The Playoff Fate of the Detroit Red Wings.

      The last time the Detroit Red Wings missed the NHL playoffs George H. W. Bush was President, the Soviet Union was still in power, Dances With Wolves won the Academy Award for Best Picture and Bette Midler won the Grammy for Record of the Year.  Pump up the Jam was burning up the airwaves and Cheers and Seinfield were number one TV shows.  2013 might be the year the Wings miss the post season again.  The standings going into play Thursday 4/11/13 have the Red Wings with 43 points in the eighth and last playoff spot.  They are three points behind the Minnesota Wild in seventh but only one point ahead of the Phoenix Coyotes in ninth and two points ahead of the Dallas Stars and Columbus Bluejackets in eleventh place.  Can the Wings hold off the Coyotes, Stars and Jackets and extend their playoff streak, the longest in North American sports, to 21 years?  The Wings have nine games left against, the Sharks, Blackhawks, Flames, Canucks, Coyotes, Kings, Stars and two against the Predators.  That is six games against teams already in the playoffs and three against teams behind them battling for that last playoff spot.  There are a few aspects of their game the Wings need to improve if they have any chance at staying in eighth. 
      The powerplay is an area of concern, as it has been all season, the Wings rank 14th on the powerplay at home with 21.4%, 20th on the road with an anemic 14.5% and 14th overall with 18.3%.  This stat almost as much as any other is the reason the Wings are struggling this year.  I have already written posts on the powerplay and how it can be improved and the Wings have not done enough to improve it.  They still haven't found a person to replace Tomas Holmstrom in front of the net, a good powerplay quarterback is still missing and they are still losing the battles in the corners.  The lack of powerplay scoring effects most other aspects of the offense and if it isn't changed, and fast, then Detroit will either miss the playoffs or lose in the first round.  The Wings are 10-11 in one goal games, 2-4 in two goal games and 7-6 in three or more goal games.  They allow 2.60 goals per game but only score 2.53 goals a game, ranking them 24th in goal differential at -3.  All these stats mean two things; one, the Wings don't have the horsepower to make any kind of comeback especially if they are down by more than one goal.  The other thing it means are teams aren't afraid of the, once potent, Detroit offense which always used to play into Detroit's hands.  If teams are afraid of the offense then they will play tight and when you play tight, mistakes will be made and the Wings used to feast on other team's mistakes.  Without those mistakes the Wings are having to rely on their talent it it just doesn't seem to be there this year. 
      Goals are down across the board.  The Wings don't have one player in the top 40 in goals scored, in fact they only have two players, Pavel Datsyuk and Damien Brunner, with ten goals or more.  There are only seven other team in the entire NHL that have only two ten goal scorers, and only one, Dallas, that has less than Detroit and that includes the other 14 teams not making the playoffs!  Brunner started out fast but has only scored one goal in the last 21 games, Henrik Zetterberg only has eight goals and Johan Franzen only has seven.  The Wings need to do something to get those guys on track.  Detroit is not getting much third and fourth line scoring which puts more pressure on the first two lines, and this year, they're not up for the challenge.  Of course offense isn't the only problem facing the Wings.
      The defense this year is another area in which the Wings need to improve, although it has improved since the start of the season.  Even though he will be the first to admit it Nicklas Kronwall is no Nicklas Lidstrom and is a weaker cornerstone to the defense.  Teams are still getting way too many chances once a puck is around the net and, just as in the offensive zone, players are getting beat to loose pucks and losing the battles in the corners.  The passing in their end has been bad at best and is leading to entirely too many chances for the opposition and Howard's backup Jonas Gustavsson has played poorly this season shifting a bigger burden onto Howard to play well every time.
      These are the issues facing the Red Wings and with only eight games left before the start of the playoffs, they need to figure them out in a hurry or they may miss the playoff for the first time in a long time.  Would that be such a bad thing?  Yes, in a way it would, the fans of the Red Wings expect their team to make a run at the Stanley Cup ever single year, so it would be quite a shock for them.  However, every team needs to go through a rebuilding phase and this looks like the start of Detroit's rebuilding and maybe a lowering of fan expectations is a good thing.  I know players have said time and time again that they feel the pressure to win it all every year in Detroit and who knows how much of a role that plays in their success or failure.  I know that it is a disappointing year for the last year in the Western Conference but hope springs eternal and next year they move to the East and will only have fifteen game outside their time zone and that can only help.  Besides, there is always next year!  Detroit fans have gone long periods of time without winning the Cup and managed to get through it, and they will again.        

Continuing Woes for the Red Wings

       The struggles for the Red Wings continue, they have lost their last three games and are now in a three way tie for the eighth playoff spot in the West with Phoenix and Minnesota.  If the Wings can’t right the ship and start playing much better than this could be the first year they miss the playoff since 1989/90 season.   Injuries have played a role in this streak of poor play but the team cannot hang it’s hat on that excuse.  The Wings aren’t playing with the fire they’ve had in years past, the fore-checking is spotty and the special teams are atrocious.  Detroit is getting outshot in 33% (5 of 15) of the games so far this season.  In past years the Wings would go a full 82 games without being outshot in that many games.  What factors are causing this strange phenomenon?  Injuries do play a part in this stat but aren’t the only factor the retirement of Nicklas Lidstrom is looming larger than anyone thought.  He was the cornerstone of that defense and a mentor of the younger rear guards and now that he is gone the defense just doesn’t seem to have a leader.  Ian White is back from his injury and Kronwall, Ericsson and him need to step up and provide that leadership.  Another factor in the Wings being outshot is the lack of consistent fore-check by the forwards.  They are letting the other team start up ice without having to make passes to get around fore-checkers, giving their offense a head of steam and not allowing the defense to stack up on the blueline and stop them.  All the forwards, but especially the third and fourth liners need to pick up their fore-check and keep the opposition bottled up.  An aggressive fore-check will also lead to turnovers, scoring chances and penalties.  Of course, having the other team shorthanded isn’t as much of a benefit as it usually is because of the lack of scoring on the man advantage. 

      I wrote a blog a week ago about the lack of powerplay scoring and it hasn’t improved at all.  They are operating at 14.5% which is good for 23^rd in the league.  The Wings still have not scored a powerplay goal on the road and it doesn’t look like that will happen anytime soon.  Tuesday 2/19 the Wings go to Nashville whose penalty kill is clipping along at an 89% pace and are only giving up 1.03 goals per game.  The Wings still haven’t solved the problem of Holmstrom’s retirement and it seems like they are trying too hard to get the perfect shot rather than following the old hockey adage that if you throw rubber at the net good things will happen.  With both Franzen and Bertuzzi on the IR Detroit just doesn’t have a traditional big body to put in front of the net.  As I said in the other entry I believe Abdelkader and/or Tootoo could do the job although not in the power forward sense but in the sense of just having a body screening the goalie.  Just as I said before someone on the back end needs to step up and become the powerplay quarterback the Wings have been without since the retirement of Lidstrom.

      Detroit also needs to have more scoring from the defense, the nine defensemen that have played this season have 6 goals and 18 assists and nine of those assists belong to Kronwall.  I’m not saying the Wings need to turn everybody loose and defense be damned, but the rest of the defense corps needs to start shooting more.  This will lead to more scoring chances both for them and the forwards.  Speaking of the forwards, Babcock needs them to start scoring too, after the first line of Datsyuk, Zetterberg and Brunner scoring has been sparse.  The top line has accounted for 19 goals and 28 assists in the 32 game so far and the other 15 forwards that have played this season have 14 goals and 24 assists or to put it another way the top line has scored 1.47 points per game and everybody else 1.19 per game.  To put it one more way, the top line is scoring 15.7 points per person and everybody else 2.5 points per person.  That needs to change if the Wings have any hopes this season.  Patrick Eaves, Jordin Tootoo and Justin Abdelkader have yet to score a goal this season and Darren Helm hasn’t scored because he has yet to play a game this season.  The Wings need all these guys as well as Johan Franzen and Todd Bertuzzi to start scoring.  I also think letting Jiri Hudler go to free agency was a mistake, something Ken Holland doesn’t do very often.  Last year Hudler scored 25 goals and already has 4 this season which would put him fourth on the Wings.  There just doesn’t seem to be the usual swagger in the Wings and they are letting teams dictate the pace of games and giving up leads entirely too often.  The Wings have surrendered five leads this season, and that doesn’t count a one goal early lead but just two or more goals.  If the Wings want to win then they have to protect those leads especially late in the game.  I guess everything has to come to an end eventually but I’m not ready to see the Wings miss the playoff for the first time since 1989/90.  I hope Ken Holland, Jimmy Devellano and Mike Babcock have something in store for the team and the fans or this could be a long shortened season.