Frkwatch Update: Playoff Overtime Winner Edition!

It's been a roller-coaster month for Detroit Red Wings fans. Better men/women/blogger robots have already dissected the struggle to reach the playoffs. If you want a gander at those posts, go over to Winging it in Motown or The Malik Report. For now, I defer to the major leagues while yours truly spends his time establishing himself as the authority on a single Red Wing (prospect) player. Someday, we'll all look back on this blog together fondly of how we watched a true legend rise from a little metropolis known as Halifax.

So while the big boys keep sucking, the Red Wings prospects across the CHL and even the AHL continue to make the future bright for Hockeytown. Xavier Ouellet and Marty Frk are still kicking around in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League's playoff semifinals, and the news is pretty good, mostly. Ouellet drew an assist in the Blainville-Broisbiand Armada's 2-1 loss to the Baie-Comeau Drakkar in Game Two. Before I continue, can you believe these names? I kid you not, these are REAL teams in the QMJHL. They both have significant meaning for the areas they represent, but to an outsider these are about as bizarre and confusing as any European team name. I'm still not sure what a Chicoutimi Saguenéen is even after Googling it.

Anyway, the Armada are down 2-0 to the Drakkar after two 2-1 losses. Unfortunate for Ouellet, but while one Red Wings prospect falls, another rises. Marty Frk continues to tear it up in the playoffs, scoring the overtime winner in a 5-4 Game Two matchup between the Halifax Mooseheads and the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies. Here's a clip of the overtime winner, care of the Mooseheads' YouTube page:




Here's another angle of the winner:



That's 10,000 Haligonians cheering on the victory. As you can see, Frk pots the biggest goal of his life thus far. The Mooseheads are up 2-0 against the Huskies in the best-of-seven series and could very well have a stranglehold on the series by week's end. Let's have a quick peak at the top scorers in the QMJHL playoffs so far:

Nice copy/paste job from the Q League page, eh?

As you can see, Frk has twenty points in ten games. He's fourth on his team in scoring, but unlike his linemates who precede him on the top scoring list, Frk also has 20 PIMs. This should come as no surprise to those of you who have been following Frkwatch since the season's beginning. Frk likes to get his hands dirty. I like that.

Not much else is to be said of Frk and the Moose aside from the likeliness that they will compete for the President's Cup very soon. All due respect for Rouyn-Noranda, the Moose are built to win championships. Next season will see most of the top players move on, but in the moment this team looks poised to become the Q's best team and a Memorial Cup lock. Catch you all next time.

Trade Deadline Thoughts

Well, the 2013 NHL Trade Deadline has passed, and the Detroit Red Wings made no trades at the last minute to bolster the forwards, defense, or goaltending of their team. That sound you year is half the hockey world slamming down the panic button for the soon-to-be-Dead-Things.

Hold on a minute, geniuses.

If you'd like a rather complete explanation as to why the Detroit Red Wings did little to improve the team, here's The Malik Report with a litany of quotes, tweets, and some comments from a host of people who cover the Red Wings on a daily basis. This should satisfy your need to know why nothing was done, or at least give you a modicum of sanity while you tear your hair out over Detroit missing out on overpaying for Jay Bouwmeester.

Most Red Wings fans (I hope) have accepted the reality that the Detroit Red Wings are rebuilding. Management are doing everything they can to keep the team competitive enough to continue making the playoffs and keep the Western Conference annoyed that a playoff slot is going to be taken up by those bastards in the red and white. At this point, it's all anyone can do not to despise the Red Wings and their success. Let's face it, the Red Wings are that guy in the office you can't stand to be around because he has the nice car, the nice apartment, the better cell phone, and that poisonous smile that you just want to sucker punch at lunch time while he eats from his expensive Tupperware containers. If you're not a fan, you're tired of hearing about them and their success and their banners and their late round draft picks who keep taking the damn puck away from you. You're tired of it all, and you want this team buried in the standings.

But they just won't die. They aren't dead yet, and it kills you to know they are rebuilding on the fly and won't go down without snagging one more chance at the Stanley Cup. For those of us grounded in reality in Motown (the figurative one that the global fan community belongs to), we get it. We knew a season like this was coming. We knew a trade deadline would loom and there would be a market the Red Wings couldn't get anything done in because it was time to stop trading away youngsters and draft picks. 2013 was the year Ken Holland said "ain't nobody got time for that". (Note: he didn't say that. But we were all thinking it.)

Deadline Day 2013 was a perplexing array of trades that, on paper, would be wholeheartedly rejected by fan communities. If you want a(n in)comprehensive look at what it means to play "Dumbass Trade Roulette", check out Twitter or HFBoards' trade section, where nothing matters but your top five prospects and first round draft picks. Seriously, don't go there because you will hurt yourself tripping over the lopsided proposals. If you must, go with the understanding that it's all trolling and jokingly bad trade proposals. Otherwise your head will be spinning and you'll be vomiting up pea soup faster than you can say "Filppula for a 2nd round pick and a prospect".

Detroit didn't really participate in the deadline, unless you count missing out on JayBouw and sending Kent Huskins to a place that needed him far more than Detroit. I honestly wish him well and hope he finds a place in Philly. Last time we sent a player their it worked out well. Right, Ville Leino? I do love what you've done in Buffalo. Snark aside for a moment, Ken Holland didn't indulge the bizarre trade market this year in order to spare the prospects from doom elsewhere and preserve the draft picks the team desperately needs to refresh its roster. How many times can we re-sign Todd Bertuzzi and Mikael Samuelsson to contract and deny our gems like Tomas Tatar and Gustav Nyquist a chance to shine? I guess we'll find out in July.

A quick glance at Detroit's injured players, we see it includes the third-line center and penalty killing machine Darren Helm, the above mentioned Todd Bertuzzi, Mikael Samuelsson (more than one injury this season), Kyle Quincey, and now Henrik Zetterberg, although thankfully the captain is not going to miss a lot of time.

Well, that list includes, in a pessimistic analysis, two thirds of the third line, a second line RW, and our theoretical second pairing defenseman. We did just get Carlo Colaiacovo back, so when Quincey returns there's the second pairing finally back in one piece. Within a couple of weeks, Detroit will have its depth scoring back from its veteran wingers and hopefully special teams will see a boost from the speedy Helm.

So, did Detroit need to do anything at the deadline?

Nope. So we didn't panic and throw away our future for the sake of acquiring players that would cost a fortune in salary. I guess you should give Ken Holland an "F" for that effort.

If you thought the Red Wings would do something like throw a pupu platter of picks and prospects for Pominville or let a team grab a gob of our greenhorns for Gaborik, you can't see the forest for the trees here in Detroit. I'd lend you my glasses, but they're both dirty and unsuitable for people who lack depth perception. Pun entirely intended.

Now, I won't go far as to suggest a certain Patriarch of the Puck is barking up the wrong tree, because I adore him, but to consider an idle Detroit who are supposedly a "win-now team" the only true failure among a class of 30 teams is folly. To punish a team desperate for a rebuild who chose not to buy up pieces in a patchwork job is folly. Detroit can no longer afford to give their young stars the boot to other teams looking to sell assets because they've done it for too long. The magical spring of Datsyuks and Zetterbergs has run dry. There's plenty of great prospects in the system, despite the tired trope of Red Wings fans over-hyping their future players, and there's no reason to toss aside a plan for a rebuild just to continue a playoff streak that is neither the longest in NHL history nor relevant in the modern age of hockey. 21 seasons is playoffs is impressive. Four Stanley Cups is impressive. Remaining competitive is impressive. You know what's more impressive? Bouncing back from a bad season immediately to rise back up the standings. I'm looking at you, Montreal.

Detroit's recovery begins now that they have secured their own 2013 first round draft pick. Here's hoping it can be used to draft someone with offensive firepower, or perhaps that top pairing defenseman we pine for. Really, one could argue the recovery began symbolically by landing college free agent Danny DeKeyser. It's still exciting that the kid chose the Red Wings when 29 other teams were competing.

As a final thought to Deadline Day, I'd like to adress the most frustrating element of the last two weeks: the status of Valtteri Filppula. Many fans, myself included, have questioned whether Filppula will return to the Red Wings next season. You can sniff around the internet to see that there's been all sorts of quotes about how that's not the focus of Filppula or management right now, but reality is he is looking for a two million dollar per season pay increase. As I pondered this week on Twitter, what has Filppula done since his last contract to warrant a pay hike like that? He had a fantastic 2011-2012, scoring over sixty points for the first time. Jubilation all around Motown. This season, Filppula has looked well defensively, but his offense is paltry, netting six goals and thirteen points in 29 games. As a reference point, six Red Wings have more goals than the Finnish playmaker, including now-top line superstar Justin Abdelkader (maybe a little sarcasm there). It hasn't been a good year for Filppula to show he's worth the 5 million a year, long term deal he's looking for. What should Ken Holland do?

Some suggested we trade Filppula today to get maximum value for him before he walks for nothing. In theory, that's an excellent idea. Today proved to be a bizarre deadline where great players were sent to strange places for curiously diluted packages. All due respect for the players traded for the Gaboriks and Pominvilles, I'm still scratching my scalp. In the end, Holland didn't pull the trigger and that can give us some insight into the Filppula situation. Perhaps he wasn't moved because he's never going anywhere. There could be a plan to keep him. Or it's a gesture of hope that he will resign for a more reasonable amount of money. Or Ken Holland just couldn't get value for him. We'll never know because it makes no sense for Holland to let on that he shopped a guy we kind of want to re-sign.

As another deadline day passes and all the major sports networks pack up their big sets and the poor bastards who had to spend 14 hours covering this dull affair get some rest from their mobile phones, take solace in the fact that the Detroit Red Wings are no worse than they were yesterday. In fact, if you think about it, they're better than they were a week ago. And in two weeks when all of our players aren't beaten up with injures, they'll be better than they are now.

I can live with that.

Frkwatch: Playoff Update and Regular Season Thoughts

My seats for Game Two vs. Saint John. Not pictured: Frk scoring half a dozen goals, the chunky kid who ruined 75% of the photos I tried to take.

It's been a while since I updated the blog or made an attempt to post. While traffic soared during January and February thanks in large to a lot of good posts, I was incredibly busy with life in February and March, and got quite ill the last few weeks with some kind of bizarre chest cold that sapped the life out of me. I'm on the mend but between work and life it's been hard to maintain some kind of consistency in terms of writing. Kudos to the fellas at Winging it in Motown for keeping things interesting the past few weeks. If you don't already participate in the game threads like I do from time to time, you should join in on the shenanigans. All your favorite WIIM guys are there acting silly. Sometimes JJ gets stern but someone has to, otherwise we all go insane.

Special shoutout to Graham Hathway for a rather controversial post about the now-signed Daniel DeKeyser. While some disagreed that missing the boat on signing DeKeyser would be a miserable failure, Graham had some excellent points in the article he wrote and the comment section about his value to the Red Wings. What was more interesting about the article Graham wrote was the bizarre assault "GallopingGreg" attempted on Graham and his analysis. It was a real treat to see the Red Wings community throttle Graham's would-be nemesis. He didn't have a leg to stand on at any point and it's a beautiful thing to see the community come together to dispatch a troll. Anyway, please send your love to Graham over at Winging it in Motown or Twitter. He's Canadian, which instantly makes him more likable than all other Red Wings fans. Just kidding. Sorry.

Time to get down to business. The QMJHL regular season ended recently and it was a very interesting final 20 games or so for the Moosehead, as Nathan MacKinnon got injured near the end of the season and while he's back now, there was concern the team would struggle without him. Enter Marty Frk. In the month of February, Frk played in 11 games, scoring 11 goals and 20 points with a plus/minus of 10 and 14 PIM. In March, Frk played in 9 games, scoring 4 and registering 11 points with a plus/minus of just +1 and 8 PIM. Frk finished the regular season with 56 games played, 35 goals, 49 assists, 84 points, a plus/minus of +31, 84 PIM, which was all good for 13th in QMJHL scoring. Frk was quite impressive in the final three months of the season, matching the creativity of his linemates and future first round draft picks Nathan MacKinnon and Jonathan Drouin.

I was able to attend a couple of games in the final months of the regular season and I had a few follow up thoughts to Frk's impressive scoring run at the end of the season. The biggest lesson learned from Frkwatch is that Frk possess that rare game-breaking ability that generational forwards like his idols Jaromir Jagr and Sergei Fedorov have. Marty Frk is the kind of player who can take over a game and use his offensive prowess to frustrate and stifle defenses and goaltenders with a blistering shot and his uncanny ability to find open ice. He has a real nose for the net and finding the right place to be when it comes to scoring. Junior hockey is one thing but Frk always looked out of place with the Moose, if only because he already knows how to play the offensive weapon role he is most suited for. Obviously his development required him to "grow up" in junior, but he possesses an offensive maturity that fueled both his game and MacKinnon and Drouin's throughout the season. That line was lethal whenever it was on the ice.

Unfortunately, Frk's strength is also his biggest weakness: his ability to make the game all about him caused some trouble when it came to penalties. Early in the season, Frk struggled to get into form due in large part to the leg injury he sustained late in the summer. Frk's "double tap" skating method (which I covered earlier in the season), caused him to very slowly leave the offensive zone and lag behind very slowly on backcheck. This backchecking improved drastically as the season went on, but Frk's tendency to take stupid penalties, namely retaliatory ones, never faded. A lot of this is mental maturity: it's hard to be critical of a nineteen year old kid bound for the NHL, but rather than pretend this player has no flaws, I'll lay it out there as I see it. Frk may be able to take over a game, but his tendency to pester defenses and retaliate when they use their physical frames to push him around is a glaring weakness in his game.

The 84 PIMs are an early warning sign of a particular attitude on the ice. No, Frk isn't a whiner or a diver or the kind of player who won't own up to his mistakes. Frk is intense. He wants the puck and wants to lead the forecheck and he wants all passes directed to him. I would argue this nature is precisely the kind of aggression Fedorov and Jagr expressed during the early years of their career, before defense became a top concern. Frk has that special nature and while it comes with a propensity to draw dumb penalties, that immaturity will wain in time as Frk learns to play a two way game in Detroit. At the very least, the lack of defensive responsibility will be hammered out of him in Grand Rapids, where he will no doubt spend the next two seasons.

FRK YEAH, MOOSE DIVE HEADFIRST INTO THE PLAYOFFS

The "Frk Yeah" saying will no doubt be abused by Red Wings fans for years to come (provided he isn't traded for an overpaid defensemen) and has already become a regularly occurring rally cry on Winging it in Motown's game threads. Halifax Moosehead fans have been saying "Frk Yeah" for a few years and were going crazy at the Metro Centre on Friday March 22nd when the playoffs began for the QMJHL. Frk kicked off the playoffs with a show of his skills, scoring a Moosehead record five goals and three assists for eight points with a plus/minus of 4 in an 11-1 thumping of the Saint John Sea Dogs. Frk finished the four game sweep with six goals and four assists, good for fourth among playoff scorers in the Q League playoff scorers. He's tied with teammate Johnathan Drouin, for what it's worth. Here are the highlights of the game:

The eight point night is the perfect example of what Frk is capable of when he takes over a game. I was there for the second game where the Moose eaked out a one goal victory. Frk was all over the ice trying to make the offense run. Unfortunately Frk had a blank score sheet but had 5 shots on goal. Here are a couple of pictures and a video I took at the game:

Frk during a faceoff, probably thinking about how soon he can replace Mikael Samuelsson. Photo courtesy of PG Marsh

On the forecheck. He's always the last man to leave the zone. You can tell he loves to backcheck. Photo courtesy of PG Marsh.

As the Moose wait to commence their second round matchup against whatever ragamuffin team ekes out a win to face them, there's time to reflect on the strength of their opening round win. Kudos to Saint John goaltender Sebastien Auger for trying to keep his team in Game Two, but holy crap did that kid ever get hammered in goal. The second round is going to be slightly more difficult for the Moose, so expect more 4-1 or 5-2 scores. Can Frk keep up the production and lead the Moose to the Memorial Cup? Stay tuned to Frkwatch.

In the meantime, if you want to talk more about the Mooseheads (Meesehead?) please drop a line in the comment section, or shoot me a tweet at my Twitter, @wizofozblog.