Detroit — The Red Wings organization will be looking for a new head coach for minor league affiliate Grand Rapids.
The Wings announced they will not be renewing the contract of Ben Simon, who was head coach of the Griffins for the last five seasons.
Grand Rapids missed the American League playoffs the last two seasons. This season, the Griffins finished with a 28-36-8 record and the fewest wins in a single season in franchise history.
“It was a tough decision. Ben has been with the organization for a long time,” Shawn Horcoff, Griffins general manager/Red Wings assistant GM, said Monday during a Zoom conference call. “Just given the way the year went, obviously it’s not the way we wanted to end the season. We’d much rather be playing right now. We do have a young team, that was taken into account as well.
“We wanted to wait the entire season and see it through and see how it went. But at the end of the day, Ben had been with us for a long time and it was time for a new voice.”
Simon joined the Griffins’ coaching staff in 2015, as an assistant for Todd Nelson. In total, Simon spent eight years in Grand Rapids, and ultimately became the 11th head coach in franchise history.
“He’s been here for a long time with a lot of the players, and eight years in a good stint for a professional hockey coach,” Horcoff said. “It’s not easy to last that long. Obviously Ben was doing something right. We just looked at it as a chance, the last couple of years haven’t been great, and at some point you have to look at the entire organization and start from scratch.”
Simon had a 144-137-38 overall record with the Griffins, and made the playoffs one year, a first-round exit in 2019 (there were no AHL playoffs in 2020 and 2021 because of COVID-19).
With the Wings having accumulated so many draft picks in recent years while rebuilding the organization, the influx of key young talent over the past several years — and into the near future — will continue to occur. That makes this coaching position an important hire.
“You’re going to need to have a coach who can handle the development, bring the young guys around and also be able to help handle some veteran players on that team and have a good sense of merging those two (areas) and have that come together,” Horcoff said. “We want to focus on the development, but we want to win as well.”
With so many young players likely to begin their careers in Grand Rapids soon, communication will be an important element for the new head coach.
“There needs to be a clear message for a lot of these young guys when they step in from junior, college, or Europe,” Horcoff said. “Communication for a coach at that level is important, and with communication comes personality. You need a coach that is able to communicate with the players and develop a (relationship) with them and get these players to trust and buy in from an early time.”
Horcoff said there is no time frame to name a new coach, and the organization will be thorough in its search.
One name to possibly keep an eye on is Dan Watson, the head coach at Toledo (ECHL), a Wings’ minor league affiliate that is entering the playoffs this season.
Rasmussen on the mend
Forward Michael Rasmussen is recovering from an injury to his kneecap on Feb. 25 that kept him out the remainder of the season.
Rasmussen took a slapshot to the knee that night, ending what had been a season which he posted a career-high 29 points, with 10 goals.
“Just took a shot off the kneecap and I wasn’t able to play. I was on crutches and in a brace for a while. It was tough,” Rasmussen said. “There was no possibility of playing. It wasn’t shattered or in 100 pieces. It just needed some time and needed to be off of it.
“It’s been getting better, almost to the point where I’ll have no limitations. It’ll be good to do the usual summer training and continue with rehab.”
Rasmussen was energized by the Wings staying in the playoff chase deep into the season, something that’s refreshing after the struggles in recent years.
“Night and day,” Rasmussen said of the feeling. “It doesn’t even compare to being out in late December or January or February. It was probably the most fun I’ve had playing hockey in a long time. That kind of stretch where we were playing well and having that feeling of really enjoying it, and being like, ‘OK, we can do this,’ and having a real goal in front of us makes everyone want it again.”
Two bad nights
It’s difficult to single out two games in an 82-game NHL season and call it a turning point.
But the Wings’ back-to-back losses in Ottawa, coming early in the week of the trade deadline and after the Wings had won seven of nine out of the All-Star break, certainly appeared to change the complexion of the season.
The Wings went 7-17-1 after Feb. 23, the Ottawa losses being the second and third of that slide.
“We kind of went in there and we were a little ripe for a game like that in Ottawa,” said forward Andrew Copp, noting the Wings were entering on a hot streak. “Ottawa played like it was Game 1 of the first round (of the playoffs) where they were running around a little bit and finishing hits and living on the edge. They almost got rewarded a little bit for living on the edge with a couple of ticky-tack calls, and we were kind of shell-shocked after that.
“From there, it was tough to recover.”
Said defenseman Olli Maatta: “We didn’t play good enough. We didn’t have enough intensity. They had more of that. Everyone wanted it real hard, but just losing those two, it’s only two games but it felt like bigger than normal regular-season games.”
Busy offseason
Wings coach Derek Lalonde was named an assistant coach for Team USA at the upcoming men’s world championships.
The tournament takes place May 12-28 in Tampere, Finland, and Riga, Latvia. David Quinn (San Jose Sharks) was previously announced as the squad’s head coach.
Lalonde will be part of the coaching staff of a U.S. men’s national team for the first time. Lalonde has been involved with U.S. teams on the international stage on two other occasions, helping the U.S. junior select team to the championships in the World Junior A Challenge in 2013 as head coach and as an assistant coach in 2012.
Lalonde arrived in Detroit after spending four seasons (2018-22) as an assistant coach for the NHL’s Lightning, where he helped Tampa Bay earn Stanley Cup titles in 2020 and 2021.
ted.kulfan@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @tkulfan