Gave: Wings' slide puts them closer to the stars
These 23 straight years of Stanley Cup playoff hockey the Red Wings have given us is pretty impressive, eh? Longest current streak in professional sports and all that.
Think about it. Not since 1990, in another millennium, have the Wings failed to give this city some great hockey in April, May and sometimes into June, with four Stanley Cup titles in those years.
But all that postseason success comes with a heavy price.
Stanley Cup championship teams are built with stars, the kind who wind up in the Hall of Fame, guys like Steve Yzerman, Mario Lemieux and, ahem, Sidney Crosby. The best way to get players like these is to have a selection very early in the first round of the annual entry draft. And the surest way to get a pick like that is to finish way, way down in the standings.
Detroit hasn't done that in a long time, and after just a couple of games, we can safely assume it's not going to happen next June, either.
In two fairly impressive performances against two of the better teams in the league, the Wings have shown us what kind of team we can expect this season: younger, quicker, really hard-working, committed to one another, with solid team defense and better-than-average goaltending (if Jimmy Howard doesn't try to get too cute with the puck behind his net) -- and not nearly enough goal-scoring to separate itself from the pack of teams competing for the playoffs.
In the season-opener, they squeaked past Boston, the team that manhandled them in the playoffs last spring, 2-1. It didn't hurt that the Bruins had played the night before.
A couple of nights later, Detroit deserved a better fate -- at least a point -- when a non-call on Ryan Getzlaf, which would have been a hooking penalty at any time during any game except for the last two minutes, wound up costing the Wings. Anaheim, which might well be the team to beat in the West after acquiring Ryan Kesler from Vancouver, stole a 3-2 victory.
Bottom line: The Wings played well enough to get at least three points, but wound up with only two because, as we feared, their offense didn't produce enough goals. This looks like it could be a chronic issue with this team, and having to grind out 2-1 and 3-2 victories night after night can take a heavy toll.
What's clear even this early, though, is that while this might not be Stanley Cup contender, it's certainly not a team that will sink to the depths of those competing in the lottery draft -- where the stars are available.
The level of consistency for these Detroit teams over the past 23 years has been nothing short of remarkable, especially considering the Wings haven't had a top-10 draft pick since they selected Martin Lapointe with the 10th overall pick in 1993. And he's now retired.
They owe their consistency to their commitment to scouting two continents for talent, and to a minor-league system that prepares these players well for the NHL rather than rushing them along like too many teams.
In recent years, Detroit has slid closer to the middle of the pack on draft day instead of picking so late in the first round -- taking players in the 25-30 range -- which would have been a mid-second-round pick in the old 21-team league.
So their chances at getting that star player they desperately need are increasing.
Hey, it's not unheard of. I vividly recall how disappointed Neil Smith, then Detroit's chief scout was on draft day in 1987, when he was overruled at the draft table and the Wings selected a young defenseman from French Canada, Yves Racine, with the 11th overall pick.
Four slots later, the Quebec Nordiques took the guy Smith coveted most, a young center named Joe Sakic.
Wings fans know how that story ended. The Nordiques moved to Colorado and Sakic became their Hall of Fame captain who led the Avalanche to a couple of Stanley Cup titles that otherwise might have wound up in Detroit.
