In Red Wings Land

Red Wings mailbag: How World Juniors affects personnel decisions – MLive

Q: Filip Zadina is still not signed. Can anything be read into that? – Ben

A: No. He’ll be signed before the start of training camp. Being a restricted free agent who wasn’t arbitration eligible, he really has no other options. Nobody is going to sign him to an offer sheet. The Red Wings will sign him on their terms.

Entirely correct here by Ansar

Around the League

NHL 23 Reveal Coming August 25 – SGO

What isn’t expected to be announced is the return of GM Connected nor a PC release as neither look to be making a comeback this year. Cross-play between generations and consoles is also being hoped for, but signs currently point to it not being added to NHL 23.

I last bought one of these in 2012 and so I’m entirely certain the game has changed since that version, but that they apparently took out things people liked and only really made a few tweaks isn’t surprising.  At least they’ve stopped trying to convince people that a two-way contract means a player is waiver exempt.

Canadian NHL teams off-season grades: Flames, Senators earn top marks – Sportsnet

No team in Canada — and perhaps the entire league — took the step forward the Sens have this summer. Adding Alex DeBrincat and Claude Giroux to the top-six mix is incredible, and Cam Talbot can reasonably be expected to help stabilize the goaltending.

Also, agreeing to a new, eight-year contract with 23-year-old centre Josh Norris — who scored at a 43-goal pace last season — is another wonderful development.

Questions remain on the blueline, but this team is going to be a lot of fun to watch and you don’t have to be a blind optimist to expect Ottawa to push for a playoff spot.

We’ve mentioned it, but we haven’t really dug into the idea that the Wings will have to race Ottawa out of the basement of this division.

As for the Leafs (who got a charitable C+ here):

The real grade is a shrug emoji until we see how things play out in the crease.

Somebody’s afraid to give the touchy fanbase’s team the D grade they deserve.