The Red Wings hit the 20-game mark in last night’s 2-1 OT loss to the Arizona Coyotes, and, at 8-9-and-3, I’d suggest this much:
In terms of progress when compared to last year’s team, the Red Wings are one game short of where I expected them to be–at NHL-level .500–and 4 games short of where I hope they finish this season, at .500, overtime and shootout losses included.
As stated in the HSJ post, the Red Wings got to the 20-game mark earlier than any other team in the NHL not named the Montreal Canadiens, and the vast majority of the NHL’s teams have played between 14 and 18 games, not 20 over the course of 37 nights, as coach Blashill told Bally Sports Detroit’s Trevor Thompson last night.
The last stretch has been particularly difficult for the Wings in terms of the ratio of games vs. practices–the Wings played 11 times in 17 nights–and as the Wings aren’t very good on the road, you and I could probably see the team’s 0-3-and-1 stint away from Little Caesars Arena (over a stretch of 4 games played in 6 nights) coming.
Long story long, for this year’s Wings team, going 0-3-and-1 on the road is unacceptable, and there’s a lot of room for improvement as we look for this year’s Wings to at least hit .500, if not exceed it, but those kinds of expectations not being met by a total of a “lost week” ain’t bad, in my opinion.
This is a very long way of leading into The Athletic’s Max Bultman’s take on the Wings’ status at the “quarter pole” as being a sign that this year’s team isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, star rookies named Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider included:
Continue reading Bultman in the morning: is the ‘shine’ off the Wings, or do we need to see more pluck from this turkey of a team?