August gloom and doom

I’m gonna be honest, I don’t appreciate pessimism in August, and Detroit Hockey Now’s Kevin Allen suggests that the Red Wings should also be preparing for “Five Worst-Case Scenarios” that will prevent the team from making the playoff cut.

We all know that the Red Wings still need another top-six forward and another top-four defenseman, ideally speaking…

But between the lack of free agency targets and the high price of the trade market this summer, Detroit hasn’t been able to address their biggest needs.

As such, the players going to training camp next month are going to have to give it their all and then some in order to improve their record during the upcoming 2025-2026 season.

Still, Allen is already preparing us for a playoff-less spring, and his scenarios for doom include the following:

Gibson Doesn’t Deliver

The Red Wings didn’t land the big-name offensive player they hoped to find in the free agent marketplace. And they didn’t get a chance to bid on Aaron Ekblad because he took less to stay in Florida. GM Steve Yzerman undoubtedly counting on Gibson to be the goalie he was early in his career, maybe like he was in the four-season run from 2015-16 t0 2018-19 when he posted save percentages of .920, .924, .926 and .924. It would be disastrous if was the sub-.900 goalie he was in 2022-23 and 2023-24.

I’m definitely worried that the 32-year-old Gibson might not be able to regain his form, but the Red Wings have gone through so many goaltenders who were supposed to be “the answer in the crease” over the past couple of seasons that I’m just not that concerned as to whether things work out at this point…

And I’m just confused about this one:

ASP Needs a Year in Grand Rapids

Axel Sandin Pellikka has a chance to be a special puck-moving defenseman. The outside hope is he makes the team in training camp, but the likely scenario is he joins the Griffins for 25 games. But it may turn out he needs a full season. That would certainly be discouraging for the fan base. There’s excitement over this youngster.  They need some hope.

The state of the Red Wings’ defensive corps is not earth-stoppingly good, but if Axel Sandin Pellikka needs a full season in Grand Rapids, and/or Michael Brandsegg-Nygard joins him, that’s called development time, not disaster.

Allen offers more doom, including an injury to one of Dylan Larkin, Lucas Raymond or Moritz Seider, a struggling power play, and a struggling penalty kill, but at this point, it just all pisses me off.

I’m gonna be honest again: at this time of year, NO TEAM comes to training camp expecting to be golfing in April. These are all competitive, proud professional athletes, and from Anaheim to Detroit to Winnipeg and everywhere in between, players believe that they’re going to make it this year.

The suggestion that Detroit and its fan base should just prepare for the worst and accept defeat before the season begins tremendously disagrees with my at least somewhat optimistic belief system, and it plain old rubs me the wrong way.

If you’re a gloom-and-doomy fan, that’s your business. I’m not going to tell you how to approach the team-and-fan marriage that is sports fandom. But this much negativity a month before training camp strikes me as a little bit lazy in terms of its level of discussion.