, Russian, American, Swede. As long as you could play fast-paced, skilled hockey, you would be on our list and if you were the next guy on our list, we would pick you.”

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from Ansar Khan of Mlive,