Is Tate Forcier Detroit’s next starting goalie?

Please excuse the laziness with the posting. Some of this stuff happened earlier in the week and I neglected it, then I was away for the most part with a nice weekend that featured stops in East Lansing and Ann Arbor, and some tickets to see this transpire live:

Justice.

Anywho, this is a Wings blog and I know the state of Michigan is quite torn in collegiate allegiances, so I won’t linger on the subject any longer as I understand the sight of maize and blue pulling off epic comebacks might sicken some.

In Wings land, there is news. I neglected to update anything after the first day of prospect’s camp. Luckily enough, others were not as lazy as me. Anyone following the Red Wings Blogger Roundtable knows that the eleven-ish day project has concluded, so I will come through on updates that I missed with that. Finally, the Wings are settling in to start camp, and we’ve got some potential lines juice as well as some promising and not so promising updates on different players. All of that, after the jump!

Just kidding, I don’t really have a jump here, I just wanted to write that. I probably couldn’t put one in if I tried, because I still find some features of WordPress to be absolutely terrifying. What I do have though, is an assortment of links and summaries of prospect camp.

The Wings, a 12 year host of the tournament, failed to bring home the gold for the 12th time. After beating Atlanta 6-4 to open the tournament, two losses at the hands of Carolina and New York saw Detroit play in the 5th place game, soundly beating Dallas 4-1. Atlanta took 7th, the Rangers took 3rd, and Carolina won its first ever tournament, beating Minnesota. Boxscores are available on Pointstreak, which at the moment seems to be having some technical difficulty. However, RedWingsCentral comes through with Detroit’s tournament ending stats, which saw Tomas Tatar and Jan Mursak tie for the tournament lead in scoring.

The 5-3 loss to Carolina saw Detroit dominate and fall because of subpar goaltending on one end and red hot goaltending on the other, according to Hockey’s Future’s Leslie Treff. Former OHL Goaltender of the Year Mike Murphy stole the show and Jordan Pearce let in some questionable goals. Tatar continued his excellent play and scored what was described in several tweets at the time as the goal of the tournament. HF also singled out Brian Lashoff for his strong play, something that’s pretty consistent with every other media outlet who offered TC coverage.

The Traverse City Record-Eagle is just one of these outlets. Their article on Lashoff is downright mouthwatering. Apparently in the 4-3 loss to the Rangers, which saw Detroit claw back from a 4-0 deficit, Lashoff blocked a shot from going into the empty net, turned the puck up ice and went end-to-end before he scored to put Detroit within one. It seems pretty obvious that he was Detroit’s strongest defenseman this year — a true compliment to a guy who was fishing for a contract and didn’t look that great to me at this time last year, but he did look like a player with all the tools and no toolbox. Red Wings Central also spoke to him about his upcoming season returning to Kingston.

After coming out flat in the game against New York, Detroit saw themselves against last year’s champions, the Dallas Stars, in the 5th place game. Detroit coasted to victory with a 4-1 win. Hockey’s Future again had glowing remarks for Landon Ferraro, Thomas McCollum, Tomas Tatar, and Jan Mursak. Mitchell Callahan, who has unsurprisingly gathered a cult following from fans who complain about Detroit needing a fighter (I like him for different reasons, for example, he hits everything that moves and actually has some skill in his hands as well), also scored in the game.

Hockey’s Future is about as good as you’ll find for the game summaries. They’ve even got some video on the 5th place game but you’d be pretty shocked from watching the clips to know that Detroit won and outshot Dallas. Red Wings Central had some very good interviews, as usual. Johan Ryno and Jan Mursak were featured in my first post about prospect’s camp, but a slew of other interviews came out as well.

The Tatar interview is probably my favorite as well as the most informative, as he is quickly challenging the struggling Dick Axelsson as my new favorite prospect. Tatar definitely loves the Red Wings, and he seemed to really like his first real go at North American hockey. He says he wants to play in the OHL, where he would end up in Plymouth if he reports. However, he has a Slovakian contract which it sounds like he’s going to honor, unless Detroit steps in. Or, if Plymouth makes a strong push, and if you know anything about the fierce nature of recruiting in the OHL you know they’re not just calling him up and asking him to play. Plymouth head coach and general manager Mike Vellucci skipped a handful of Plymouth pre-season games and a large chunk of their own camp so he could be up in Traverse City — and you better believe Tatar was a big reason why.

Tatar was also interviewed by NHL.com and the remarks from Detroit’s brass are certainly very impressive. Hakan Andersson says Tatar could play in the AHL today, and that Hakan would prefer if Tatar went the OHL route. Makes you wonder if something might be in the works. Curt Fraser, Jim Nill, and Mike Babcock all compliment Tatar as well, and you’ve got to believe Babcock talking about how Tatar has the high hockey IQ means it won’t be too many more training camps before he’s getting a long look at the roster. In other Hakan news, file this Q&A from NHL.com under “must read.”

Dick Axelsson had a performance probably a little disappointing for a player who’s played so many professional games in Sweden. One assist and a -3 doesn’t cut it — he needs to be better in camp to get a regular role with the Griffins. Unfortunately, his timing is pretty poor as he crashed into the post against the Rangers and is awaiting MRI results to see if he might miss some time. He didn’t play in the 5th place game. Apparently, he looked a little more impressive than his stats indicate, but this is just one of those guys who doesn’t work hard enough to make it as a 3rd or 4th liner. It’s scoring or bust, unfortunately. Red Wings Central spoke to him about his camp and injury and he says that the North American ice is something he needs to get used to, but he knows he has to play better. Elsewhere in the same article, Jim Nill singled out Thomas McCollum, Tomas Tatar, Landon Ferraro, Jan Mursak, Travis Ehrhardt, and Brent Raedeke for strong performances.

Continuing right along with more Raedeke news, RWC also profiled him, who, like Brian Lashoff, earned a contract at this very same camp last season. They seem to see a little Darren Helm in him as a speedy Western Canadian who might jump up on the prospects radar soon. No one expects Raedeke to have the speed or clutch hands of Darren Helm, but it’s not ridiculous to think that on a young Edmonton Oil Kings team with some pretty promising prospects (including a potential top 10 pick next year, Mark Pysyk), Raedeke could come out looking like the star of the team. He tells RWC that he’s been told he’ll be named captain this year, his last in the AHL. I’d say he’s in line for a monster offensive season, as the Oil Kings were an expansion team, and now in their third year, there’s really no excuse for a low playoff position. That’s just the nature of major junior hockey, if you’re bad for long enough you’re going to stockpile ridiculous amounts of young talent. Just look at the Windsor Spitfires in the OHL right now.

RWC also took looks at Mitchell Callahan and Andrej Nestrasil. Callahan had always been a scorer in his home state of California before taking on the role of agitator in Kelowna this season. Now that Kelowna is losing some significant offensive depth to the professional ranks, Callahan is a prime candidate for a breakout offensive year. Nestrasil, despite a 57 point performance as a rookie in the QMJHL, says last season was the hardest of his life and seems convinced he can take his game to the next level. I’m all for that, because not too many imports can really come in and score right away in North America, it takes them a season or two. Detroit calls Nestrasil a first round talent, and I’d agree that his skills, size, and physical play would have seen him in the first round if he had 20-30 more points. His coaches expect 100 out of him this season, and Nestrasil says he hopes working on his speed and strength will let him make that jump.

NHL.com wrapped up the event with a team-by-team wrap up. They singled out Tatar as far and away the best Wing, but the rest of their coverage on Detroit leaves something to be desired as they wrote a lot more for everyone else.

And that’s that. Take from it what you will. A bad camp doesn’t really ruin a prospect, but you definitely have to smile when you see someone like Tatar taking his game to North America and earning such rave reviews. It’s also nice to see Thomas McCollum perform well, since after his WJC performance (where he lost to Slovakia on the blade of a Tatar two-goal game, ironically enough) many thought he choked under pressure. Meanwhile, you’d probably like to see a little more out of Dick Axelsson and Johan Ryno, who have SEL experience under their belts and have both been at this camp before. Also, things sounded rocky for Sebastien Piche, Logan Pyett, Jordan Pearce, and Stephen Johnston.

In prospects news, but not a guy who was at camp, Bruce MacLeod has his first Wings article of the year and it centers around Jakub Kindl. Bruce speaks of how Kindl is following in Ericsson’s footsteps and seems to clearly be the next graduate from Grand Rapids to Detroit. Kindl seems very comfortable in his development, and he knows that his day is coming despite the fact that many 2005 picks are regulars in the NHL. But as he says, none of them are wearing the winged wheel (except Helm, but that’s not really who he was talking about).

Next item on the list for this year’s super post is the roundtable. If you didn’t read a single word of offseason coverage, heed this warning: Read. This. Roundtable. Take an hour out of your day and catch up on these if you missed any. I found this to be a fantastic idea given the tremendous amount of popular blogs that we have, and I considered it an honor that I was asked to participate. I thought it was a great idea at first when I figured we’d get questions from every blog that would range from silly to a little analytical, but I was blown away when I saw the quality of questions and answers we got from everybody. Everyone submitted a multi-layered and weighted question that covered essentially every issue with the 2009-10 Wings. It was a blast to answer these, and to read what everyone else had to say. So I offer the complete list of blogs that participated and topics that were covered. Read them.

Winging it in Motown — The Olympics
Red Wings Snapshots — Free Agency
The Triple Deke — Fatigue
Bingo Bango — Motivational Performances
Snipe Snipe, Dangle Dangle — Goaltending
The Production Line — Rebound Seasons
On The Wings — Nicklas Lidstrom
Babcock’s Death Stare — Rookies
Abel to Yzerman — Rivalry/Inspiration
Motown Wings — The Central Division
Nightmare on Helm Street — Motivation

Great stuff.

So now that I’ve covered the past week, it’s time to move on to current events: training camp. Camp just got under way today and so actual interesting news is finally starting to filter in.

First off, what I’d call the most important is Andreas Lilja. Obviously, every Red Wing fan wants this guy to be healthy. He’s the only player I can recall in recent memory to play himself out of whipping boy status. Ever fond of a costly turnover, the Lilja that everyone saw last season on a team that was a defensive nightmare was solid, calm with the puck, and virtually mistake free. Brain bleeding is nasty stuff too, so you just want to know when this guy is going to play. But at the same time, it’s important to kind of get some answers for him because if he plays, Detroit’s over the cap and might make a move. Lilja seemed upbeat this week and his comments to The Sporting News indicate that he thinks he’s ready for the season, or at the very least, he’s not going to miss much time. I wasn’t entirely sure of what to make of any of this — maybe his injury isn’t as bad as I thought, but today the situation became a little clearer as Bruce MacLeod reports that Lilja hasn’t been cleared for contact practice yet. This means he’s a ways from returning, and Ken Holland confirmed today he’s starting the year on long-term IR, which means he won’t count to Detroit’s cap until he returns. And if he returns midseason for example, his cap hit only counts for half, meaning Detroit is under the cap. But the priority in a serious head injury situation like this is getting him back on the ice whenever he’s symptom free.

He’s in the last year of his contract, and I’d hate for him to miss a whole season and see no one pick him up next offseason because if injury issues. He’s always had a reputation, but it looks like he’d finally been ready to hit his stride, so it’s really a shame that he hasn’t been cleared to practice yet. Get better, Andreas, I’m sure there will be more than a few games this season where your presence will be sorely missed.

In terrible news, Jason Williams looks to be resuming his spot on Detroit’s second powerplay. Ugh. And I’m staying true to my word — I said I like this signing as long as he doesn’t end up there. Now that he is there, and we signed Bertuzzi, I’m quickly changing my tune on this. I’ll give him three strikes. That is strike one. Strike two will be the moment that he costs Detroit a goal on the point. Strike three could be anything else, ranging from on-ice play to whether or not I like his face. We’ll see.

To be fair, as much as Detroit’s had bad luck with forwards on the point, Williams and Samuelsson are polar opposites back there.Williams is actually useful and incredibly crafty with the puck. His shot isn’t at the level of Samuelsson’s, but it has that seeing eye ability and it’ll get to the net through a few pairs of legs — Kronwall’s is fairly similar. Samuelsso,n on the other hand, was full of blocked shots and poor creative decisions, he passed when he had a shooting lane, and he shot when he had a passing lane. He didn’t get burned shorthanded as much as Williams did. So this will be an okay change of pace. But if defensive play becomes a problem, or if the second unit is not that potent, I want Jonathan Ericsson across from Kronwall before any forwards come off. I wouldn’t mind Williams on the wing, even. I think Franzen, Leino, and Filppula will end up on the second unit.

That seemed to be the only bad news from the first day of camp. Good news came out of Day One as well, according to Ansar Khan. Ville Leino isn’t messing around, as he put up 2 goals and 2 assists in the first team scrimmage. He made a good case for a regular third line job with the two other most Finnish guys on the team, Valtteri Filppula (1G 2A) and Jason Williams (1G 1A). Henrik Zetterberg had two goals, despite a possible groin injury. Jeremy Williams had a goal and an assist, and Mattias Ritola had two helpers. Jimmy Howard is not off to a good start with 12 saves on 15 shots.

The other big news coming out of camp is that we’re now looking at potential lines here. Detroit has three NHL lines strung together, then every 4th line candidate is spread out. These lines aren’t always concrete, but as I recall last year they ended up being the opening night lines, and the lines the majority of the time that everyone was healthy. Your top 3 lines are:

Johan Franzen | Pavel Datsyuk | Tomas Holmstrom
Todd Bertuzzi | Henrik Zetterberg | Dan Cleary
Ville Leino | Valtteri Filppula | Jason Williams

I love the balance of size, speed, skill, and grit on each of the top two lines. I’ve proposed tons of line combos but I don’t think I hit those two at any point. I was sure Franzen would stay with Zetterberg if they split up the Eurotwins. However, I think Franzen can fill Hossa’s role on that line. He’s got the finish, he’s got the two-way ability, and he’s got enough skill to make up for the fact that Holmstrom is dangerously insane when he has the puck. Bertuzzi has much more to offer Detroit on the top two lines than he does on the third line. He won’t look nearly as lazy. That third line puts a lot of defensive responsibility on Filppula’s shoulders, but I feel like we have the fourth line depth where Leino and Williams will frequently be rotated off for Darren Helm or Patrick Eaves.

Next, Detroit put together three lines of Detroit’s 4th line candidates, including Justin Abdelkader even though he’ll end up in Grand Rapids. I like these lines as well. Along with the NHL player, each line has Detroit’s top callup candidates. I expect these lines will get a lot of pre-season time, and hopefully it’ll be obvious who’s coming up for Detroit if anyone goes down with an injury.

Dick Axelsson | Justin Abdelkader | Kirk Maltby
Tomas Tatar | Kris Newbury | Francis Pare
Mattias Ritola | Darren Helm | Jeremy Williams
Jan Mursak | Kris Draper | Patrick Eaves

Cory Emmerton and Evan McGrath are definitely guys who will get longer pre-season looks as well and should be on and off all of those lines.

Defensively, pairings aren’t yet obvious because Detroit’s paired veteran defenseman with young ones for the time being. Probably for training camp parity — no one’s winning against Lidstrom and Rafalski, and no one wants to see Brad Stuart or Niklas Kronwall end someone’s season in the first week of the year.

Goaltending, seeing as the the team is split into three, the groupings don’t mean much, except the placement of Dan Cloutier in the grouping of three goalies.

Osgood/McCollum
Howard/Pearce
Larsson/Cloutier/Whitley

Excellent.

So now we’re up to date. Detroit’s camp this year is shortened, just Monday and Tuesday before the pre-season starts. Detroit starts the pre-season against Philadelphia on Wednesday, but that game doesn’t appear to be on TV. FSN just picked up Saturday’s tilt against Buffalo, and the NHL Network has September 21 against the Rangers. As of now, FSN+ has September 25 against Toronto and September 27 against Pittsburgh. CBC is showing the September 26 game against Toronto as well. Not too bad for the pre-season, it’ll be perfect if some Swedish channel will show Detroit against Farjestad on September 30 and stream it online.

Hockey’s back — yes. Oh yes.

Class of 2009 shines in TC opener

With somewhat little fanfare, Detroit’s annual prospects tournament has once again rolled around and the prospects of 8 NHL teams are going full force in Traverse City. For me, this is the official beginning to hockey season. Surely, it isn’t as interesting as the regular season, but it’s the small things like this that make me appreciate the sport. It’s nice to get an annual look at all of Detroit’s prospects together playing against a group of their peers. The hockey isn’t always top notch, partly due to the talent level being slightly higher than what most are used to, and partly due to having to learn a new system on the fly and gel with a group of your peers/competition, playing in front of the people who hold the keys to your future in their minds. It’s a lot of pressure, I certainly appreciate that the Red Wings have set up such a successful event that’s attracted so much interest from teams around the league.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure what the coverage on this tournament will be this year. I did want to get out to the tournament this year and I think I blew it. Last year, the NHL Network was top notch and decided to show about half the games as they happened. However, that turned out to be too much of a hassle this year and for whatever reason, the NHL Network isn’t covering the tournament. I was banking on watching these games so I could post some original analysis, but once I found this out I figured it’s too late to try to get tickets for anything because the people in Traverse City are absolutely fanatical about this event and it’s unlikely there’s much left. It would be a perfect Labor Day weekend trip as I’m lucky enough to have six full days in between classes with the way my schedule works, but I digress.

I do really love this tournament. Since I won’t be able to watch these, I will be scouring the internet for whatever information I can find on the tournament. Most, I’d imagine, will come from Red Wings Central, always the leader in camp coverage, Red Wings Snapshots, and Hockey’s Future, who will be providing some video from the camp. I’ll just be compiling everything I read on camp so it’s all in one place, and I’ll hopefully be adding some of my own thoughts to other articles whenever one strikes me.

Day One of prospect’s camp saw Detroit storm back from a 4-1 deficit early in the 3rd period to score five unanswered goals in a 6-4 win. Detroit’s 2009 picks were out in full display as each who played hit the scoresheet. Tomas Tatar scored two goals, Andrej Nestrasil had the game winner, Landon Ferraro and Adam Almqvist each had assists, and Mitchell Callahan found the scoresheet in his own way as he picked up a penalty.

Other thoughts from just looking at the scoresheet, Francis Pare’s three assist and +4 stat line further indicate that this might be one of the better prospects in the system that no one talks about. Due to the nature of the tournament, players already in the AHL rarely play — you’re only allowed to play rookies and they’re expected to be more advanced than everyone around them because they’re older and have that AHL experience. So if Pare, Cory Emmerton, Jan Mursak, Sergei Kolosov, and Logan Pyett weren’t dominating, there might be some concern.

But Pare signed with the Griffins last year after an 100-point season as an overager in the QMJHL, and after scoring 20 for the Griffins last year, Detroit signed him this offseason. He’s interesting in that his speed is not of NHL caliber, and not many of his skills are — but he is smart, and his production as a rookie in the AHL indicate that he just might be one of those players that is going to produce whether you like it or not because he just knows the game. Pare finished at #10 on The Hockey News’ list of Detroit’s top 10 prospects in their yearbook, and that drew some criticism from Wings’ fans, but I don’t find it too absurd. If he’s on pace to score 30 goals or 70 points, there’s no way Detroit isn’t going to give him a chance sooner rather than later. He’s definitely a dark horse for a long look at training camp and and early callup, even though most people are only talking about Justin Abdelkader, Evan McGrath, and Mattias Ritola.

Thomas McCollum was in net and obviously you’d like to see him let in fewer than 4 goals, as his only knock is his performance in high pressure situations. These games might not mean anything from a real competitive standpoint, but you better believe the pressure is on him to give the Griffins a second consecutive season of elite goaltending tandem with Daniel Larsson. In his defense, it looks like the Wings’ prospects took a page out of the real Wings’ book as they were outshot 13-6 after going 12-4 in the first period. But it’s not wise to analyze a goalie just from stats, I’m hoping someone will have a little more on his performance and whether or not he had a shot on any of his goals.

RedWingsCentral has their usual stable of impressive information. The photo gallery boasts some impressive shots of Pearce and McCollum’s new masks. An article earlier this week is an interview with camp attendee Johan Ryno, who is back in North America for the first time since leaving Grand Rapids in 2006-07. Unfortunately, the interview seems to indicate that Ryno is delusional because he says he’s intent on making the Red Wings. Ryno indicates that he might go back to Sweden if he’s sent to the AHL. Obviously I don’t have a say in it, but I can tell you that if that happens, he’s done as a Wing because they want him here. The comment indicates a lack of that “buying into the system” quality that makes Detroit’s prospects so successful. You don’t jump from second-tier Sweden right to the NHL, especially on a Detroit team that has a full roster and the option to keep you in the AHL.

Also in the article is the confirmation that Detroit has released the rights to 2004 9th round pick Nils Backstrom. Backstrom is going to be a senior at Alaska-Anchorage this season and I wondered aloud if he was still a Red Wing when he was not at Detroit’s summer development camp, but at Washington’s. Not a huge loss — he was considered a skill guy but he struggled to put up numbers. To his credit, he has evolved into a steady defenseman for the Sea Wolves.

Today’s RWC article focuses on Jan Mursak. Mursak has fallen hard as he was actually ranked 4th on my prospect rankings heading into last year’s camp, but he got behind in the ice time game early on in Grand Rapids last season and was often a healthy scratch. Mursak’s attitude appears to be right though, as he seems hellbent on not digging himself into that same hole this season. He’s a skilled guy, and I’m not terribly worried about his poor rookie year. He is not a player who will ever do well on the 4th line, but he will score if he can get onto the 1st or second.

This thought seems to be confirmed by Hockey’s Future, who briefly covered Detroit’s 6-4 win over Atlanta. They list Tomas Tatar, Cory Emmerton, and Mursak as Detroit’s best players and it’s to be expected as that was the team’s top line. In addition to Mursak being a positive, it’s nice to see Tatar score and it makes his future interesting. Tatar has expressed heavy interest in coming to North America — be it Grand Rapids or Plymouth. Right now he appears set to play in Slovakia, but all it would take is a heavy push from Plymouth (who certainly has some representatives up there looking at him) or a recommendation from Detroit and he could end up inside the state this season. We’ll see.

NHL.com has a feature on the third member of that big line, 2006 second round pick Cory Emmerton. Emmerton knows he has to come up big this season as he’s a veteran player in this tournament and a second-year player headed into Grand Rapids. Emmerton is a scorer, although he never exploded offensively like he was expected to in the OHL. His last season should have been his best, but battles with a midseason trade, mono, and his parents’ divorce really slowed his production.

Lastly, this isn’t from training camp, but I ran across a little nugget from the  Wisconsin Badgers’ blog Sixty Minutes. No Alibis. No Regrets. The blog is previewing players and today’s focus is on Brendan Smith. Smith is expected to land on the second pairing (of a very, very deep defense) and first line powerplay minutes. They compliment his elite offensive game and the strides he’s made as a defenseman, but still say he needs some work. Additionally, the Wisconsin fans wish he wouldn’t focus on signing with the Wings after the season and just focus on being a better player.

Detroit’s prospects will take on Carolina tonight. I’ll be busy blogging tomorrow with the roundtable headed my way and hopefully some more talk on prospects camp after Day Two coverage emerges.

Kill me — Dan Cloutier lands tryout

Maybe the way to get it right is to go back to where it all started going wrong?

So I’ve been on the internet all night but apparently it took me two hours to realize the Dan Cloutier and Detroit Red Wings related tweets that had been popping up on my Digsby were related — because Dan Cloutier did indeed land a tryout from the Red Wings.

I could not hate this any more than I do. Yeah, it’s a tryout, but still. I hate this from a personal standpoint and a management standpoint.

Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever made fun of a goalie more than Dan Cloutier, as our friend at Dan Cloutier for Vezina will probably attest to after I post this. It’s not that I hate the guy per say, I’m sure at one point I did, but he does suck. I always felt he was the weakest link on some average to strong Canuck teams. During the glory days of the Naslund/Bertuzzi tandem, Cloutier held them back with his soft goals, poor mental game, and well below average goaltending ability.

But from a managing standpoint I absolutely hate it. It better be nothing else than just having an extra warm body in camp. I don’t see why you need it — for months they’ve been talking about how this is finally Jimmy’s time, and he’s been talking up the past week about how he’s ready for this, so now they invite Cloutier to camp. Hopefully it’s just Todd Bertuzzi doing the guy a solid. I can’t express to you how much I do not want Cloutier to do well and earn a contract.

I've seen this so many times I'm beginning to think it's an actual picture.

Because of the cap, it guarantees that Howard is out the door and it only saves Detroit $200,000 in cap space if that’s the case. Plus it sets back the whole “develop a goalie for once” thing because Howard gets the shaft. Say what you want about whether or not you’re comfortable with him, he has certainly paid his dues and his tastes of the NHL have ranged from “very good” (1-0 loss against Dallas) to “good, but he got no help from the team in front of him” (see the Minnesota game this year) to just “he needs more AHL time.” And in the AHL, he’s always been one of those good but not great goalies. But he deserves more of a chance than he’s had.

But just as a warm body in camp, I don’t get it. The real goaltending competition is in Grand Rapids this season. Daniel Larsson is the starter. Thomas McCollum and Jordan Pearce are fighting it out for AHL/ECHL time, one gets to be the backup to Larsson, one gets a full slate of games in the ECHL — but if both are good they might split the time. But this is such a big year for goaltending. Osgood only has two more years on his deal, and everyone knows he’s not coming off the best regular season. This is Howard’s year to prove himself in the NHL. McCollum needs a big pre-season to try to close the gap between him and Larsson. One of them (edge to Larsson obviously, being older) could possibly jump up to the NHL next year if Howard is just that bad, but if not, 2010-11 is the telling year if Osgood retires. Do they need to run out and get a free agent then? Will they be comfortable with some combination of the young guys they have? Who knows? That’s down the road. But the point is they need the pre-season time and Detroit needing to make a “decision” on Cloutier just eats up that time. If they need another warm body for camp, they’ve already got the CIS tryout Chris Whitely, in addition to Jim Bedard himself who straps on the pads in a pinch.

Sigh. Simple camp tryout has me all stressed out and has my mind running all over the place just because of how bad I don’t want this to happen. I am so satisfied with the goaltending right now. Adding a 33-year-old who was laughed out of the league is not a Detroit Red Wings type of move. Inviting a guy like him to camp isn’t really a Red Wings move. They’re all about the reclamation project, but in the absolute best case scenario (for Cloutier, not for me) he’s still probably a bad backup, but that’s what a lot of people seem to expect from Howard and he’s nine years younger.

After stops in New York and Tampa Bay where he earned a reputation for being more of a fighter than a goalie, Cloutier finally somehow became a starting goalie for the desperate Vancouver Canucks. He was beaten out in 2005-06 by Alex Auld of all people and somehow found another NHL job in Los Angeles. There, he lost playing time to the likes of Mathieu Garon (okay, not that bad), Sean Burke (he played in 2006-07!?), and Barry Brust (bad). This was even the year that Yutaka Fukufuji made his NHL debut, but I think Cloutier was probably hurt at the time. I hope he wasn’t though, because it’s a better story that way. Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story, right?

He hasn’t been seen since 2007-08. When he wasn’t busy in the NHL with his 88.7% save percentage, he managed to post a svelte 86.9% through 24 games in the AHL. Apparently, last season he was an assistant coach for the CHL’s Corpus Christi IceRays serving underneath his brother. Not surprisingly, their (backup) goalie posted an 81.4% save percentage (in the playoffs) in 20 (2) games. But again, that might not be completely accurate because it’s funnier when it’s untrue. I don’t know how that justifies a tryout with the Wings. EDIT: Upon further review it appears that Dan Cloutier approached Detroit and asked for a tryout. Alright, Bert’s off the hook.

On the conspiracy side, I think the NHL might have sent out a memo telling teams to invite a player to camp as a joke (note to self: do some research on it and find out if maybe this is why Paul Kelly got fired), because there have been a lot of strange invitations and Cloutier is hardly the worst (second worst, actually). Jason Allison’s first comeback in Toronto was so successful that they’ve invited him back to camp four years later (there’s a joke about his speed in there somewhere). Jared Aulin, a once promising prospect out of hockey for three years, got a tryout with Columbus. Manny Legace got a tryout in Atlanta, Kyle McLaren is with the Rangers, Daryl Sydor is with the Blues, Robert Lang in Montreal, Dave Scatchard in Vancouver, Dan Hinote in San Jose, Mark “Hit’n'Run” Bell with Philly (good fit), Shawn Bates in Colorado, and Kyle Calder in Anaheim. That’s almost half the league with a ridiculous tryout. Apparently multiple teams are after Mark Parrish. Must be some kind of joke to remind everyone of how lame hockey was in the early 2000s. If Petr Buzek gets a call, it’s official.

One thing I like to do when the Wings sign someone or get close to it is watch a lot of highlights from them. Unfortunately, when you search Cloutier you get him fighting goalies, letting in Lidstrom’s shot, and this, described as “The best goalie in the world”:

God help us all if anything comes of this.

Vigilante, Lemieux invited to camp

Quick post in the training camp department this afternoon. When I posted the Austin Fyten news I figured there would probably be a few more invitations handed out, but I think that Coetzee, Fyten, and Whitley are it for the prospect’s team. Detroit managed to secure a nearly full roster of just drafted players this year, usually they have more than a few spots open and they’ll invite more guys than they need in case of injuries and so they can have more competition among the free agent tryouts. This year, with 13 forwards, 7 defensemen, and 3 goalies it looks like Detroit is done inviting players.

However, the training camp roster came out today and it boasts two minor league invitees: Francis Lemieux and John Vigilante. To some of you, both of these names are very familiar. Detroit acquired Lemieux in 2007-08 for minor league forward Brett Engelhardt as Engelhardt felt he should be called up. Lemieux was a struggling prospect in the Montreal system and showed some life once he became a Griffin. Detroit didn’t elect to re-sign him that offseason, but he stayed on with the Griffins and caught fire playing with Evan McGrath and Francis Pare. He put up 13 goals and 29 points last season.

John Vigilante, other than being one of the top five best hockey names ever, is familiar to anyone who’s a fan of the Plymouth Whalers. Originally from Dearborn, Vigilante is one on the lengthy list of Michigan-born, college-bound players that the Whalers convinced to play for them. Vigilante spent four full seasons with the Whalers and left as one of their highest scoring players ever. On a personal level, he is probably one of my favorite Whalers of all time. In juniors he was really fun to watch. Fast skater, quick hands, lethal shot. By the looks of his stats he never caught on once he turned pro, when he signed with the Nashville Predators. He signed with Columbus last season and struggled in Syracuse before being loaned out to Quad City.

Detroit is two contracts shy of the 50-contract limit, so all of the tryouts I’ve covered would have to be insanely impressive to earn a deal. I would love to see Vigilante especially earn an AHL contract with the Griffins if he doesn’t get one with Detroit. He’s 24 so he’s no longer a bluechip prospect, but he’s a fun guy to watch and I’d like to see him as a depth player for Grand Rapids.

In other free agent tryout news, according to CBC’s Elliotte Friedman’s Twitter, Aaron Downey is attending Phoenix’s camp as a tryout.

Lastly, the news of these tryouts came about because Detroit’s training camp roster is out. And with that, we finally know Detroit’s new numbers. Here’s what all of the new players will be rocking (keeping in mind that pretty much everyone except Helm and Ericsson apparently changes their high “camp number” if/when they make it to the NHL).

44 – Todd Bertuzzi
73 – Mitchell Callahan
70 – Willie Coetzee
17 – Patrick Eaves
57 – Landon Ferraro
65 – Austin Fyten
63 – Francis Lemieux
56 – Andrej Nestrasil
32 – Kris Newbury
59 – Francis Pare
72 – Tomas Tatar
64 – John Vigilante
29 – Jason Williams
15 – Jeremy Williams

74 – Adam Almquist
04 – Andy Delmore
45 – Travis Ehrhardt
54 – Gleason Fournier
37 – Doug Janik
58 – Sebastien Piche

36 – Jordan Pearce
66 – Chris Whitley

Austin Fyten invited to camp

Today, RedWingsCentral, easily the best source for all training camp news, released Detroit’s prospect roster. The site seems to be undergoing some serious server issues after their last update, but the text will show up if you wait a minute or two.

But on the roster are three free agent invitees.

First is Willie Coetzee, a teammate of Landon Ferraro in Red Deer who I briefly mentioned at the bottom of this post. Second is someone I haven’t mentioned yet, but was invited to Detroit’s camp in early July — Chris Whitley. Whitley is not the typical Red Wings invitee. He’s a 26 year old goaltender from the CIS. The CIS is the Canadian Interuniversity Sport, which is the league of Canadian university teams. The league is comprised of mainly players that have graduated from major junior hockey and haven’t signed professional contracts (read: not top level prospects). However, the league has produced a handful of NHLers, the bigger names being Steve Rucchin, Joel Ward, Cory Cross, P.J. Stock, and of course, Stu Grimson. Certainly, not the most scouted place in the word.

But from the sound of things, Whitley is one of the more sought after players coming out of the CIS. He played five seasons for Lakehead University and drew some NHL interest. Detroit invited him to camp and he’ll battle with Thomas McCollum and Jordan Pearce for time during prospect camp. However, it’s doubtful he’s anything more than a warm body, as Detroit already has 5 goalies for 5 goaltending spots, but best case scenario for Whitley find him signing a contract with the Toledo Walleye, possibly earning a callup to Grand Rapids if injuries take hold, or something. Otherwise, he’s signed a contract with the CHL’s Allen Americans.

The new name on the list is Austin Fyten, a member of the WHL’s Lethbridge Hurricanes. I can’t dig up a whole lot on him. But you better believe if he’s from the WHL, then WHL scout Marty Stein has found him, and he seems to love the average size, speedy, and moderately skilled two-way type of players like Darren Helm and last year’s tryout discovery, Brent Raedeke.

The whole roster is available for viewing here. No big surprises. The only professional players are Jan Mursak, Cory Emmerton, Sergei Kolosov, and Logan Pyett. Many players that will be playing in Sweden don’t show up because this bumps into the start of Swedish camps, so it’s nice to see that Adam Almquist is coming over anyway. Tomas Tatar is also coming, and this will likely be Detroit’s last chance at trying to convince him to come to North America, if they’re as interested in that as they’re rumored to be. The Plymouth Whalers currently hold his OHL rights.