After a fun start to the season, the Detroit Red Wings fell back to reality last week, losing four straight road games and dropping below .500 a quarter of the way through the season. In that rough outing, the shortcomings off this year’s squad were on display.
Defense
First, the defense this year has been quite bad. Great goaltending from Thomas Greiss and (especially) Alex Nedeljkovic has masked just how poor some of the defenseman have played, but the duo couldn’t stop the onslaught of dangerous scoring chances they faced on the road trip.
In the four games on the road, the Red Wings were outscored 17-8, with only one loss being within a goal. In three of those games, Detroit allowed the opponent to score five goals.
Defensively, the Red Wings are worse than they were a year ago. Last year the team finished with the 20th best average goals per game (three goals against per game). This year, they are 28th in the league (with 3.35 goals against per game).
Danny DeKeyser has been especially brutal on the backend. He just does not look like the same player he was a few years ago and seems to average a mistake a game. But during the road trip, it wasn’t just DeKeyser that struggled; nearly every defenseman seemed just a bit out of place. (except for Moritz Seider). Opponents were able to pepper the goaltenders with plenty of high quality scoring chances, taking advantage of Detroit’s defensive lapses.
If the Red Wings want to be more competitive this season, the defense needs to be better. They don’t even have to be good, just average or slightly below average.
Depth
This team is just not deep enough to be a real playoff contender.
The offense is being dragged on by the top-line of Bertuzzi-Larkin-Raymond, while on the blue line, Seider is by far the best defenseman. If Seider doesn’t have a strong game, the defense usually struggles. If the top line doesn’t produce, the offense falls apart. And even if the top line shows up, the rest of the offense might not. Four of the seven goals scored on the road trip were netted by Detroit’s top line, but they could not power the team to victory.
When a team’s success relies so heavily on three rookies (Nedeljkovic, Seider and Raymond) and a couple of forwards, it doesn’t take long for imperfections to become extremely clear. After coming out hot, the team has gone ice cold. Detroit’s overtime loss to the lowly Arizona Coyotes was especially concerning.
The Red Wings are only a quarter of the way through the season. There is still plenty of time to turn things around; the terrible road trip was just four games, and they are still just one game under .500. But until the defense improves and the depth on the roster steps up, Detroit will continue to struggle.