A Sunday night win over lowly (but still a division rival) Buffalo might be a nice, but brief distraction from the recent struggles of the Detroit Red Wings. Another home loss to division foe Ottawa on Saturday, cost Detroit points against a sub .500 opponent and their star center Pavel Datsyuk.
Datsyuk took a cheap shot from Jared Cowan Saturday night that left the Russian star a tad woozy. Kept out of the Buffalo tilt for “precautionary reasons”, Cowan was neither penalized on the play nor disciplined by the NHL. Detroit’s next game is Wednesday night against the rugged Bruins from Boston.
While I would rather see Datsyuk rest until he is 100%, the Red Wings certainly can’t afford to miss him at both ends of the ice. Captain Henrik Zetterberg leads Detroit in overall scoring, but Datsyuk leads in goals, face-offs and is generally regarded as the better defensive center of the two. Detroit looked a little sluggish without their shifty center on Sunday, escaping Buffalo with the win, but they’ll need him at full strength to keep pace with the rest of the Atlantic Division.
With four total wins in the last 12 games, Detroit should consider itself lucky to still be sitting in the middle of their division.
With teams like Buffalo, Florida and Ottawa playing so poorly, the Wings find themselves in the middle of the early playoff picture and actually only sit three points behind the Bruins for first place.
After Zetterberg and Datsyuk, Detroit has no other players above five goals scored through the first 24 games. Hockeytown, once a land that overflowed with offense, has only the “Eurotwins” as regular offensive contributors.
The two big offseason acquisitions Daniel Alfredsson and Stephen Weiss have been disappointing to say the least (combined five goals and 12 assists), and the defensive lapses from the blue line seem to be happening with far more regularity this season.
Sadly Detroit looks like the team we expected to see last season when Nicklas Lidstrom retired. A lot was expected from veterans Niklas Kronwall, Jonathan Ericsson and Kyle Quincey and the result was the fifth overall defense in the NHL. This season, only Kronwall has been reliable with Ericsson hit or miss and Quincey becoming a major liability.
The shuffling of young defensemen into the lineup included Danny DeKeyser, Jakub Kindl, Brendan Smith, Brian Lashoff, Adam Almqvist and Xavier Ouellet.
Kindl, Smith, and DeKeyser can be counted among the regulars to coach Mike Babcock’s lineup, but with DeKeyser (shoulder) out for about three weeks, Smith and Lashoff will need to step into the second defensive unit.
In goal Jimmy Howard is the beneficiary, or victim, of the porous defense.
Howard is putting up numbers that make his backup, Jonas Gustavsson look like a Vezina Trophy candidate.
The normally reliable Howard through 18 games has only 5 wins. I count an overtime loss as a loss, so 5-13 for Howard just won’t get it done in a division that has five playoff teams from 2013.
So the big question is: How can the Detroit Red Wings save their season? The short answer is to stay the course. Detroit has survived a brutal losing streak that was ripe with bad bounces and some really terrible misfortune. Even as the losses piled up for the Wings they managed to stay in the top half of the division.
No shows from Johan Franzen, Alfredsson, Weiss and basically everyone else on offense has put an unfair burden on the stars, Datsyuk and Zetterberg. The flip side of that is that if Datsyuk and Zetterberg slow down, whom else is there to step up? The goals will come. The talent is already on the roster. The formula is simple: keep shooting the puck and eventually the goals will follow.
The biggest opportunity is on the blue line. DeKeyser will return and slide into the second pairing alongside Kindl. Kyle Quincey, pack your bags. You are heading to waivers my friend. As a 10-year veteran, we have seen all that we will ever see from Quincey. Poor decision making, awful positioning and a negative physical presence from a 6’2 210 pound player are no a liability. If Detroit wants to keep Smith and Lashoff on the roster, they need to be paired with solid, fundamentally correct rear guards that make good decisions.
Jimmy Howard will be fine when he isn’t being left out to dry by bad decisions and odd-man rushes. Can he improve? Certainly, and the answer is to give some of his starts to Gustavsson. Two years ago I never would have suggested such a thing, but “The Monster” has proven his worth to me so far. Not only will one start a week rest Howard for a playoff push, but also Babcock can use Gustavsson to really push his starter.
In the end, patience is all that Detroit fans need. The Red Wings will be just fine, and the playoff streak will continue. Let’s all remember back in April when the doomsday Hockeytown “fans” decided that they were okay with their team missing the playoffs for the first time in 22 years. That team pushed the Stanley Cup Champions to seven games. This team will be better, just not yet.