The Athletic’s Sean McIndoe offers his “Weekend NHL Rankings,” and this morning, part of his column addresses the Red Wings’ successes of late:
Detroit Red Wings — OK, now that they’ve finally lost a game, let’s regroup and see where this team is really at.
Saturday’s loss to the Lightning snapped a seven-game win streak and left the Wings with a mark of 15-5-1 under Todd McLellan. That’s still an excellent record, obviously, and it’s been enough to get them into the last wild-card spot. It’s been an impressive climb — when the win streak started on Jan. 23, they were 14th in the conference, five points out of a playoff spot. When McLellan took over, they were 15th, and eight points back. To cover all that ground and pass all those teams in just six weeks is an impressive feat.
But it still leaves them in a precarious spot, setting up a second half in which every point will be crucial. And for our purposes, it makes them a tough team to evaluate. The pessimist’s view is they’re a mediocre team that got hot for just long enough to barely climb into a wild-card spot. Every team has a win streak at some point, and while those wins count as much as any other, regression arrives eventually. When it does, these Wings will revert back to being what they’ve been for a few years now — a wild-card bubble team that ends up falling short.
The optimist’s case is McLellan, and the fact his arrival coincides with the best six weeks this team has played in years, isn’t some random quirk. This is his team now, and he’s unlocked something here. Derek Lalonde had sucked the life out of this group, and McLellan brought it back. Maybe they won’t play at a 120-point pace for the rest of the year, but we shouldn’t worry about anything that happened in the pre-McLellan era. And if you buy that, the Wings are going to roll to a playoff spot.
Of course, you could also be boring and say the truth is somewhere in the middle. That might be good enough for Wings fans, who haven’t seen a playoff game since 2016 and might figure an underdog run as a wild card would be good enough for this season especially given how it started. But at least they can spend the break hoping for something more, as unlikely as it seems.
Continued; you know where I stand on this.
I don’t care whether the Red Wings actually make the playoffs. I just want them to be in the playoff mix for the balance of the regular season. To simply be competing for a playoff spot going into the final 5 games of the season would be quite the feat given how badly things went under coach Lalonde, and it would be a testament to how much they might be able to accomplish under a full year of coach McLellan’s stewardship.
As far as the pessimist’s view is concerned, I roll my eyes a bit at The Athletic’s company line regarding the Red Wings being nothing more than a mediocre team, and I suppose that the cynic does hold that view.
Therein lies the rub: I believe that it is incredibly important in life to be skeptical of everything, but to not become cynical, because I find cynicism to be an unhealthy state of mind.
