Steve Yzerman may be walking out with one more parting gift for Red Wings fans: a team built to bring more thump.
Detroit has already added plenty of skill in recent years with Moritz Seider, Lucas Raymond, Simon Edvinsson and Alex DeBrincat. But the latest move, bringing in Keegan Kolesar from the Vegas Golden Knights, points in a different direction - toward a roster that can answer back physically.
Kolesar fits that idea cleanly. He’s not a fringe piece who disappears in and out of the lineup.
He played 74 or more games in five straight seasons for Vegas, handled both third- and fourth-line minutes, and over the last three seasons missed only three games. At 6-foot-2 and 217 pounds, he’s built for the kind of work that wears opponents down, and he has piled up 237 or more hits in each of the past five seasons.
Yzerman made clear after the season that he wanted the Red Wings to become harder to play against right away. Kolesar says he sees that same need in Detroit.
“Just talking to guys now, they felt that there was a missing piece, maybe an identity of just having that - not the fighting aspect, but more of the toughness and being hard to play against,” Kolesar said about coming to Detroit. “Being a veteran presence on the front end, bringing guys into the fight. I think that’s something I can provide.”
That kind of edge matters because the Red Wings didn’t have much of it last season. Marco Kasper led the club with 186 hits, while Ben Chiarot was next at 171. Those were the only two Detroit players who reached 150.
The picture could change fast. Kolesar’s arrival, along with an expected bump from Emmitt Finnie, who had 131 hits, gives Detroit a chance to load up on players who don’t shy away from contact. Carter Mazur and Michael Brandsegg-Nygard could also factor in regularly, and both have shown in the AHL that they like to hit.
That puts the Red Wings in range to have six players with 150 or more hits, and maybe seven if Seider decides to turn the physical dial back up. He finished with 121 hits last season while focusing more on becoming a complete defender.
Detroit may not be finished, either. The Red Wings reportedly remain interested in unrestricted free agent Eeli Tolvanen, who has averaged 200 or more hits for Seattle over the past.
If the goal is to make the Red Wings tougher to handle, Seider will be one of the faces of it. And if this all comes together, Detroit could go from being one of the league’s softer teams to one of its most annoying. Last season, the Red Wings ranked 29th in the NHL with 17.83 hits per 60 minutes, so there’s a lot of room for that identity to change.
The league’s most frequent hitting teams last season were the New York Rangers at 25.47 hits per game, followed by the Florida Panthers at 24.42, the Ottawa Senators at 23.59 and the Philadelphia Flyers at 22.46. Among that group, only Ottawa had as many as four players with 150 hits, and one of those players was Brady Tkachuk, who is now with the Florida Panthers.
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Team USAs roster has the three forwards scheduled to face Finland, and Detroit will be watching closely for more than just results. With the Red Wings needing their pipeline to keep moving and offensive options never in short supply on the wish list, any glimpse of chemistry or progress from Hurlbert, Plante or Solomon is worth filing away, even if the bigger payoff is still to come later. [Read more 🡒]