Detroit Red Wings Desperately Need a Stephen Weiss Comeback in 2014-15

It would be a stretch to say that the Detroit Red Wings' 2014-15 season hinges on Stephen Weiss. One player does not make a team, and that’s particularly true when the player in question isn’t even a first-line forward for the club.

However, Stephen Weiss has it in his power to make life either significantly easier for Detroit or much, much harder.

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Detroit took a chance when they signed Weiss as a free agent in July 2013. The veteran pivot was coming off a difficult year in Florida, one where the combination of a lockout and a wrist injury limited him to just 17 contests. However, for years prior he’d had a reputation as a reliable two-way pivot for the Panthers. The Red Wings decided that there was a good chance he’d bounce back and awarded him a five-year contract with an average annual value just south of $5.0 million.

The results in year one were disastrous. Weiss was dogged by injury all season long, eventually appearing in only 26 games for Detroit; in those 26 games he managed just four points and by the Corsi numbers he was lit up like a Christmas tree despite playing soft minutes (weaker opposition, lots of shifts starting in the offensive zone).

Weiss, regrettably for the Wings, didn’t provide the team with even replacement-level play last season; Detroit would have done just as well to scratch him for 26 games and call up the top guy on their minor league depth chart. Obviously, that needs to change; there isn’t a team in the NHL that can afford to spend $4.9 million per season on a guy who simply isn’t playing NHL-caliber hockey.

Beyond that, the stakes are actually more significant for the Red Wings. Last season’s team barely squeaked into the playoffs, and already the Wings are beset with problems:

With two veteran scorers—one of them a centre—struggling through injury before the season is even a day old, Detroit needs some good news up front. If Weiss can be the player they thought he was when they signed him, it would ease the load significantly.

That’s where we run into more bad news for Detroit. The Stephen Weiss the team thought it was signing, that two-way guy who can play tough minutes and triumph, hasn’t existed in some time. The underlying numbers tell much of the story:

Season	% played	QC Rk.	Zone Start	Corsi Rel.	5v5 PTS/60
2008-09	95.1	1	45.5	12.4	2.06
2009-10	97.6	1	47.0	10.6	1.76
2010-11	92.7	2	47.6	0.1	1.43
2011-12	97.6	2	55.6	-2.2	1.88
2012-13	35.4	2	57.4	-15.5	0.51
2013-14	31.7	15	58.6	-17.5	0.38

Those numbers tell the story of three different players:

• The guy from 2008-10 is the guy who earned Weiss’ reputation. He missed very few games, took on tough opposition while starting a bunch of shifts in the defensive end, yet still managed to post solid scoring numbers and dramatically outperform the team Corsi rate.
• Weiss’s play dropped off in his late 20s, even before injury hit. His scoring totals fell a bit (particularly in 2010-11), but more critically his relative Corsi imploded. This is especially bad because Weiss played for such a lousy team; a good player really should be outperforming the Florida Panthers of these years.
• Then there’s the guy we’ve seen for the last two season, injured Weiss. Injured Weiss is not a good player by NHL standards; he isn’t even really a player period by NHL standards. In these seasons he’s getting lapped offensively by people like Drew Miller and Joakim Andersson and getting crushed on the shot clock.

If Weiss can get back to being the Weiss of old, the Wings will be laughing, but it seems a tall order; it’s been half a decade since that guy’s been seen. If he can be the player he was later in his Florida career, he can help; he’ll be a useful top-nine forward who can score a little bit and be trusted in most situations. He might not be worth his contract, but he’ll be a guy that Mike Babcock can get some use out of.

If he can’t get back to even that level, Detroit will have little choice but to buy him out, and the quest for the playoffs in 2015 will suffer yet another blow.

Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work. Stats courtesy of Behindthenet.ca; salary information via CapGeek.com.