HSJ’s mailbag and Tweets of note

The Free Press’s Helene St. James filed a mailbag feature, and among her Q and A’s answers:

As someone who is in the locker room daily, it’s clear how much it bothers veterans like Henrik Zetterberg, Niklas Kronwall and Jimmy Howard to keep having to explain one-goal losses. The team plays hard, but they just do not have the talent it takes to win regularly.

Ultimately, I maintain the best scenario for them is to come up a goal short most games and miss the playoffs. Beyond franchise defense prospect Rasmus Dahlin, the 2018 draft is heavy on high-end defensemen and high-scoring forwards. The Wings will only regain competitiveness via drafting and developing, as they did to emerge from the “Dead Wings” era – they drafted Steve Yzerman, Nicklas Lidstrom and Sergei Fedorov, the three core building blocks for the resurgence. At the same time, players and the coaching staff should want to make the playoffs. It’s important especially for the development of the young players that good habits are maintained, that the Wings continue to push.

That efforts will go unrewarded is pretty clear. The Wings haven’t been able to string together more than one four-game winning streak all season, and they’re off to an 0-2 start as they’ve embarked on a stretch of playing 11 road games in March. They’re not gaining any ground, and there are four teams between the Wings and a wild-card spot. Points-wise, the picture is bleak. Last season, Nashville got into the playoffs as an eighth seed with 94 points. The Wings have 62 points with 18 games remaining. Even if 90 points gets a team into the playoffs this spring, that would require the Wings to bank 28 points over 18 games. Cue Vizzini exclaiming “inconceivable” – this time the word means what he thinks it means.

St. James continues:

Also of Red Wings, Griffins and Walleye-related note:


 

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George Malik

My name is George Malik, and I'm the Malik Report's editor/blogger/poster. I have been blogging about the Red Wings since 2006, when MLive hired me to work their SlapShots blog, and I joined Kukla's Korner in 2011 as The Malik Report. I'm starting The Malik Report as a stand-alone site, hoping that having my readers fund the website is indeed the way to go to build a better community and create better content.