Complete Preview for the Detroit Red Wings' 2014-15 Season
The summer of 2014 has been an odd one for Detroit, defined less by the team’s actions than by what hasn’t happened.
One of the Red Wings' big offseason goals was to acquire a significant right-shooting defenceman to give their back end a different look. They struck out and ended up bringing back Kyle Quincey instead.
“We had hoped to sign a right-shooting D-man,” Wings general manager Ken Holland told Red Wings beat writer Chuck Pleiness. “We made offers, but for a variety of reasons they chose elsewhere to go. That’s the reality of the cap world. There are a lot of reasons why players go in different directions.”
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Head coach Mike Babcock’s name has figured heavily in speculative discussions over the summer. His contract is up at the end of the year, and Detroit hasn’t allowed AHL head coach Jeff Blashill—widely seen as the club’s Plan B—to interview for NHL jobs. Babcock himself told MLive.com’s Ansar Khan he wouldn’t negotiate during the season, but said he wasn’t worried about the lack of an extension.
“I've said this and no one believes me,” he said. “I have a real good relationship with the general manager and I'm real confident in my own ability and confident in the ability he has to put together a team—we'll find a way to work something out over time.”
That hasn’t stopped the rumour mill from imagining Babcock somewhere else, such as Toronto, however far-fetched it is that he’d leave Detroit. And it isn’t just behind the bench that things are unsettled.
If Daniel Alfredsson plays anywhere, he’ll play with the Red Wings, but he still isn’t under contract and back troubles have cost him training camp time.
With the Red Wings coming off a somewhat disappointing season, an unsettled summer has not done much to calm fans nervous about Detroit’s future.
What We Learned in 2013-14
Most pundits seem to have taken the wrong lesson from Detroit’s 2013-14 season. The Red Wings barely squeaked into the playoffs and were quickly dispatched by Boston in the first round, but despite popular narrative this wasn’t the season of a team nearing the end of the line.
A glance at the team’s regular-season scoring chart tells much of the story. There are still veterans near the top, but 25-year-old Gustav Nyquist slots in higher than Henrik Zetterberg and 23-year-old Tomas Tatar comes in one spot ahead of Pavel Datsyuk, who'll miss the start of the season due to his shoulder injury. Riley Sheahan and Tomas Jurco were pressed into service for more limited periods; both fared well.
It’s not that the veterans are done, simply that in a year in which injuries visited the Red Wings like plagues upon the Egyptians, the younger players were thrown into serious competition.
If anything, that’s the encouraging sign. It still isn’t clear that Detroit’s time as a high-end NHL team won’t come to an end when Zetterberg and Datsyuk eventually leave, but the 2013-14 campaign demonstrated convincingly that the next wave of Red Wings include some very useful players, players who at the very least will be a solid supporting cast in the immediate future.
An eighth-place finish in the East wasn’t pretty, but in this case the standings lie. Detroit’s season was much more a year of rejuvenation than a campaign of decline.
Outlook for 2014-15
The question facing the Wings now is what to do with all of the players who showed so well last season. With veterans returning from injury, the Wings have the welcome dilemma (particularly at forward) of having too many useful players and not enough space for all of them.
There’s also very little room for an incoming wave of prospects. 6’5” Anthony Mantha scored 57 goals in 57 games in the QMJHL and may have deserved a look, but an injury will likely put the kibosh on that. Minor leaguers like Mitch Callahan and Landon Ferraro will probably be exposed to waivers, and guys like Teemu Pulkkinen, who still have a waiver exemption remaining, have minimal chance at sticking.
As it is, a deep team is already likely to risk someone on waivers:
| Henrik Zetterberg | Pavel Datsyuk | Daniel Alfredsson* |
| Johan Franzen | Riley Sheahan | Gustav Nyquist |
| Tomas Tatar | Darren Helm | Justin Abdelkader |
| Dan Cleary | Stephen Weiss | Tomas Jurco |
| Drew Miller | Luke Glendening | Joakim Andersson |
Assuming that Alfredsson signs, the Wings should have a pretty dynamic top line, and they always have the option of playing both Zetterberg and Datsyuk at centre if they want to make it difficult for the opposition to match lines against them.
There is pretty decent depth here, too. Sheahan filled in well last year on a scoring line ,and Helm and Abdelkader is an excellent duo to build a third line around. We’ve already discussed Detroit’s numbers in depth; there is no shortage of bodies for fourth-line minutes.
The X-factor is Weiss. The 2001 fourth overall pick has been injured and ineffective for much of the last two seasons, but he was always good for 50-60 points back when he played for the Panthers. If he can push Sheahan out of the No. 2 centre role it would be a massive boost for the Wings.
The defence is in good shape:
| Niklas Kronwall | Jonathan Ericsson | Jimmy Howard |
| Kyle Quincey | Danny DeKeyser* | Jonas Gustavsson |
| Brendan Smith | Jakub Kindl | Petr Mrazek |
| Brian Lashoff |
The top pairing is a cut below that of some of the NHL’s most powerful teams, but Kronwall and Ericsson have been an effective duo for the past two seasons, taking on top minutes while posting a combined 53.1 percent Corsi rating.
Outside of that duo, Quincey was brought back to lend a veteran hand to youngsters DeKeyser and Smith. That trio should provide the team with an adequate second pair plus a very strong No. 5 to anchor the third pairing.
Kindl and Lashoff round out the group; they aren’t anything special, but Detroit has an excellent selection of prospects rounding into form in the minors, and one or more of them may make their presence felt as early as this season.
In net, Howard is coming off the worst season of his career. It was so bad at points that Gustavsson, who chronically battles with the 0.900 save percentage plateau, was able to challenge him for time in the crease. Because 2013-14 was so far below Howard’s usual standards, there is good reason to believe he can bounce back.
If he doesn’t, it might not be Gustavsson coming after his job. Mrazek is arguably the second-best goalie in the system, and if Howard suffers an injury that takes him out for any length of time the young Czech could well supplant Gustavsson in the No. 2 slot.
Assuming the Red Wings manage to avoid the wave of injuries that left them the most damaged team in the NHL last year, the pieces are in place for a strong campaign and perhaps even home-ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs. Are they a legitimate contender? That’s more debatable, but given the state of the East these days they have at least a puncher’s chance of making it to the Final.
Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work. Statistics via NHL.com, Stats.HockeyAnalysis.com and BehindtheNet.ca; salary and waiver information courtesy of CapGeek.com.
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