Wings Getting Clipped

SPOILER ALERT: If you've followed this blog at all, you know that the month of September is when I do my annual NHL season preview.  Today is going to cover one team and why I think they will miss the playoffs this coming season.  However, I will not list where they will finish until it is their time.  

The Detroit Red Wings are clearly a team in decline.  It all began with a first round exit at the hands of the Nashville Predators.  Soon, both Brad Stuart (San Jose) and Nicklas Lidstrom (retired) left the Wings with major holes on the blue line.  When free agency rolled around, Ryan Suter and Zach Parise spurned them for Minnesota and they weren't even thought of by Columbus in the Rick Nash sweepstakes.  And Jiri Hudler decided to take his act to Calgary.  So, who did Detroit manage to get to sign with them this off-season?  Mikael Samuelsson, Jordin Tootoo, and Jonas Gustavsson.  Not exactly world-beating, is it?  All that has happened to the Red Wings in the past few months has me believing that this is the year the Red Wings will miss the playoffs.  The last time the Red Wings missed the playoffs?  Lidstrom wasn't even on the team.  That's right...the Red Wings never missed the playoffs when Lidstrom was playing in the NHL.  Why is missing the playoffs a real possibility for the Red Wings this coming season?  Let's count the ways...

• Their most obvious hole is on the blue line, and when you think about who the number one defenseman could be, it could from any of the group that features Ian White, Jonathan Ericsson, Niklas Kronwall, and Kyle Quincey.  The two youngsters on the roster are Jakub Kindl and Brendan Smith, and neither are ready to assume those duties right now.  Do you now see why they tried to get Ryan Suter?
• Currently, their goaltending duo is Jimmy Howard and Jonas Gustavsson.  Howard has actually been good, but he has not raised his level of play to the elite level.  There is question as to whether he will ever be in that category.  He has also never led the Red Wings to the Conference Finals as a starter, and if you know your expectations from Red Wings fans, then you know that won't cut it.  Fair or not, Howard is going to be criticized until he can win when it counts the most.  Gustavsson failed to seize the starting role in Toronto, a team that is goaltender-starved.  Part of the reason he hasn't proven to be a reliable starter is due to injury, but when he has been healthy, he has dealt with bouts of inconsistency.
• Yes, Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg remain, but who will step up and score?  Hudler wasn't the most consistent player on the roster, but he was the closest that the Red Wings had to a goal scorer.  Samuelsson is in his second go-around, and certainly he has done well as a scoring threat.  However, he turns 36 this season and has had injury issues lately.  Tootoo will provide a little offense, but his real role is to stick up for teammates by dropping the gloves, something the Red Wings didn't do often for most of the last 20 years or so.  Gustav Nyquist, Darren Helm, and Justin Abdelkader will be among the group at forward that will be asked to shoulder a heavier load on offense.  The question is not whether they will be able to do it, but how soon they can do it.
• The prospect pipeline hasn't exactly been great, largely because they've always drafted in the lower half of the NHL Draft.  The Red Wings have been patient with the prospects, which in turn, has given the team tremendous reason to believe they will succeed in the long run.  However, with the core of the team either gone or aging, it is time for the prospects to finally step up, and many of them remain largely unknown as far as whether they will play to potential.  Only Nyquist and Brendan Smith appear to be ready to contribute to the Red Wings this season.

In the Central Division, the Blues still have their two-headed goaltending monster and appear to be welcoming Vladimir Tarasenko and Jaden Schwartz to the team full time, the Predators still have Pekka Rinne and Shea Weber, and the Blackhawks still have their core intact.  Throw in Vancouver remaining well despite Ryan Kesler being out for the first two months of the season and the Roberto Luongo saga hanging over their heads and Minnesota getting better and tougher (you have to compliment the Parise and Suter signings somehow) in the Northwest, and the Ducks and Sharks looking to get back to prominence with largely unchanged rosters, not to mention the Kings retaining just about all of last year's team, and Detroit looks like they will possibly be on the outside looking in for next season's playoffs.