Trouble Looming For Detroit

Every year, a strong minority of pundits predict a letdown for the Detroit Red Wings. The success of the last twenty years has left the Red Wings with few top flight prospects, and a rapidly aging corps. The team is still driven by the engine of Pavel Datsyuk, Nicklas Lidstrom, and Henrik Zetterberg. However, all of them are over 30, and this is probably Lidstrom's last season in the league, though knowing him, he could easily pull a Chris Chelios and play well into his 40's. The recent retirements of Brian Rafalski, Chris Osgood, Kirk Maltby, and Kris Draper indicate the close of an era in Red Wings history. The problem is that the Red Wings have not begun to prepare for the next era. The team's defensive corps, featuring Jakub Kindl, Nicklas Lidstrom, Ian White, Brad Stuart, Niklas Kronwall, and Jonathan Ericsson, is still solid. The question, however, is how solid that corps will be down the road. Lidstrom will be gone in a year or two, and Stuart and Kronwall are both already over 30. Just today Kronwall signed a 7-year extension that will keep him in Detroit until he's 38. His cap hit will be about 4.6 million dollars, which would be a fair price if it weren't going to follow him until he's 38.

At forward though, the Red Wings seem much shakier. Firstly, they're not deep to start with. Johan Franzen, Datsyuk, and Zetterberg are probably the only legitimate top six forwards on the team, though you could count Jiri Hudler in there depending on how you view him. Those three players are all over 30, and the youth that has come onto the team in the last three years does not look like it's going to be able to take over the offensive reigns. Darren Helm, Justin Abdelkader, and Drew Miller, while young, homegrown prospects, certainly don't seem capable of rising above the third line. Naturally, that raises some concerns. Is Valteri Filpula really a second pivot? How much longer does Todd Bertuzzi have? One year? Two? The Red Wings might be looking on some dark days ahead. Now don't get me wrong, as long as Ken Holland and Mike Babcock are there, the team will be competitive. Rather, it's just a matter of when they start playing at a level where they will receive draft picks that actually matter.

What's Wrong With The Montreal Canadiens?

The list of things maligning the Montreal Canadiens is long: small forwards, a defensive corps composed of stiff veterans, untested youngsters, and unproven free agents, a lack of a first line center, and injuries. All of these are, of course, validly raised issues with the Montreal Canadiens. The problem is, however, that these are issues that have existed for more than two years. In spite of that, the Canadiens pushed the Stanley Cup champion Boston Bruins to seven games in the first round of the playoffs last year, and made their own trip to the Eastern Conference Finals the year before that. So what's changed? Why, all of a sudden, has this team seemingly spit up on itself?

The first issue is in fact injuries. Scoring winger Michael Cammalleri has missed three out of six games with a laceration on his leg, and defensemen Chris Campoli, Jaroslav Spacek, and Andrei Markov, have been limited to a collective three games played, having played one, two, and zero, respectively. That hurts. Markov is the team's best offensive defenseman, Spacek is a solid veteran that eats up a solid number of minutes and is a calming influence on the rest of the corps, and Chris Campoli is a 27-year old free agent acquisition who is capable of chipping in around 25 points a season. Regardless, Markov was gone all of last season, as was defenseman Josh Gorges, who is now back. So why does their GAA now rank 22nd in the league? Well, like I said, it's because of injuries, but more importantly, it's because their healthy defensemen are, well, playing like garbage. Super stud P.K. Subban has skated to a 0-1-1 scoring line, with a -6 rating. That is awful. To put that in perspective, the defenseman with the second lowest +/- rating is Hal Gill, and he is only -2. So, that certainly hurts. What also hurts though, is that veteran Roman Hamrlik is gone. Now, Hamrlik was never really all that great, in my opinion. But he'd been with the team for awhile, and he certainly understood the system that Jacque Martin implements in Montreal. In his place, the Canadiens now have two rookies, Raphael Diaz and Alexei Yemelin, along with young defenseman Yannick Weber, who has a grand total of 55 NHL games to his credit. An inexperienced D-Corps definitely does not help a team that is supposed to play defense first hockey.


With that being said, there are problems with other parts of the team as well. If I were to ask you what the first line of the Montreal Canadiens was, who would you say was on it? Gionta, Plekanec, Kostitsyn? Cole, Gomez, Pacioretty? You probably wouldn't have any answer-- because there isn't one. The Canadiens have been line juggling all season, which has caused discontent amongst much of the Canadiens' blogosphere. Though I personally rarely support line juggling, you can hardly blame Martin for trying it out six games into the season. It's still early, no one has built any chemistry yet anyway, and there's just no real way of knowing who the Canadiens' top six guys are. They have a lot of guys that would fit well on a second line: Tomas Plekanec, Max Pacioretty, Andrei Kostitsyn, Brian Gionta, Erik Cole, Scott Gomez....ok, maybe not Scott Gomez, but there's a noticeable problem here. Though these guys are top six forwards, none of them are top line forwards. The line of Max Pacioretty, David Desharnais, and Andrei Kostitsyn has been fairly effective. Patches, as Pacioretty is sometimes referred to by fans, has a score line of 2-3-5, which is very respectable through six games, especially on a team that ranks 22nd in goals scored. Regardless, is they're anyone in the world that thinks that David Desharnais is a first line center? Plekanec, though his qualifications can be debated, should be the team's top pivot. He's posted a 70- point season before, and he's good pretty good hands. Putting him on a line with the two physical wingers previously mentioned could really complement his finessed style of play well.

There's also the goalie problem. Carey Price has a 2.84 GAA, with a .890 SV%. Not exactly the numbers that won him fame and admiration in Montreal last season. Despite these statistics, however, Price isn't actually the problem. The defense has been terrible in front of him. The problem is that the Habs can't afford to play anyone other than Price. If Price can't handle the games he plays behind this defensive corps, how on earth is Peter Budaj going to? No offense to Peter Budaj, but he's kind of terrible at playing hockey.

Lastly, there's the coaching element. Lots of people blame the departure of Kirk Muller for the team's recent misfortune. He was the special teams guy, the players' coach. Now that he's gone, the special teams are horrendous (2-25 on the powerplay), and the team looks out of sync and apathetic. It won't be long before the discontent over the fortunes of this season turn to the coach that is still there, Jacques Martin. Yet, that's not where displeased fans should be turning their anger. At the end of the day, this team is bad because it is poorly constructed. Though Gauthier made smart decisions last season in his decision to keep Carey Price and ship away Jaroslav Halak, his moves this offseason were downright boneheaded. He let the bottom two lines get worse, while he did nothing to improve the top line. He didn't replenish the defensive corps, and he did nothing to try and replace Kirk Muller. The result is a terrible team.

Ryan Nugent Hopkins Is Proving Me Wrong

When the Edmonton Oilers decided to sign Ryan Nugent-Hopkins to an entry-level contract and start him off in the big leagues, I was a bit skeptical. Granted, they have a nine-game grace period to send him back down, but the general feeling seemed to be that they would keep him in the NHL or AHL this year. Sure enough, that's proving to be a good decision. Through three games, Nugent-Hopkins has 4 goals. Three of them have come in one game-- against the Oilers' division rivals the Vancouver Canucks. And his goals are not fluky. In fact, his first career goal was a prime example of quality hockey IQ. Unfortunately, Youtube seems to now forbid all embedding of hockey videos, and so I can't show off the goal. However, it can be described like this. Nuge got the puck, and took a shot from the red faceoff dot. Firstly, shooting like that in his first game as an NHLer demonstrates a strong level of confidence on the ice. After shooting, he drove to the net, through a defenseman, to follow up on his own rebound. As a defenseman tried to box him out, he slipped past the check, and put the puck over the glove of Marc-Andre Fleury with a sharp backhand shot.


If this is for real, and Nugent-Hopkins is already ready to be the first line center for the Oilers. This is going to be a very exciting season for the Oil. Devan Dubnyk is, in my opinion, a very competent goalie, and he has a good mentor in Nik Khabibulin who, despite his current lack of prowess, used to be quite the goalie. Taylor Hall, Magnus Pajaarvi-Svenson, and Jordan Eberle form the trifecta of exciting sophomore forwards heading into this season. I suppose you could also put Linus Omark in that category. There are also veterans like Shawn Horcoff, Ales Hemsky, and Ryan Smyth there to help foster the young talent. On the back end, the defense is anchored by Ryan Whitney, who, prior to his injury last season, was playing at a Norris Trophy worthy level. They also have the forgotten former Blackhawk Cam Barker, along with veteran Andy Sutton...alright so essentially the defensive corps is garbage. The defense is probably going to be the thing that holds the Oilers back from being a middle of the pack team. However, once they shore up that defensive corps (perhaps by shipping away Sam Gagner, who is being totally wasted on that roster), they have the potential to be competitive, even this season.