EP Rinkside’s Ryan Lambert is anything but a fan of the Detroit Red Wings, so his take on the direction of the Detroit Red Wings (in Lambert’s latest “Take Town” column) is not necessarily surprising:
Continue reading Turning on the screwI mostly like what the Red Wings did this summer, but the improvements are largely marginal. If they were trying to go from a wild-card team to top-three in the division, you could see the thinking. But the point is that they went from finishing lower than a rather bad Washington Capitals team that lucked into the playoffs, and it’s hard to see how they take a step back into the postseason with the changes they made so far this summer.
For instance, cleared a bunch of cap space and then kinda mostly didn’t use it. I would argue they made their blue line worse in giving away Jake Walman and letting Shayne Gostisbehere walk, and only replacing them with Erik Gustafsson (a player I quite like). They somewhat surprisingly brought back Patrick Kane and added Vladimir Tarasenko, which should juice the offence a bit. But the thing those signings are most likely to do is not necessarily juice the offence but rather make the offence slightly more sustainable.