Detroit Red Wings Future Safe With Young Players

[LastWordArmy]

The Detroit Red Wings future is in jeopardy. The team is having a tough 2016-17 season. Special teams struggles and woes on the blueline have forced them into the basement of the Eastern Conference. They are about to miss their first postseason in 25 years.

One of the problems with making the playoffs every year is getting stuck with a mid-first round draft pick. The Red Wings haven’t had a top-ten draft pick since they took Martin Lapointe 10th overall back in 1991. Since then, their mid-to-late first round drafting has been good enough to keep them competitive.

http://lastwordonhockey.com/2017/02/22/detroit-red-wings-future-safe/

Click to read more...

 

[Lil Sebastian Cossa]

Ha ha ha ha..

Wings future safe with young players. Clickbaity headline.
Wings future is in jeopardy. First line of the article.

Fantastic.

 

[Henkka]

Head coach Jim Blashill? Did we hire his brother?

***

These articles are like 1 year late usually. We already know about AA, Larkin and Mantha.

Nothing about Hronek, Saarijärvi or Cholowski, which would be most interesting thing about defence rebuild and could give something real depth analyzes about out future overall.

Disappointed for going too easy in Hockey's Future board.

 

[SoupNazi]

That's really a terrible article.

 

[Ezekial]

This season, Andreas Athanasiou and Anthony Mantha have fought for and won their roster spots. At 22 and 20 years old respectively, these three are proving to be smart, talented hockey players. They give the Red Wings a core to build their forward unit around. They have been the silver lining to the Red Wings awful 2016-17 season.

Come on man, what a terrible piece of writing.

I get that AM and AA are 22 and Larkin is 20, but did you even proof read this thing - it doesn't read like that.

 

[Shaman464]

Seriously, has the author actually ever seen the Red Wings play? This article is clickbait trash.

 

[Bench]

The future is safe the same way casinos are safe with Brad Pitt and George Clooney hanging around your lobby.

 

[HIFE]

I think it's unfair to call the title and first line clickbait- the idea just wan't thought out well. The intro should have read "Some say the Wings future is in jeopardy." It would make more sense as he goes into the argument for Mantha, Larkin, and AA being the brightest hope within a dismal season.

In the transition sentences between the subject of Larkin to Mantha the "misery loves company" phrase was corny. I would edit that out. The other criticism I have is the piece ran on slightly too long. Tying in the kids' contracts with the trade deadline was not relevant.

This is the kind of fighting spirit the Red Wings need. This kind of fire and energy makes a difference for team morale. It builds momentum on the ice. It creates hope for fans. It’s a beacon of light in an otherwise dark tunnel leading the Red Wings to their first playoff miss in twenty five years.

Boom! It should just end there. Dramatic ending that reinforces the point of the discussion. As I said no need to trail off into contract speculations.

I don't mind Nick's opinions. His writing feels like a younger person with a subjective, "bloggy" style which is cool. It may not be your taste but no need to shred it pieces. How about HF has a 400 page essay content we can all submit and critique our work? Seriously I'd like to hear some constructive criticism of Nick's writing. What don't you like? What do you think he could improve on?

 

[Lil Sebastian Cossa]

I sat and re-read it.

A couple nit-picky things to start... it's cool to use advanced stats, I suppose. I hate when writers drop them in win no context. It gets really easy for the writer to just say "his PDO was this" as some kind of point. That isn't my complaint with him this time though. He actually did pretty well on this point.


My problem was that he alternates between calling them iCF or individual Corsi for, alternates the per sixty metrics between /60 and it written out as per sixty.

Now onto the meat of the article. He starts out by saying they are in jeopardy and whatever. He talks about the mid-late first round draft picks being good enough to keep them competitive and then.... nothing. He goes onto talking about Larkin. Not anything like "but has not allowed them to obtain the elite players a team needs to be successful" or "but has led to a general decline of roster talent". Say something, anything in the opener to link mid-late firsts and a dearth of elite talent.

Then, the start of his Larkin section, he starts talking about how Larkin, AA, and Mantha are the silver lining of the 16-17 season. This year, Larkin is anything but that. He's been pretty bad and isn't really adjusting to the book being out on him yet. And he ends a "puff piece" about Larkin by saying that bad attitude and low morale are contagious and Larkin has had to deal with them. That's not exactly strong praise.

AA stuff always worries me because it's always rate stats with him. It's "dude if we played him 20 minutes instead of 10, he'd totally score double the points. This isn't especially bad, but I'm not a fan of "imagine what he could do if he had actual lnemates. I counter with.... imagine how he'd do if he were pulling the hardest defensive assignments too." I don't think his p/60 would follow at that point.

The Mantha section isn't bad. I don't have an issue with it... outside of my abhorrence with taking the Jimmy D and Ken Holland "spare parts" quote as literally as so many people have. They took him in the first round and he's playing with Henrik Zetterberg on the top line as a rookie. They clearly like him and think he's a damn good hockey player. It always struck me as either reverse psychology to prod Mantha into working harder or in Jimmy Ds case catching an old dude shooting from the hip whatever comes to his mind.

I agree, the cap space section at the end feels tacked on. If you want to include it, tie it back to Mantha, AA, and Larkin and their RFA deals and how it will be important to lock them up. You're talking about the future of the core... you shouldn't be talking about trying to clear money in the here and now. It could easily be removed and maintain the point... but if you want to have it in there, relate it to the silver lining.

And lastly, there is the inconsistency between Larkin's section where bad attitude and low morale are contagious and the summary close where the hard work that they put in and the morale boost from having three talented youngsters.

 

[ScottyBowman]

This is clearly FAKENEWS. This is going to be a non-playoff team for the next 5 years.