Breaking it Down

These late games are killing me. As a lot of you know, I work super early mornings - usually I have to get up around 4 am and be coherent enough to count a lot of money by 5, so staying up and watching games that start at 10 pm are out of the question. While I was able to watch the last two games despite their late starts thank to days off, I still find myself nearly falling asleep during them (and subsequently sleeping late enough that my "breakfast" this morning consisted of a toaster strudel and some Andy Capp's hot fries at 2 pm), so my comments about the particular games may not be quite as astute as in the past (...as if they ever were).

Coming off of two shootout wins against Chicago and the LA Kings, both of which involved a comeback on the Wings part, the Wings have improved their record to 7-1-1 on the season, not too shabby! However, not everything is smooth sailing when it comes to Wings hockey right now, as the team has more than a few struggles to go along with their strengths.

PROS:

• Goals for. The Wings certainly aren't short on firepower, as they lead the league in goals scored. Even better, the scoring is coming from across the board. Twelve players have notched goals thus far, and the team certainly doesn't need to be worried about secondary scoring.

• Marian Hossa, after starting the season not poorly but slowly, has stepped it up. The most talked-about addition to the team put up a goal and two assists in Saturday's game against the Blackhawks and then scored the winning shootout in the shootout as well, curiously enough with a slapshot that blew right past Hawks goaltender Nikolai Khabibulin. Hossa now leads the team in points (12) and +/- (+7) and the chemistry between he and Pavel Datsyuk that seemed absent early in the season is really heating up. Don't worry though, Hank, I'm sure you're still Pav's favorite.

• Brian Rafalski is second in points (10) and started off the season with a 7-game point streak (h/t to Gorilla Crouch for that link - what a neat Yahoo feature!) that set a club record. There isn't much else to say - he's been awesome. How's that defense of yours doing over there, New Jersey?

CONS: (Please note the first time I typed that it read, "CONKS")

• Goals against. Usually a strong point for the Wings, this season the all-star defensive lineup has look just a little bit shaky. The team is 18th in the NHL for goals against, allowing an average of 3.11 per game - not a very pretty statistic. Not only that but the team who boasted a huge chunk of players in the top 10 league +/- this season has nine players in the red, lead by Brett Lebda who boasts a gaudy -7. Goaltending needs a little work as well; neither Chris Osgood nor Ty Conklin have been particularly bad, and both are racking up wins, but neither looks all that stellar, either. Osgood's save percentage is only .884 and he's 21st in the league in GAA. With the defense looking a tad wobbly, Osgood's going to need to step it up as well. Faultering defense and goaltending is a recipe for disaster. The Wings have been winning games, yes - close games. The defense needs to buck up and start playing like we all know it can, and should, be, or sooner or later these numbers are going to catch up with the Wings.

• Johan Franzen's knee injury could put him out for 3-4 weeks. The Mule came into his own last season, breaking a Gordie Howe record for game winning goals in a month near the end of the season, tearing it up in the playoffs, and starting strong this year as well. with 5 goals and 2 assists in 7 games played. Unfortunatley Franzen took a knee-on-knee hit from Brent Sopel in Saturday's game against the Blackhawks and is expected to miss a month with a left knee sprain. The Wings have looked okay without his firepower so far, but Franzen was a key piece to last year's success and will be missed. Luckily for the Wings, they have a substantial amount of talent in Grand Rapids - Finnish Ville Leino will probably get the call-up if it becomes necessary.

Overall, the Wings look better than they do worse - but there are still a few question marks. While I'd like to let their record do the talking, it's also tough to watch a team play below what you think its real abilities are. It's early on in the season though and hardly time to get worried. Tomorrow night's game against the penalty-prone Ducks will hopefully be a good time for them to break out the devastaing powerplay, and Thursday's romp with the Sharks (which has a 10:30 pm start and which I will definitely see on a delay) should be an extremely good measure of how good the team is. (Don't get worried yet, the answer is "very!")

Final Verdict on the Hossa Signing (DET 5, ATL 3)

It might have taken ten games, but nothing says it better than this goal, Hossa's first from this past game against his former team, the Atlanta Thrashers:

YEAH.

Hossa Gets it Done

Last Saturday a group of coworkers and I headed down to the Joe to catch the Wings take on the Rangers - it seems like ages ago, having a three-day break in between games like this.

The game was fantastic one to see live, especially, from the quick start the Wings had out of the gate (Mikael Samuelsson scored 28 seconds into the first period, and Johan Franzen picked one up around three minutes in), to the sketchy third period where the Rangers not only tied it up but skated to a 4-2 lead on two goals by Aaron Voros. The real fun began with Jiri Hudler tied it up on the powerplay, but it was the ensuing overtime that was the icing on the cake.

After mentioning new Wing Marian Hossa's struggles to make a serious impact so far this season and jokingly swearing to my boss every time he fell short on an opportunity, it was Hossa who tapped in Pavel Datsyuk's shot to beat Henrik Lundvist and win the game in overtime for the Wings and also to notch his 300th career goal. So is Hossa ready to step up? Maybe, maybe not - after all, a tap-in is hardly proof of a sudden chemistry between the two, and more likely a happy coincidence. But you have to think Hossa's feeling better about, well, just about everything, scoring the goal that won a dangerous game against a team with one of the current best records in hockey. He'll be one to watch in tonight's game against the Blues (for the number one spot in the division - how weird is that!). About that goal, Hossa replied:

"It doesn't get any better than this, the 300th, the first goal as a Red Wing and the game winner in overtime."

I hope it does get better - let's see 301, 302, etc. With luck, that victory was an eye-opener to the team, who has seemed to be playing down to its opponents a little bit, as well as a jump-start to Hossa's season. Either way it was a fun thing to see live, and the Joe's reaction was awesome.

We'll see tonight in a game that promises to be interesting - Henrik Zetterberg will be back, along with Brad Stuart, but Andreas Lilja will be sitting out after undergoing an appendectomy. Also out will be Darren Helm, who was returned to Grand Rapids, but Darren McCarty, who cleared waivers today, could make his debut soon.

Ken Holland is a Mad Genius (I Hope)

Wow. WOW. It's days like these you're happy to be a Red Wings fan. While a multitude of other teams out there are frantically racing around buying and selling and freaking their fans out, the Wings have sat back and made a few careful, smart, slightly shocking, deals. The other teams I follow frequently (the Leafs and the Oilers and to a lesser extent the Capitals - thanks Capschick) as well as many other teams in the league have made drastic roster changes, lost players unexpectedly, gained players unexpectedly, and set the fans on edge for what will be very different teams next year. Not so with the Red Wings, who once again have given us every reason to continue being confident in everything from the team to the management to the owners - and anything you can imagine inbetween.

First and foremost, Andreas Lilja
The Wings resigned Andreas Lilja to a two year contract worth $2.5 million. Lilja hasn't always been perfect, but despite all the grief he's gotten for a few boneheaded moves, he honestly hasn't make a substantial amount more mistakes than a lot of other defensemen, especially for the level of play expected from him - and it's easy to look bad when you're playing next to Nick Lidstrom, right? It's just unfortunate for Lilja that his mistakes always seem to wind up in the spotlight as gamebreakers. Nevertheless, he's been around the Wings for a while, understands the team philosophy, and can contribute as a fifth/sixth defenseman. He's also very affordable, and is receiving only a small raise over the 1 million he made for the past two season. The only problem with this signing in my mind, considering the next move the Wings made, is that it perpetuates a huge logjam of defensemen and creates the potential for a promising young kid to be lost.

Bringing Back B-Stu
After the Lilja signing, the chances of the Wings resigning UFA Brad Stuart, acquired from LA at the trade deadlline this past season, seemed slim. By the morning of trade deadline day, he was still unsigned and it seemed likely that he'd hit the free agent market where he could possibly make quite a bit more than Detroit was willing to offer. And then, just before noon, the news hit that he had indeed agreed to come back. The contract is for four years averaging $3.75 million per season - a little more than the Wings wanted to give and a little less than Stuart wanted to make. TSN reports the deal also includes a no trade clause for the first two years and a limited no-trade clause in the last two:

Stuart has moved around a fair bit in recent seasons, getting traded from San Jose to Boston in 2005 (as part of the Joe Thornton trade), from Boston to Calgary in 2007 before signing in Los Angeles as a free agent last summer.

It will be nice for Stuart, after all that, to get to settle down for a while. I had thought he was more than likely lost, so it was a great surprise to see that he'd decided to stay after all - and a testament to the environment surrounding the Wings that he chose to accept less to play for a team that seemed to tap into his potential. After struggling with the Kings (21 points and a minus-16 in 63 games) he clicked with Niklas Kronwall on the Wings (2 points and a plus-6 in 9 regular season games and 7 points and a plus 15 in 21 playoff games wherein he averaged over 21 minutes of ice time per night) and became an integral, top four part of the Wings' already stunning defense. He clearly liked his time here, and the way the Wings treated him (letting him travel back to LA for the birth of his second child comes to mind) and with Rafalski, Stuart, Kronwall and Lidstrom (because lets face it, even when his contract is up he isn't going anywhere unless he retires), our top four defense is locked up for a good long time. And in fact it was both family and his partnership with Kronwall, as well as tasting Stanley Cup victory, that brought him back:

“It’s been a tough couple of years from having a family and having to move around a bit, spending a lot of time a part,” Stuart said. “To be able to stick in Detroit for four years, I’m real happy about that. It’s not just about you anymore. It’s about the family and some times you have to make sacrifices to make everyone happy.”

[...]

“It was a pretty big factor. I really enjoy playing with him,” Stuart said of Kronwall. “We seem to have a pretty good chemistry. That's not always easy to find, so that was pretty important to get a chance to continue that. I'm excited to get going next year.”

Unfortunately the resigning of both of them does have it's downfalls in that the Wings now have a surplus of defensemen. Outside of the top four and Lilja, Brett Lebda will be back as well as Chris Chelios (though he's accepted a much lesser role and won't be playing as often as in the past) and then there are Derek Meech and Kyle Quincey, neither of whom can move back and forth between the AHL without clearing waivers any longer - and neither of whom aren't likely to be snatched up should they have to. On a personal level, Quincey is my favorite Griffin and I worry for his future with the organization - not because they want to lose him, but because they may have to. And then of course there's Jonathan Ericsson who's leaped from Mr. Irrelevant to the number one Wings prospect and could easily play in the NHL this season - but is stymied by not having to clear waivers and will likely remain dominating the AHL instead. Still, it's hard to find fault with either of these signings, even if they do have a small downside.

Jimmy Howard: Conkblocked
Since Dominik Hasek announced his retirement, it's been one of the biggest questions in Detroit - will Jimmy Howard, the "Red Wings goaltender of the future" for so many years, finally get his NHL chance? The answer appears to be probably not quite yet, as the Wings signed former Penguins backup goaltender Ty Conklin to a one year, $750,000 deal. It's a one-way contract which means the likelihood of Conks being sent down to the AHL in favor of Howard is slim. Holland's opinion:

"Ty Conklin has the inside track, but if Jimmy Howard is the obvious No. 2 guy (in training camp and the preseason), we'll reassess,'' general manager Ken Holland said. "Do we carry three (goaltenders)?''

Despite his rocky past with the Oilers, Conks looked incredibly solid with Pittsburgh last year when Marc-Andre Fleury was sidelined by an ankle sprain (18-8-5, with a 2.51 goals-against average and a .923 save percentage, which ranked second in the NHL last season). Aside from that, he and the number one guy Chris Osgood should get along well as both possess seemingly very casual demeanors, and it'll also be interesting to see how a goaltender like Conklin plays behind the sort of stellar defense Detroit possesses - look for some gaudy numbers. Another good decision by Holland.

WHAT JUST HAPPENED?
Free agency had slowed down a little. Day One was pretty predictable as far as the Wings went, and aside from hearing that management had been looking into both Leafs captain Mats Sundin (which seemed unlikely given the offers he'd received from other teams) and at bringing back Todd Bertuzzi, it seemed as though perhaps the Wings would be done. And then, as I was pulling out of the Tim Horton's parking lot at 12:43 pm when I received the following text from a friend who'd been updating me all day:

"Hossa: 1 year, 7.4 million. DETROIT."

I stopped, stared, processed, and replied, eloquently, "WHAT?" Yes. Marian Hossa signed with Detroit, one year, $7.4 million. This sort of signing is what really puts into perspective how good your team really is. Hossa was offered nearly as much over five years by the Penguins and $9 million by Edmonton for a multi-year deal as well, and instead opted to come to Detroit for only one year, where the likelihood of him resigning after the season is virtually nil, as the Wings must then resign Henrik Zetterberg and Johan Franzen. This effectively underlines what pretty much everyone already knew: Hossa wants to win a cup, and Hossa wants to win it now.

Brilliant. Hossa scores goals, plain and simple - and while he's not quite the two-way player most of Detroits forwards are (frankly the only downside I could possible see to this signing is if he doesn't mesh well with the team and upsets chemistry - but Detroit has a habit of bringing out the best in players), goals are never a bad thing. The team had some extra money lying around for the upcoming season and they managed to negotiate their way into becoming a heck of a lot more dangerous. How, we might never know - but is anyone complaining?

Here's another thing I like about Detroit's management of their players: Hossa was offered 7.4 million because, reportedly, it was the most Detroit would pay any UFA. No one was allowed to come in and make more money than captain Nick Lidstrom. While it's not a big deal or anything, that sort of loyalty shown to a player who deserves it as much as Lidstrom is just another example of why players stick with this team.

Finally, one hilarious bit from the Wings report of the signing:

The Red Wings’ inability to get secondary scoring last season was constantly scrutinized in the media.

[...]

Landing Hossa, who has scored 299 goals and 349 assists with a plus-85 rating in 701 career games, should address secondary scoring.

Only with the Detroit Red Wings could Marian Hossa be considered secondary scoring!

Last but not least
Are the Wings done with free agency yet? Not quite, as they have to deal with making offers to Darren McCarty and Aaron Downey, should the pair be brought back (they're expected to) and Valtteri Filppula, an RFA, whose deal will likely not come until further down the road. And who knows what else may await - Hossa was certainly unexpected, there could always be more, however unlikely. But rest assured, already the team has shown the rest of the league that it is ready to come back bigger, sharper, scarier, and more devastating than before. Congrats, Ken Holland, and thank you!