Of Red Wings-related note this morning:
- As you might expect, The Athletic’s Harman Dayal mentions the Red Wings among 8 teams that “could be stuck in the NHL’s ‘mushy middle‘”…
Detroit Red Wings: The Red Wings have arrived as a team that should consistently be in the playoff mix. I’m not sure if they’ve improved enough this summer to actually win one of the final wild-card spots, but they’re at least in the race, just like last season when they were one point away from getting in.
That’s crucial, positive progress.
However, the path for Detroit to take the more meaningful leap to Cup contender status looks difficult over the next three seasons.
For starters, Detroit lacks a true superstar or two, especially at forward. The Red Wings’ prospect pool is exceptionally deep, but the likes of Nate Danielson and Marco Kasper aren’t projected to become stars.
In net, the Red Wings look shaky with none of Cam Talbot, Alex Lyon or Ville Husso inspiring much confidence. They’re in good shape long-term as Sebastian Cossa and Trey Augustine are excellent goaltending prospects, but goalies often take a long time to develop and hit their NHL peak.
Cap-wise, Husso and Petry will come off the books next summer which will free up additional room to bolster the roster for 2025-26. However, they are still hampered by Andrew Copp, Justin Holl and to a lesser extent Ben Chiarot’s contracts.
Big picture, the Red Wings have a bright future. They have a ton of quality prospects on the horizon, with an especially strong long-term outlook on the back end (Simon Edvinsson and Axel Sandin-Pellikka stand out) and in goal. Detroit can eventually become a Cup contender, but because of how long it can take prospects to develop and hit their prime, that doesn’t seem like a probable outcome within the next three seasons.
Continued (paywall); we’re at a point where the Red Wings are believed to be a one-line, no-defense team, and they’re just going to have to continue to prove their critics wrong as they’re written off over the next couple of weeks;
2. And Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff notes that the Red Wings’ rebuilding effort was hampered by the inability of the Ken Holland-Tyler Wright drafting regime’s ability to land a significant number of prospects through the draft:
A study of a decade of NHL drafting succinctly displays exactly how little Steve Yzerman was left to work with upon his arrival as GM of the Detroit Red Wings in 2019.
The study, conducted by Josh Beneteau, a writer for Canadian all-sports network Sportsnet, breaks down every draft selection made between 2010-19. Teams are ranked based upon what percentage of the players they drafted during this time period wound up playing at least 200 NHL games. That would basically be the equivalent of three NHL seasons.
Based upon this research, the Red Wings slot in among Tier 4 of NHL teams. That means more than 15%, but less than 20% of the players they drafted during this decade would spend 200 or more games skating in the NHL.
Interestingly, during this time period, only the Chicago Blackhawks (76) would be making more draft selections than the 73 chosen by Detroit. However, just like the lottery, having more tickets than everyone else really isn’t going to significantly increase your chances of hitting a winner.
Continued; drafting is not an exact science by any means in the NHL, but the Red Wings swung for the fences and missed consistently both just before and after then-director of amateur scouting Joe McDonnell left with Jim Nill for Dallas.
After that, the Wings kept trying to maximize the number of draft picks they could gather, but they very rarely seemed to hit on actual players like Dylan Larkin, Tyler Bertuzzi or Filip Hronek.
There’s no guarantee that the Red Wings’ current crop of prospects will pan out, either, but there appears to be a much better chance of the Nate Danielsons, Marco Kaspers and Axel Sandin Pellikkas to develop into strong players (even if they’re not superstars).
That being said, the push out of the “mushy middle” starts now, with the players the Red Wings have on their roster (Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider included).
The garbage about the Wings not really having an NHL team yet is “preseason talk,” but there’s no doubt that the Wings didn’t really re-stock their cupboard of young players until Kris Draper and Steve Yzerman came along, and that has put the team at a disadvantage.
Now it’s a matter of slowly affording the Wings’ younger players chances to earn lineup spots over the next couple of seasons, while remaining relevant–if only to themselves–as the Wings look to take the next steps toward becoming a playoff team.
