Wings make Halloween moves

The Wings don’t play until tomorrow night, but there’s plenty of news coming out of Hockeytown today. The club announced both the signing of Niklas Kronwall to a seven-year deal, and the call-up of Gustav Nyquist after sending Fabian Brunnstrom to Grand Rapids.

Kronwall locked down

Long-term contracts have become the best way for NHL GMs to work around salary cap restrictions. Niklas Kronwall is the latest Red Wing to be locked down for the foreseeable future by Ken Holland and his staff. Detroit announced today that Kronwall has signed a seven-year extension to stay in Detroit until 2018-19.

“I felt pretty good that we were going to come to terms at some point. I had no doubt in my mind,” Kronwall told Bill Roose of the Red Wings’ official site. “To me, there was never any doubt that this has become home for me and my girlfriend. I don’t want to go anywhere else. Just the history and the tradition and the culture of the team and the state of Michigan and the fans, it just feels really good to be a part of it.”

Kronwall, currently in his eighth season with Detroit, was named an assistant captain prior at the start of this season. The 30-year-old posted career highs in goals (11) and shots (131) last season, along with leading the team with 129 blocked shots. He was sixth on the Wings with 113 hits last year.

The versatile defenseman should serve as the heir to captain Nicklas Lidstrom as the leader of the Wings’ blue line.

Nyquist called up

After the Wings’ final preseason game, I asked Nyquist to put a grade on his preseason. He wouldn’t give an exact answer, just saying that he “did his best out there every game”.

It wasn’t enough to get him a spot on the opening night roster. But it must have left an impression on the Wings’ coaching staff, who have called him up just three weeks into his first professional season.

After that final preseason game, coach Mike Babcock said that they would see how Nyquist handled the start of the season.

“He’s a good player,” coach Mike Babcock said at the time. “He’s a real good player. He looks like he’s an NHL player. We’ve always kind of done things the same way, we send those kids to the minors and let them play a little bit and see what we’ve got here – see how the year starts and see.

“I mean, it’s an exhibition game, let’s not kid ourselves. I’m not trying to take anything away from the kid, he was outstanding, he’s been great all camp, but the league usually gets to another level, and we’ll see what the guys we have can do. If he keeps playing so good that he’s got to be on the team, then he’ll be on the team.”

Nyquist’s four goals and five assists in nine games must have done the trick. The Wings will be hoping that his scoring pace will continue at NHL level – the Wings have only scored five goals in their last four games, which have all been losses.