Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff examines the Red Wings’ remaining 27-game schedule from, well, the pessimist’s viewpoint:
Detroit’s final five regular-season games include four road games – a pair of back to to backs – sandwiched around a home date against the Dallas Stars. The Red Wings have lost eight in a row and 11 of the last 12 games in which they’ve faced the Stars.
As for the road games, Detroit goes to Florida (April 10) and Tampa Bay (April 11). The Wings finish up with games at New Jersey (April 16) and Toronto (April 17).
They’ve lost seven of their last nine visits to face the reigning Stanley Cup champion Panthers. They’ve also lost 20 of the last 24 trips to meet the Lightning on the road.
Detroit is riding a two-game losing streak at New Jersey. In Toronto, the Wings do show three wins in their last four visits, but just four victories in the last 14 road games facing the Maple Leafs.
Quite correctly, the Red Wings point out that since Todd McLellan took over as coach, they’ve slayed some mighty dragons. The Red Wings won against all four current division leaders. There was a home victory over Washington (Metropolitan) and road triumphs at Edmonton (Pacific), Winnipeg (Central) and Florida (Atlantic).
“I think that the way we look at it is we’ve been two different teams so far,” Detroit forward Andrew Copp said. “One before Christmas and one after Christmas, and the one after Christmas has played really good and beaten a lot of top teams in the league. Going to Winnipeg, you win that. Going to Edmonton, win that. Washington, we beat at home. So those are three of the top teams in the league that we beat.”
Detroit’s mettle has been tested and it’s shown no signs of fatigue. It will be tested again over the final 27 games of the season, and certainly down that final five-game stretch.
