2009-2010 Detroit Red Wings Preview

The NHL’s most consistent franchise of the last twenty years resides in Detroit. The Red Wings have hoisted Lord Stanley’s chalice four times in the past dozen years and have always been in the thick of the championship hunt. In fact, they became the first team in NHL history to earn more than 100 points in nine consecutive seasons last year! However, Detroit is aging and many of their keystone players are nearing the end of their careers. In fact, longtime captain Steve Yzerman is now the team’s General Manager! Can the Red Wings continue their winning tradition despite icing the oldest team in the National Hockey League?

Looking Back at 2008-2009

Last season was extremely successful as the Red Wings repeated as Central Division Champions with an impressive 51-21-10 record and their strong showing earned the 2 nd overall seed in the Western Conference. After the Sharks’ upset at the hands of Anaheim in the first round, Detroit claimed home ice for the rest of the playoffs and they took advantage, qualifying for the Stanley Cup Finals for the second consecutive year. A familiar foe awaited them: The youthful Pittsburgh Penguins, whom the Wings had defeated the previous year in 6 games to hoist the Cup. However, Pittsburgh shocked the Wings by forcing a 7 th game and won the Stanley Cup on Detroit ice.

The Offseason

The Red Wings had a lot of changes in the offseason. Leading goal scorer Marian Hossa left for an enormous sum of Blackhawk money and took winger Tomas Kopecky with him, giving the Wings’ division rivals two of their best forwards. Furthermore, talented young center Jiri Hudler was displeased with his arbitration award and is expected to ply his trade in Russia this season. If those losses weren’t enough, gritty scoring winger Mikael Samuelsson also departed for conference rival Vancouver, leaving the Wings thin up front. Detroit must also cope with the loss of keeper Ty Conklin, who played a major role in Detroit’s strong early season run.

How did the Wings replace all of these losses? Well, they did bring in scorers Todd Bertuzzi and Jason Williams via free agency but the large portion of the ice time lost is going to be filled by younger players already within the organization. It will be interesting to see how the Wings respond to losing so much scoring in one offseason.

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2009-2010 Outlook

The good news is that the Wings were already one of the league’s highest scoring squads and should still be far more than adequate this fall. Few teams can boast two centers of Henrik Zetterberg or Pavel Datsyuk’s quality and wingers like John Franzen, Tomas Holmstrom, Daniel Cleary and Bertuzzi should round out two extremely strong lines. The Red Wings also have a lot of youth on hand, most notably Ville Leino, Darren Helm and Justin Abdelkater, all of whom impressed during the playoffs last season and are expected to play significantly bigger roles this season. Detroit should still score a ton of goals but they probably won’t be as lethal as last season without Hossa.

Defensively, the Red Wings are the envy of the league. Quiet captain Nick Lidstrom is simply the most consistently excellent player in hockey and will remain one of the truly elite players in the game until his retirement. However, Brian Rafalski and Nicklas Kronwall are also exceptional defenders and the final three of Andreas Lilja, Brett Ledba and Brad Stuart are stalwarts in their own end and would likely fit seamlessly into most team’s top pairings. This is a fantastic set of defensemen from one through six.

The goaltender position is where most detractors believe the Wings will struggle. After all, Chris Osgood is older and simply doesn’t look like an elite goaltender. Heck, Yzerman is in charge of Canada’s Olympic program and didn’t even make Osgood one of the FIVE goalies invited to camp this summer! You can’t really blame Stevie Y because for most of last season, the detractors were right. Until Osgood was sent away from the team to get his head right at mid-winter he stunk and Conklin carried the team. However, he was solid upon his return and he was nothing short of masterful in the playoffs. In fact, if the Wings had won the Cup, I would have bet that Osgood would have won the Conn Smythe Trophy! The really pressing question is whether he’ll avoid a similar letdown to start this season because new backup Jimmy Howard is unproven at the NHL level.

PREDICTION: People can talk all they want about Detroit’s age; I’ll take their talent over almost any other team in the league. However, the age argument carries a little bit more weight this season because it is an Olympic year. That means that the schedule will be compressed, giving the Red Wings’ veterans less time to recover. Furthermore, this team is so ubertalented that almost half of the roster will be representing their country in the Olympic Games so there is some serious concerns about fatigue, especially after the Wings looked like they were tiring at the end of their long Stanley Cup run last year.

However, I’m not ready to bury a team that seems to always find a way to get the job done. While the Wings play in perhaps the toughest division in the NHL, I’m picking them to win the Central Division again this season. Furthermore, Osgood is the perfect example of a player who steps it up in the clutch: He is always great in the playoffs and that’s enough to make me believe that the Wings are going to earn their way to their 3 rd consecutive Stanley Cup Finals appearance. Unfortunately, I think that Pittsburgh will be waiting for them again and I think that the younger Penguins take home the rubber match and the Stanley Cup in 2009-2010.

By Matt Baxendall
DFN Sports & ProHockey-fans.com Staff Writer

Feel your team is underrated? Tell Matt Baxendell why at matt.baxendell@gmail.com

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