Red Wings Prospects Tournament Game 3: Notes and Review

Cross Hanas shines and Sebastian Cossa struggles as the Red Wings prospects drop their third and final game in Traverse City, 6-5 at the hands of the Maple Leafs

Through 32 minutes and 22 seconds of hockey at Centre Ice Arena Sunday, the Detroit Red Wings appeared on their way to claiming their first victory in three tries at the Traverse City Prospects Tournament.

Starting goaltender Jan Bednar had been busy, but he was effective—stopping all 29 of the Toronto Maple Leaf shots that came his way.  On the strength of goals from Nic Sima and Cross Hanas, Detroit led 2-0.  The turnovers that sunk the Wings against Dallas had mostly dried up, and Detroit imposed an order on the game that never existed Saturday against Columbus.

Still, that lead vanished within five minutes, and things didn't improve in the third, with Toronto bagging four more to claim victory in the final minute.  

The Traverse City Prospects Tournament is by design a starting point rather than an end goal.  Nonetheless, for the winless hosts, it cannot be described as anything but a disappointment.

Sima gave Detroit the lead after nine minutes, taking advantage of a poor first touch on a Maple Leaf attempt to exit the defensive zone, cutting in for a clean chance, and converting via the five hole.

The goal came against the run of play, with the Leafs having enjoyed the better of the chances in the game's opening stages, but Sima's tally energized the Red Wings.  Detroit played with much sounder structure than it had against Columbus the afternoon prior, and when there were breakdowns, Bednar was ready to clean up.

Hanas—the offensive star of the event for Detroit—doubled the lead 6:59 into the second with a power play snipe.  The 21-year-old Texan winger had been cleared to return from a shoulder injury just last week, and his eagerness to be back on the ice was apparent, as was his combination of size and a heavy wrist shot.

The goal came late in an Easton Cowan holding minor, with Detroit struggling to generate much of any quality early in the penalty.  However, some sound facilitation from a combination of Antti Tuomisto and Marco Kasper helped reverse that trend, before Hanas rifled home a shot.

As they had throughout the event, the Red Wings swapped goaltenders not long after the midpoint of the second, with Sebastian Cossa spelling Bednar.  

For Bednar, it was an excellent evening, his second such performance in Traverse City.  Over his two games (totaling 61:19 in the crease), Bednar stopped 39 of the 40 shots he faced, good for a monstrous .975 save percentage, tops in the tournament.  The strong form comes at a good time for Bednar, who will be looking to compete with Cossa and one of the two offseason goalie signings (James Reimer and Alex Lyon) for a roster spot in Grand Rapids.  With a strong performance already in Traverse City, the Czech backstop might just be in the process of forging his path to one of those spots.

Unfortunately for Cossa, the opposite is true.  At the risk of conflating correlation and causation, Cossa's entrance into the game corresponded to an immediate dip in the sense of stability Detroit had established in the wake of Sima's opener, and the lead soon slipped away.

Brandon Lisowsky nabbed the first for Toronto before Jacob Frasca tied the score at two.  In both cases, Cossa found himself in disadvantageous circumstances.  The Lisowsky goal came at the conclusion of a sustained spell of pressure from Toronto's top line, and Frasca's was the direct offspring of a bad Detroit turnover that sprung an immediate odd-man rush.  Still, it was impossible to ignore that Bednar had faced similar challenges and dealt with them, where Cossa struggled.  

Before the period ended, Amadeus Lombardi buried a Hanas rebound off the rush to restore the Detroit lead, but Toronto's offense and Cossa's difficulties weren't done.

In the third, first it was Cowan, then Lisowsky added two more—all within the period's first eight minutes—and Detroit trailed 3-5.  The Lisowksy goal to make it 3-4 was particularly discouraging from Cossa—a long distance shot without much traffic that beat his glove cleanly.

However, Detroit wasn't done yet.  Hanas buried another bomb on the power play, then Elmer Soderblom converted on the doorstep (welcome contributions from two of the team's top performers all tournament), and the score was tied.  Hanas' goal—his fourth of the tournament—tied him with Lisowsky and Columbus' Jordan Dumais for the event's lead.

However, Maple Leaf defenseman Tommy Miller scored on a long, screened shot with 34.8 seconds to play, and Detroit fell 6-5.  The goal left Cossa with a .759 save percentage (41 saves on 54 shots) in not quite 90 minutes of game action from Traverse City, and the Red Wings fell to 0-3 for the event.

 For today's film study, let's take a look at how Amadeus Lombardi and Cross Hanas combined for Detroit's third goal of the evening.

Lombardi stole the show at Red Wings development camp for the second year in a row, and Hanas was among Detroit's top performers throughout the three games in Traverse City, so it should come as no surprise that they found success together.

The sequence, which begins with a controlled breakout, illustrates both the limitations of drawing conclusions from a September exhibition and the promise of both Lombardi and Hanas.

Antti Tuomisto gather the puck behind his own net—free from any pressure of consequence from the Toronto forecheck—and threads a lead pass into the neutral zone for Lombardi, who is able to proceed into the offensive zone unabated.

The ease of all this—Tuomisto's pass and Lombardi's entry—is a clear marker that we are watching pre-season hockey.  In an NHL game, a play like this one isn't available without a good deal more struggle.  All the same, Lombardi ends up with a decent look from close range on the backhand, but his attempt is controlled and cleared by the Leafs without much trouble.  

When watching Lombardi, the offensive gifts are obvious.  He is a strong skater with excellent hands, who can dominate defenders one-on-one.  However, Lombardi's dependence on beating defenders wide off the rush is something of a red flag for his NHL future.  Lombardi loves to turn the corner on a defenseman and then either send in a centering pass or stickhandle a bit more until he sees a shooting opportunity himself.  Throughout the tournament, Lombardi created opportunities in this fashion: wide rushes into centering bids.

This brand of offense is clearly effective in junior, where Lombardi posted 102 points for the Flint Firebirds in the OHL last season, but in the NHL, even the bulkiest defensemen will be quicker than Lombardi's OHL foes.  

In the NHL, however, if you constantly push wide, you are taking yourself out of the area where goalscoring happens—the inner slot—and you risk being unable to make your way back to that premium ice.  To find success in the NHL, he will need to add different layers to his offensive game.

After the Leafs clear, counter attack, and send a chance of their own wide, Lombardi receives the long caroming rebound and finds himself on the precipice of a 2-on-1 with Hanas at his side.

Hanas heads straight to the net, and Lombardi hits him in stride, but Hanas' bid is stopped.  From there, Lombardi arrives to deposit the rebound.

Throughout the weekend, Hanas' goal scoring stood out above everything else, but it's worth also appreciating the directness of his game.  Hanas is a direct, vertical player.  Where Lombardi enjoys a labyrinthine twirl through neutral ice to set up a rush chance, Hanas plays in straight lines, perpetually working his way to the net.

In this case, even though his chance is denied, Hanas' direct route to the goal mouth leads straight to Lombardi's tap-in for the rebound, Lombardi having also finished the play at the net.

Again, there's preseason written all over the play in the two sides' willingness to trade rush chances, but habits have to form somewhere, and it's nice to see Hanas' directness rubbing off a bit on Lombardi to their mutual benefit.

It was far from a banner tournament for the Red Wings, but that doesn't mean it was without bright spots.  Lombardi and Hanas appear natural compliments to one another, and perhaps that chemistry will translate to the NHL level in Detroit before too long.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Otnt0kjgt-E[/embed]

After the game, coach Dan Watson emphasized that the work has just begun for the Red Wings.  “It was a grind, but every team went through it," he said. "Main camp doesn’t get easier. The intensity ramps up, there’s guys trying to make the team. The details, the habits are better. The game is quicker. What we hope to happen is that they have a step ahead here, whether it’s through systems we ran that Detroit will also run, some of the drills that we did. But it doesn’t get easier.”

Watson added that, despite poor results, there were positives to take away from the tournament.  "To get us together as a staff is extremely important," he said. "That's going to feed and bleed into the players too. With the players, just getting them to understand that it is consistent compete and work ethic. There's no nights or days off. I thought our guys came to work every day."

Lombardi offered a similar message—giving voice to the obvious frustration of dropping three from three while also keeping the bigger picture in mind:

“It was obviously a little bit frustrating losing all three games. We want to come here and win. We want to compete, but that’s also not the biggest thing. We’re here to develop, get better and learn things. We come together as a group right away without really practicing, so we understand that.

“We’re getting a day off tomorrow, so we can rest and recuperate then go straight to work. Main camp starts right away, so it’ll be good to get the speed of the NHLers and how they make plays. Hopefully all the young guys can adjust to that. That’s what we’ll be doing moving forward."