lordstanley

Penalty kill is still weak. Vegas ties it on first opportunity.

The Wings have got in close a couple more times, but still 1-0.

Powerplay is still strong. Raymond scores on what looked to be attempted pass.

Wings game in Vegas is on ABC for some reason. Odd matchup to showcase.

I’m starting to figure out the new scheme Campbell and Sheppard are cooking up. 3 on the line, 2 linebackers, 6 in the secondary. Brilliant and revolutionary.

Problem is that the players in the Wings’ wave of top 6 draft picks in Seider, Raymond and Edvinsson are already established NHLers and the Wings are still out of a playoff position. The next wave is mostly mid 1st round picks or below, for whom the jury is still out, with many bubble teams having a similar handful of potential players. Look, I think the drafting of Yzerman has been “fine” and the prospects pool now is “promising”. But that’s the strength of Yzerman’s tenure and so far hasn’t been enough to make up for the underwhelming results from trades and FA signings, as Freak references.

6 not 8 but I get your point. Going into this season, Yzerman defenders hung their hat on two things: a) the Wings improved in points four straight seasons after bottoming out in 2019-20; and b) prospect pool. Point a) almost certainly will come to an end, unless the Wings pick up 22 of the 28 available points in the final 14 games. For b), prospect pool is probably better than it was 5 years ago, but by how much will that be at the NHL level? At the beginning of the 2019-20 season, ESPN listed 3 Wings in their top prospects: Zadina at #10, Veleno at #35, Seider at #43 (also had McIsaac at #92j. At the beginning of the 2024-25 season, Wings again had 3 in ESPN’s top 50 with ASP at #23, Brandsegg-Nygard at #36, and Danielson at #39. Hardly a sure thing any of those three become stars. So if they just become solid, contributing NHLers, will that be enough to elevate the Wings from 85-90 points to the 100-105 points range? https://www.espn.com/nhl/insider/story/_/id/27632023/ranking-top-100-nhl-prospects-2019-20 https://www.espn.com/nhl/insider/story/_/id/41961178/nhl-2024-25-prospects-rankings-top-players-scouting-analytics

What's the point of divisions then if winning it gets you nothing, not even a road playoff game? The unbalanced schedule makes the entire NFL playoff system "unfair" really.

The Wings finished 13 points ahead of Ottawa (now 7 points up on the Wings) last year and 15 points of Montreal (now 3 points up on the Wings) last year. The Blue Jackets (now tied with the Wings) finished 25 points behind the Wings last year. The Devils finished 10 points behind the Wings (now 10 points up on the Wings). The Capitals finished tied in points ahead of the Wings by the tiebreaker only last year (now 28 points up on the Wings). Within the Eastern Conference, the Rangers and Bruins have fallen back but almost every other team has gained on the Wings. And hard to point to Ottawa (Stutzle, Sanderson, Greig, Yakemchuk) or Montreal (Hutson, Slafkovsky, Demidov with Caulfield having just turned 24) as having much fewer or worse under 24s/prospects than the Wings. For the record, I'd prefer the Wings' under 24s/prospects to those of Ottawa and Montreal, but it's not as massive of a gap as I'd have hoped.

Montreal has playoff fever as the Habs move into 8th place alone.

Once again the Wings are unable to sustain it for 3 periods. 3-1 Caps with 6 minute to go.

Mrazek is making his 4th straight start.

Whole game played at 5 in 5 so far, no penalties. Wings likely need to go 3-1 on this 4-game road trip to stay in thick of things.

Wings hanging in against Washington. 1-1 late in the 2nd.

2nd rounders pretty much come down to luck, so I don't really hold it against a GM for not getting hits in that round, but they can sure be nice bonuses that kickstart the rebuild. It's a numbers game that unfortunately hasn't fallen the Wings' way so far, but 2nd rounders do take longer to develop so we only have a year or two of them so far to evaluate. Canucks got 51 points out of their 2019 2nd rounder Nils Hoeglander last year, John Peterka has 51 points in 61 games this season for Buffalo as a 2020 2nd rounder, another 2020 2nd rounder Brock Faber made the U.S. 4 Nations team already as defenseman, Matthew Knies is a 2021 2nd rounder who put up 45 points last season for the Leafs (arguably inflated from playing with offensive stars), and Lane Hutson of the Habs is a 2022 2nd rounder who is one of this year's top rookies. Again, the fact that the Wings don't have one of those yet isn't that much of a knock on Yzerman, cause there are way more misses than hits down there league-wide, but until one breaks through I hesitate to say Yzerman has been "great" at drafting. Good or very good is fair enough.

That are Johansson are two pluses of 2025. Gotta start getting something out of our 2nd rounders, and now that’s one possibility.

10 am start actually, but yes was still breakfast time for me and the Knights.

Shutout for Mrazek.

Jennifer Botterill is as dull as bathwater. If your HR department insists you hire a woman as commentator, at least find one with sass and energy, like that former gold medalist Tara Lipinski who does Olympics figure skating with her gay best friend on NBC.

Best Wings game in awhile.

Wings holding their own against a stronger team. 1-0 Wings late in the 2nd.

Good, no. But the 2019 team had four 20-goal scorers under 25 years old. Two of them were 30-goal scoring centres. Plus had a future top pairing/top 4 d-man in 20-year old Hronek. The cupboard wasn’t totally bare.

In March 2019, "one of the worst teams in NHL history" that Yzerman inherited a few weeks later went 8-6-1 for 17pts that month on the way to a 74 point season. Man, would have killed for a March like that the past few years: March 2022: 3-8-3 (9 pts) March 2023: 5-9-1 (11 pts) March 2024: 3-9-2 (8 pts) March 2025: 1-6-0 (2 pts with 7 March games to go)