Wings soar despite roster changes
Younger players fill gaps left by retirees
Detroit Red Wings general manager Ken Holland thinks about it for quite a while before admitting that yes, he is surprised his team is where it is atop the Western Conference standings.
Why wouldn’t he be? When last year’s team lost to San Jose in the second round of the playoffs, a long series that could have been so much shorter given the Sharks were up 3-0 at one point, it was looking as though the Wings may be on their way down for a bit. Not a long way by any stretch — they were still a team with Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg, and any team with those two guys isn’t going to sink too far.
But nonetheless, it was hard to see how they were going to be appreciably better unless you knew this team as well as Holland does.
“We knew Brian Rafalski was retiring and we knew we needed a couple of defencemen, so we got Ian White and Mike Commodore, one for the power play, one for the PK, one with size, one with skill, and it’s turned out White has been the perfect fit for Nick [Lidstrom].
“We also had Mike Modano, Kris Draper and Chris Osgood retire, and we lost a lot of leadership, but they were older guys and we knew we had young guys ready to take a bigger role and improve from within. Jimmy Howard has taken a step that way, [Jiri] Hudler’s bounce back has been big, [Valterri] Filppula has been better and [Jonathan] Ericsson too. [Justin] Abdelkader and [Darren] Helm have been better, Drew Miller we just tried to rebuild internally.
“Now we’re a lot younger, we have more guys who are in their mid-20s who are important to us and we have a sizable bit of cap room for next year.” That, of course, is subject to how the CBA works out, but there will be room no matter what, although Holland isn’t sure what he can pull off between now and the trade deadline — even though they’ve got enough cap room to take on a couple of Sidney Crosbys.
Getting defenceman Kyle Quincey Tuesday helps immediately, as well as providing insurance against Brad Stuart possibly leaving next year or Lidstrom retiring, but they could be a long way from finished.
Holland believes the race in the Central Division has been the driving factor in this great Detroit season, the Wings just looking across at their near rivals, not even really paying any attention to the Canucks until just recently.
“I think the race has been great for all the teams in it and I know our guys have just been concentrating on the division and trying to stay in front of St. Louis,” he says. “And we’ve been more focused on our road play, not even paying attention to what’s been going on at home until just a couple of games ago.
“In this conference, I think any team that finds itself leading this conference any time is surprised to find themselves there. I mean St. Louis wins every night, Vancouver seems to win every night ... Now that I think of it, yes. If you told me at training camp in September we would be where we are, I would have said, I’m surprised.”
As is typical in this environment, to be where the Canucks and Wings are at this point, you have to have had good fortune with health.
“We’ve been lucky to have our top guys be able to go out there every night,” says Holland, duly noting a little setback for Datsyuk, who is having his knee scoped and will be out two or three weeks.
“We’ve had Howard out now and we had Danny Cleary out there for a while, but I mean we all have four to six guys in this situation, where if they’re out for any length of time, it really hurts you. You can cover short-term, but over the long haul if you lose any one of those guys, it really affects you and we’ve been fortunate to have those guys healthy.”
Ditto the Canucks and Blues. And for the sake of the quality of entertainment ahead of us, let’s hope it stays that way for all these quality teams down the stretch.
The playoffs are the reason why everyone puts up with this ridiculously long regular season in the first place.