The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn, Harman Dayal and Shayna Goldman offer an in-depth Red Wings season preview this morning, suggesting per Luszczyszyn’s predictive “model” that the Wings will finish 27th or 28th in the league, with 85-87 points:
The best case: 103 points
Everything gets settled with Larkin. Raymond, Emmitt Finnie, Edvinsson and Sandin-Pellikka all take the next steps, and this team makes it through the month of March without crashing out. Detroit finally returns to the playoffs.
The worst case: 73 points
The Larkin situation lingers and drags this team down. Raymond struggles to hit the next level. Seider gets crushed by his workload and has no support on the back end. It’s another wasted, glum season in Detroit.
The bottom line
With a core of Seider, Raymond, DeBrincat, Edvinsson and solid goaltending, the Red Wings will be icing a competitive team regardless of how the Larkin situation unfolds. However, the club’s depth looks like a potentially insurmountable bottleneck again, and it’s stuck in the ridiculously stacked Atlantic Division, which means there’s a good chance that the NHL’s longest playoff drought continues for another year.
Continued (paywall)
