Pro Hockey Talk’s Adam Gretz weighed in on the state of the “Red Wings’ decline” as a preface to this week’s power rankings, and if you were wondering what the “outsiders” think of what’s going on in Detroit right now, here’s what Gretz thinks of the post-2009 Red Wings:
The team was clearly starting to descend down the mountain. That descent has now turned into a complete collapse, and they may have hit rock bottom over the past couple of weeks.
At least for this season. Who knows how much deeper this can go in future seasons. After being systematically dismantled by Nathan MacKinnon and the Colorado Avalanche on Sunday, the Red Wings enter the week having lost 10 games in a row, have one of the worst records in the NHL, and just look … bad.
The most concerning thing of all, though, is that this is not just a bad team this season, it is one of the oldest teams in the NHL, one of the most expensive teams in the NHL, and 15 of the players on the roster are under contract for next season with more than $58 million in cap space committed to them.
Even worse: Who on this team is a player that can be the centerpiece of any sort of a rebuild or offer legitimate hope for the future?
Dylan Larkin is still only 21 years old and has shown flashes of being an impact player at various times in his young career. But he has also 23 goals … over the past two years. Anthony Mantha and Andreas Athanasiou look like they could be useful players, but they are not franchise building blocks. Gustav Nyquist is going to be 29 next season and has topped 50 points once in his career. There is not one player on the defense right now that is under the age of 27 and other than Mike Green all of them are signed through at least next season.
Detroit Red Wings: Four key forwards to the Red Wings’ rebuild are Dylan Larkin, Anthony Mantha, Andreas Athanasiou and Tyler Bertuzzi. In the Red Wings 0-9-1 losing streak, Larkin has three points and is minus-7; Athanasiou has three points and is minus-3; Mantha has five points and is minus-6; and Bertuzzi has seven points and is minus-four.
Petr Mrazek’s eyes lit up and he showed a wide smile each time he was asked about his old team. He wants the revenge game against the Detroit Red Wings on Tuesday. What he did Sunday night, getting a win that dramatically changed the Flyers’ playoff outlook, probably earned him the opportunity.
“It’s gonna be nice to be back but when the game starts, it doesn’t matter who is on the other side,” Mrazek said. “We are going there to get some good result and we have to go from there. It’s gonna be nice to be back in the town where I spent my first five or six NHL years.”
On Feb. 19 the Flyers traded for Mrazek. Detroit retained half of his salary and in return the Flyers gave a draft pick in 2018 and an additional pick in 2019 if Mrazek re-signs in Philly.
The initial pick was a fourth-rounder that becomes a third-rounder if Mrazek wins five regular-season games and the Flyers make the playoffs. The first condition was met with Sunday’s 6-3 win over Washington. It could become as high as a second if the Flyers make the Eastern Conference finals and Mrazek has six playoff wins.
Detroit, in rebuild mode, is hungry for draft picks and the conditions of the trade was their a showing of hope in Mrazek, who disappointed over the last couple years for the Red Wings. Upon his leaving town, it was clear that rumors of poor work ethic and attitude rubbed the organization the wrong way.
“Sometimes there’s things that I think about certain situations I can’t tell you people,” GM Ken Holland told reporters in Detroit. “I don’t think it’s fair to all the people involved.”
Isaac continues, and let’s just state what Holland intimated at his Mrazek presser: it is highly likely that Mrazek felt entitled to the #1 goaltender’s job, and Ken Holland has very specifically and very repeatedly said that he “doesn’t believe in entitlement.”
After the Wings anointed Mrazek their #1 goaltender, and told Howard that he’d be the back-up, Mrazek got a big contract, had a rough 2016-17 campaign, and pissed off management along the way, thus being exposed during the expansion draft.
It certainly appears that Holland accommodated Mrazek’s desire to exit the situation, and Mrazek himself suggested as much after he was traded…
So neither party was happy, and it’s probably better that Petr’s where Petr is now.
As in Detroit, Mrazek has been inconsistent in his brief time with the Flyers, going 5-5-1 with a 3.14 goals-against average and an .888 save percentage. Rookie Alex Lyon, who is coming off Saturday’s 4-2 win in Carolina, is the other option for Tuesday’s game, but coach Dave Hakstol is expected to go with the more experienced Mrazek.
When he was traded, Mrazek said he realized right away that the Flyers had one more game in Detroit.
“It’s gonna be nice to get back, but when the game starts, it doesn’t matter who is on the other side,” Mrazek said. “We are going there to get some good results, and we have to build from there.”
After losing seven of eight games, the Flyers regrouped nicely over the weekend, winning in Carolina and whipping Washington. They sit in third place in the Metropolitan Division with nine games left.
Next they face a reeling Detroit team that is out of the playoff picture and has lost 10 straight, during which it has been outscored, 41-19. The Red Wings have allowed four goals or more in eight of their last nine games.
“It’s gonna be nice to be back in the town where I spent my first five or six years in the NHL, but now it’s the opposite [side],” Mrazek said. “It’s gonna be fun.”
A team suffering through a losing streak sometimes feels like it just can’t get any bounces to go its way. The Red Wings experienced that in the third period against Los Angeles, when we saw one of the strangest goals of the year take a terrible, unlucky bounce against Detroit.
I thought the Red Wings deserved to win. They outplayed the Kings in almost every facet of the game. But again, they couldn’t solve Jonathan Quick, who made countless big saves to keep the game close.
And then the goal in the following clip happened midway through the third period to give the Kings the lead:
3. Of Twitter-related note, in the contest department…
Enter to win 2 tickets to the #RedWings regular season finale! Visit the Carhartt Detroit Store 5800 Cass Ave, or enter online by emailing –> drwsweepstakes@carhartt.com
1. I’m not a big fan of the theory that “tanking is good” for a franchise, and I don’t believe that the Red Wings are “throwing” games despite their 0-9-and-1 record of late. I truly believe that the Wings are just an incredibly, incredibly mediocre a team this season.
That being said, MLive’s Ansar Khan duly notes that the Red Wings’ odds of earning a high first-round draft pick are improving because the team is struggling so mightily, and Khan discusses the team’s imminent elimination from playoff contention as well:
If the Red Wings (26-35-11, 63 points) lose to the Philadelphia Flyers at Little Caesars Arena in any fashion (regulation, overtime or shootout), they’re out. Even if they win, they would be eliminated if New Jersey (37-26-8, 82 points) defeats San Jose.
This will mark the first time the Red Wings have missed the playoffs in consecutive seasons since they failed to qualify five years in a row from 1979 to 1983.
The good news: Their odds of winning the draft lottery, or least moving into the top three, are improving.
The Red Wings, during this skid, have dropped from 25th overall to 28th. If that’s where they finish they will have a 9.5 percent chance at landing the No. 1 pick and a 28.6 percent chance of getting into the top three. Those are estimates calculated by tankathon.com’s simulator. The NHL doesn’t release official lottery odds until after the regular season.
The 15-team draft lottery is a merciless business, and with the bouncing balls’ odds not even determined yet, any low-finishing team’s chances of dropping down in the draft lottery are higher than their chances of moving up.
No offense intended, folks, but just as players are hard-wired to try to win, I believe in rooting for wins, even if they’re incredibly elusive because the Wings just aren’t very good.
2. Speaking of mediocre, Petr Mrazek has played perhaps predictably streaky hockey for the Philadelphia Flyers of late.
Mrazek helped the Red Wings’ draft stead by backstopping Philadelphia to a 6-3 win over Washington on Sunday. Mrazek’s 5th win flipped the Wings’ compensation for Mrazek from a conditional 4th round pick to a 3rd-rounder, but it’s going to take a long shot for Mrazek to earn the Wings a 2nd round pick–he has to win at least 6 playoff games and the Flyers have to make the Eastern Conference Finals to trigger the 2nd-round pick…
“Well, it’s going to be nice to be back, but when the game starts it doesn’t matter who is on the other side,” Mrazek said. “We’re going there to get some good results, and we have to go from there. But it’s going to be nice … to be back where I had five or six NHL years. It’s going to be fun. I am looking forward to it.”
As Parent notes, however, Mrazek’s play has been inconsistent:
Mrazek, acquired from Detroit when regular goalies Brian Elliott and Michal Neuvirth went down with injuries last month, won his first three Flyers starts but then swooned as his team suddenly went south.
As the Flyers went from a stretch of no regulation losses in 12 games to seven losses in their next eight games, Mrazek fell to 4-5-1 with a 3.15 goals-against average and .887 saves percentage as a Flyer.
After getting yanked for allowing four goals on 10 shots, Petr Mrazek knew he needed a good game. He was solid until one leaky goal at the end when Carlson scored on a backhand and Mrazek was slow to react.
“After the game against Columbus when you don’t finish the game you try to go into the next game with big confidence and build with that,” said Mrazek, who finished with 25 saves. “I tried from the beginning of the game to focus on the puck and get as many pucks as I could. That was a big first period for me and our team.”
More on Mrazek in Tuesday’s Courier-Post but have to wonder if part of the motivation on Sunday was that if he laid another egg he might not get a start Tuesday in Detroit against his former club. Detroit traded him to Philadelphia before the trade deadline and Sunday being his fifth win for the Flyers elevated the fourth-round pick the Flyers spent to a third rounder as long as the Flyers make the playoffs. Each time Mrazek was asked about returning to face the Red Wings, his eyes lit up and he smiled.
“It’s gonna be nice to be back but when the game starts, it doesn’t matter who is on the other side,” he said. “We are going there to get some good result and we have to go from there. It’s gonna be nice to be back in the town where I spent my first five or six NHL years.”
3. You may have noticed that the lip of Niklas Kronwall’s visor has slowly but steadily migrated from the tip of his nose to the center of his forehead again, despite the NHL’s new rule mandating that players wear their visors in front of their faces (see: Tyler Bertuzzi for a good example of visor compliance).
One interesting development on the visor front is that a handful of players with the option not to use them at all have since been granted dispensation to wear them in a manner not allowed by their younger colleagues. That list includes Detroit’s Niklas Kronwall, Arizona’s Niklas Hjalmarsson and Toronto’s Leo Komarov.
4. Finally, Alex Wood, a.k.a. AWood40 on Twitter and YouTube, has done a tremendous job of compiling Wings highlight videos over the years. This morning, he’s dug into the archives to post 33 of Vladimir Konstantinov’s 47 regular season goals, as well as Konstantinov’s 5 playoff markers:
In the ECHL, the Toledo Walleye “swept” their week’s workload of four road games by defeating the Cincinnati Cyclones 4-1. Christian Hilbrich scored 2 goals and added an assist, Pat Nagle stopped 26 of 27 shots and try-out Luke Nogard registered his first pro point via an assist.
#RedWings have lost 10 in a row (0-9-1), but at least there’s this: Petr Mrazek won his 5th game today for @NHLFlyers, so if Philly makes playoffs (they’re 8 points up on Florida), the 4th rounder Wings got turns into a 3rd.
Sunday saw Petr Mrazek won his fifth game since being traded to Philadelphia Flyers Feb. 19. As long as the Flyers make the playoffs — and that’s looking pretty safe as they have 85 points, good for third place in the Metropolitan Division — the 2018 conditional fourth-round pick the Wings received in the trade becomes a third-round pick.
That would give the Wings three picks in the third round: their own, Pittsburgh’s (from the Scott Wilson trade) and Philadelphia’s. The Wings also have two first-round picks and two second-round picks, all of which may come within the first 40 selections.
The pick would improve to a second rounder if the Flyers advance to the Eastern Conference finals and Mrazek wins six playoff games.
Mrazek made 25 saves in the Flyers’ 6-3 victory over Washington on Sunday. Next up for the Flyers: A date Tuesday at Little Caesars Arena against the Red Wings, who have lost 10 straight.
The Detroit Red Wings tried to snap an 0-8-and-1 losing streak against the surging Colorado Avalanche on Sunday afternoon. Colorado had won 6 of their past 10 going into Sunday’s game, and the Avs had earned points in 9 of 10 games.
Detroit displayed good efforts for portions of a 5-1 loss. The Wings gave up a 3-0 lead over the course of the first 31:14, but Detroit played much better during the second half of the 2nd period and until the Avs scored their 4-1 goal in the 3rd, with the Red Wings playing honest-to-goodness dominant hockey for about a period. The Wings just couldn’t or wouldn’t score on Semyon Varlamov, and Jared Coreau was not spectacular by any means, but he got no support whatsoever as Nathan MacKinnon and company steamrolled the Wings.
Disturbingly, Henrik Zetterberg and Gustav Nyquist–arguably the best players of late on the team’s best line of late–were -4, and Bertuzzi and Ericsson were -3.
Detroit will head home at 0-9-and-1 over their past 10 games, hoping to beat Petr Mrazek’s Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday and the Washington Capitals on Thursday before heading out to play games in Toronto (Saturday) and Montreal (Monday the 26th).
Via the Free Press’s Kirkland Crawford, the NCAA Division I hockey tournament’s playoff seeds are set, and three teams will be of interest to Michigan hockey fans, for various reasons:
Bracket with game times and broadcast channels.
All games will also be available through WatchESPN. pic.twitter.com/KIFpFLm1GX
In the “local team” category, Michigan Technological University will battle Notre Dame on Friday, March 23rd at 3 PM EDT on ESPN2, representing the “East” bracket;
The University of Michigan will battle Northeastern University on Saturday, March 24th at 4:30 PM on ESPNews, representing the Northeast Division;
And Red Wings prospect Kasper Kotkansalo’s Boston University Terriers will also represent the Northeast Division, playing against Cornell on Saturday, March 24th at 1 PM on ESPNews.
1. ColoradoAvalanche.com’s Scott MacDonald filed a Wings-Avs preview ahead of today’s game between the teams (3 PM EDT on FSD/Altitude/97.1 FM). Among MacDonald’s notes:
Last Time They Met
The Avalanche took on the Red Wings on Nov. 19 and skated out of Little Caesers Arena with a 4-3 overtime victory. Despite falling 3-1 midway through the third period, Colorado battled back and tied the game with less than a minute remaining to force overtime. Nathan MacKinnon notched the winning tally in the extra frame and Carl Soderberg, Nail Yakupov and Erik Johnson each netted a goal of their own to secure the win. Tyson Barrie tallied two helpers in the win and Jonathan Bernier made 21 saves to help his team to victory.
On Saturday, the Iowa Wild did their best to dent the Griffins’ playoff hopes, and they did so by scoring with 16 seconds remaining in regulation, winning 2-1 over the Griffins. Again, the Griffins’ website posted a recap;
