The Athletic’s Max Bultman offers 10 Thoughts about the Red Wings after 10 games this morning, and several of his observations involve Tuesday night’s 3-0 loss to Montreal, and some involve the schedule ahead:
The big question coming out of these first 10 games is which team represents the real Red Wings? Is it the shot-blocking, willing-to-fight-for-each-other team that showed up against Tampa Bay, Washington, Vancouver and Florida? Or is it the flat-footed group that has now reared its head twice against the Canadiens?
All fall, we’ve known Detroit would be playing with thin margins, especially without Jakub Vrana. And losing Bertuzzi for those games in Montreal cannot be ignored; he’s a tone-setting player, and losing him surely factors into the Red Wings’ 0-3 results in Canada thus far. But his absence was far from the only reason the Red Wings came up short, and now the question shifts to which Detroit team will show up more often.
It’s hard (frankly, impossible) to play the way the Red Wings want to play for 82 straight games in the regular season. So, slip-ups and off nights are to be expected. And by and large, Detroit has seemed to make legitimate progress from last year to this one.
I buy that it can win games by being resilient and hard to play against, and I’m increasingly sold that Seider and Raymond can keep making big impacts (even if I think the point production is destined to slow down a bit soon).
Bultman continues (paywall), noting that the Red Wings have 11 more games to play between now and U.S. Thanksgiving on November 25th. 10 of those games will be played over the course of 17 nights, and we’re definitely going to know a lot more about the Red Wings by the 20th.
