Nichols' Notes
/Teuvo Teravainen is taking part in the Blackhawks prospect camp, but he’ll also be staying in Chicago for the rest of the summer to get ready for the 2014-15 campaign. The highly-touted Finn will be working with the team’s strength and conditioning coach to add muscle to his frame, which has already gained somewhere in the range of five pounds or so since the end of last season.
GM Stan Bowman, as you’ll remember, went out and signed bought out center Brad Richards to a one-year pact to be the team’s second line pivot. That solved a pressing need for the club, while also allowing Teravainen more time to develop either further down in the lineup or in the AHL for awhile. Teravainen, for his part, seems to have an excellent attitude about following the strength coach’s instructions to the letter and doing whatever he can to have a successful summer leading into training camp.
It's not a matter of if, but when, this kid will become a star in the NHL.
Three Sunday Teravainen offerings came via The Tribune's Chris Kuc, CSN's Tracey Myers, and Seth Gruen of The Sun-Times.
The Detroit Red Wings plan to have high-scoring winger Anthony Mantha, a blue-chip prospect to say the least, play in five or six of the team’s eight exhibition games this fall. Mike Babcock wants to give Mantha looks with Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg to see what the youngster can do.
As Ken Holland pointed out with Michigan Live’s Brendan Savage though, Mantha will have to “take somebody’s job” if he’s going to make the big league club out of training camp.
"How is he physically? Is he good defensively?" Holland asked. "Lots of times in junior, college and Europe, scores are 5-4, 6-5 and we play a lot 2-1 and 3-2 games. So if you don't score what else do you bring to the table?
"If you don't score, can you kill a penalty, are you good defensively, can you win physical battles, can you protect the puck down low, can you forecheck and force the defense to make mistakes? It's more than just can you score.
"Unless you can score 80 goals, and nobody scores 80 goals let alone 50 goals."
Holland also explicitly mentioned that should Mantha make the team, it’ll be because they think he can be in the top six and playing those sort of minutes.
The two key improvements for Mantha, which will be central to his chances of being able to compete at the NHL level, have been making strides in his defensive play and also being stronger on the puck. Has he come far enough along on those two fronts to have a chance of breaking Detroit’s storied pattern of extreme patience in prospect development? It seems unlikely, but we’ll find out in a few months. What happens in October will really be beside the overall point though, because a kid with this sort of offensive potential being brought along in an organization that knows how to nurture a prospect's growth is a pretty exciting proposition for fans of the Red Wings and hockey in general.
Martin Brodeur has yet to find a hockey home for the coming campaign and, according to agent Pat Brisson, that’s okay. There’s still time.
“On or around July 1, we explored a few possibilities for Marty that made somewhat sense. That didn’t come to fruition,” Brisson told Tom Gulitti of NorthJersey.com via email. “Marty has a lot to offer, but it will be the right fit and this may come later this summer or even early in the season. He is in no rush until the right fit appears.
“In the meantime he is getting ready the same way he has the past 20 seasons.”
The article notes that aside from the Toronto Maple Leafs having publicly declared an interest in Brodeur in late June, he reportedly also spoke with the Tampa Bay Lightning and Pittsburgh Penguins about back-up gigs before they filled those slots. Steve Yzerman signed Evgeni Nabokov to a one-year deal, while Jim Rutherford inked Thomas Greiss. The Leafs still have RFA James Reimer of course, but we’ll see if he’s still with the team by the time camp rolls around.
David Pastrnak was selected by the Boston Bruins 25th overall in the first round a few weeks ago and The Herald’s Stephen Harris and CSNNE’s Joe Haggerty each takes a swing at the idea of the youngster potentially being an inexpensive cap fit to replace some of the offensive firepower lost with Jarome Iginla moving on to the Colorado Avalanche.
“We would never put any limitations on any player with that type of skill and ability,” new Bruins executive director of player personnel John Ferguson Jr said. “There have been players before who’ve done it, including guys who were drafted even lower. Ryan O’Reilly did it and he was drafted 33rd. Bergeron, of course.
“You’ve seen teams do it. Los Angeles has done it, Chicago has done it, Dallas, Boston. It does happen, and it does seem to be happening with greater frequency.”
GM Peter Chiarelli: “You never know. You don’t want to place too much of a burden on this kid’s shoulders, but he was good. The hesitation you have is that he’s 170 -173 pounds, but he’s wiry strong, so you never know. Speed, skill, sense is all there. It would be nice, but we’ll see. But he’s young and to throw someone like that at that age, at that weight [isn’t common], but there have been guys who have done it.”
The Tennessean’s Josh Cooper examines how Seth Jones and Jonathan Diaby could potentially be a pretty dangerous defensive pairing for the Nashville Predators somewhere down the road. In the last year, Diaby has become “dialed in” with his nutritional habits and is likely headed for the AHL this season.
"You're always looking for a twin-tower pairing," assistant general manager Paul Fenton said. "They're both 6-foot-4, and it would be nice to have something like that, but I wouldn't pin it down to say they're going to be pairing in the future. But from a hockey planning standpoint, when you look down the road, you're hoping something like that develops."