The Hockey News’s Michael Whitaker adds a few new quips from Red Wings forward Alex DeBrincat, as delivered during the NHL’s Player Media Tour in Las Vegas this week:
“I think we have a majority of our team coming back,” DeBrincat said at the NHL/NHLPA North American Player Media Tour. “Obviously Kaner is gone, but we got a couple of additions that will really help us out. Going into the year, we’re looking essentially the same as last year.”
The Red Wings signed Viktor Arvidsson, who scored 25 goals with the Boston Bruins last season, on the opening day of free agency. They also acquired hard-nosed forward Keegan Kolesar and signed backup goaltender Daniil Tarasov.
Last season, Detroit lost what was a comfortable points cushion entering the month of March for the third consecutive year; they’re now mired in the NHL’s longest active postseason drought.
For DeBrincat, the new campaign represents a chance to correct the mistakes that have plagued them during critical times in previous seasons.
“I think it’s a fresh start, we can get our mindset and get confident again and learn from our mistakes last year, I think that’s the biggest thing,” he said. “We made too many mistakes late in the season, and it ended up costing us. But the first 60-75 percent of the season was really good; we were right at the top, but we just fell off a cliff. Try and get back that confident side of the game and hopefully not go through that same lull.”
Continued with a bit of Patrick Kane talk…
And it’s hard to deny from an outside perspective that the Wings aren’t quite the same team without #88.
I am more optimistic than most about Detroit’s ability to get its shit together and battle for a Wild Card spot, but I’m not so blind a partisan as to suggest that it’s going to be easy for the team to rise above “mediocre” and in to playoff-worthy form.
