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Gergeswillems is Officially superhuman. After Thursday’s game (which he also predicted correctly, and the one before that) he said that Detroit would lose this one. His gut should have its own hotline.
Look, when I step back and look at hockey honestly, it’s easy to see when a team earned a win or got lucky. Dallas, most likely, feels like they should have swept this 2 game set. They’re right. Detroit had some very high level goaltending on Thursday and rode a Fabbri hat trick. Dallas had outshot Detroit 40-21. Tonight, Dallas outshot the Wings 33-21 and won 3-0. They had excellent goaltending, but the pressure up and down the ice was very good. This is a team that knows it should be higher in the standings.
The other component to this is that Detroit is actually ahead of 3 teams in the standings. Buffalo and Ottawa will be vying for the top slots at the draft. If the lotto was held today, Detroit could (and probably would) drop to the 6th pick. New Jersey is right there as well. It would be a kick in the gut to see NJ or Buffalo get another top 1 or 2 pick. Buffalo, however, has not been very strong when it comes to converting high picks into success. New Jersey doesn’t need to be, yet.
Yes, it stinks to lose. But, it would be nice to pick in the top three for the first time in almost 40 years. This upcoming draft is, supposedly, strong on defensemen. The issue is scouting. Some of the highest rated North American skaters haven’t been scouted this year. The draft isn’t likely to be pushed back, and so it is going to be wide open going into it.
You really want these years of the rebuild to have meaning. Seider, so far, is a very bright spot. Raymond, I think, will need at least another year (or two) developing. Berggren looks really good right now. Petruzzeli was in the top 4 for goaltending in the NCAA. We still need to add some defense, centers and goaltending to the pipeline. The hope is that Veleno can still pan out well, but he’s having more success on the wing. Soderblom was fantastic at the WJC, but not great in the regular season. It’s a long tough road for these kids to make it.
We have about 20 days until the trade deadline. In an ideal situation, prospects and/or picks will be added to Detroit’s system. It would be nice to have some more success, but at the same time it would be a real drag to pick at 6th or 7th. Where are you at with it? No one wants a “tank”, so where do you look to for expectations? Let me know, and Detroit will face Nashville on Tuesday. Let’s see what the Gman has to say about it!
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