Follow me on Twitter
Detroit’s trip to the shootout ended in a 3-2 loss. Greiss posted a .944 sv% stopping 34 of 36. His play continues to allow Detroit to find some confidence, even as the season winds down. Here’s how the team looks for the season:
Detroit so far - 16-24-7
9 games remaining
My prediction from January - 19 wins
Current place - 24th
First round pick without lottery win - between 8 and 10
Never, in my wildest prevarications, did I expect Columbus to be sitting at the bottom of this division at this point in the season. The Blue Jackets have been the team to find a way for the past few years. The team swung for the fences just a couple trade deadlines ago and had Duchene, Bobovroski and Panarin on the roster. The team has imploded this year, and now sits one place lower than Detroit in the overall standings.
It’s good to see Detroit making an effort. It’s frustrating to see them potentially picking at 10th. The Wings are only 2 points behind San Jose and Calgary. If they fall past 11th, even a lottery win wouldn’t give them first overall with the new rules. It’s ironic, but it’s a gut punch.
Yzerman has tried to do right by the club. The roster this year was an improvement. The closed division play has erased some of the parity, where teams that are in better shape could have picked up some points. Honestly, it’s getting close enough to the end of the season that this is frustrating. Detroit hasn’t had a third overall pick in more than 20 years. Chicago went from Cup contender to getting Kirby Dach fairly quickly. New York went from a post season contender to selecting second overall and then first in consecutive years. The Red Wings have been knocked down a few places in every draft since “full rebuild mode” kicked in.
There’s no way you want to tell your group to stop trying. The culture suffers immensely. Buffalo is a prime example. A GM tanking for McDavid created at atmosphere so toxic that it still hasn’t recovered, and now they’re looking at starting over again. I believe Yzerman can make hay at 10th overall, especially in this draft. He is one of the best European scouts, and has tended to ignore North American rankings. It would be nice, though, just once, to have a crack at the top pick during the salary cap era.
Detroit could obviously go on a slide for the next 9. The season ends with back to back games against Columbus. Dallas/Nashville/Chicago are all fighting for the final post season spot. Columbus is spiraling. The interesting part of that could be that Tortorella will become available. We’ve talked about him and Brind’amour, and the latter is considered the most exciting “free agent” for the coming off season. Teams will line up if the Carolina bench boss decides to test the market. This time, Waddell can’t override the negotation with an RFA clause. If Rod signs papers somewhere else, the Hurricanes will take a significant loss in what has been an exciting couple of years.
So, where are you at? Seeing Detroit ahead of seven teams in the standings, does it make you glad for the progress, frustrated for the draft, or a little bit of both? Last year’s finish would have given Detroit the third round pick this year due to the change in format. This season’s improvements have an ironic twist, to be certain.
Just as I’d lost all faith in the league when it comes to integrity, a blip has hit the radar. Any teams that have players “magically” available for the first game of the playoffs are going to be “looked into”. Tampa is a big name for this. If Kucherov is ready to come back, they don’t have the cap room to do it. That was an observation made by NHL tonight a few days ago. It would seem that the “Patrick Kane rule” is going to finally start some internal audits (including emails, text messages and physician reports). Lupul raised the alarms a couple of years ago, calling the Maple Leafs “liars” by saying he was unfit to play. Within hours that tweet was down and the apology was up. With 17 teams using the LTIR pool, it’s not gone unnoticed as to who will benefit the most from the cap removal.
Toronto’s penchant for collecting more and more LTIR contracts has to, at some point, be the harbinger of change. Just think, if you couldn’t move “dead contracts”, Detroit would have Chycrun on the blue line. GMs could be saved both from rigging the system and making horrible decisions on trades. Feels like a win-win to me!
Detroit Red Wings Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»