3. The Detroit Red Wings added three scoring forwards (Andrew Copp, David Perron and Dimitri Kubalik), four defensemen (Ben Chiarot, Olli Maatta, Mark Pysyk and Robert) and improved their goaltending (Ville Husso). But the NHL Network's team preview has them finishing the same or worse in the Atlantic Division. This is a hard league. Mike Johnson picks them seventh out of eight teams in the Atlantic.
A few thoughts here...
1) who is Dimitri Kubalik?
2) who is the defenseman named Robert? Does he have a last name?
3) once again, you simply list all of the additions without noting the players who were lost. For example, yes they added Copp, Perron, and Kubalik...but lost Gagner and Namestnikov. Net improvement. They added Chiarot and Matta...but lost Leddy, Staal, Stecher. That's getting worse. Pysyk was added and then tore his achilles and is out 6 months. The mysterious Robert is Robert Hagg who is nothing more than a 7th d-man. So maybe the reason why some are projecting them to finish 7th is that the net result of all this turnover is pretty lateral. Moving in the right direction. But the net improvement is marginal.
Good blog.
