Red Wings’ Season Starts Tonight
Detroit Red Wings vs. Anaheim Ducks
7:00 EST - VERSUS
The Red Wings are coming off back-to-back 50-win seasons [thanks largely to the division-heavy schedule] for the first time in their 81 year history. The team came close to winning their 4th Stanley Cup in ten years during last year’s playoffs and the expectations are high for the season that kicks off tonight. The Detroit News sat down with the braintrust behind the organization and came away with a fantastic interview that shed light on an organization that has generally steered clear of the spotlight.
If you haven’t read it yet it’s definitely worth your time. Nice work by the organization and the Detroit News in putting this together. Here are some snippets that I found interesting.
Building a franchise from “the Detroit River”.
Jimmy Devellano: “…when I walked in here for my press conference on the 12th of July, 1982, after the press conference I had lunch with Mr. and Mrs. Ilitch. I said, ‘Mrs. Ilitch, how many season tickets do we have?’ And she said, ‘Well, the Norrises said that we inherited 5,000. But she said, ‘Let’s go down and see Bob Kerlin in the box office and find out.’ Bob said, ‘Mrs. Ilitch, give me 10 minutes and I’ll tell ya.’ That’s how long it took to count ‘em. It was 2,100 season tickets on July 12, 1982. So there was some sense of urgency. We had to try to build for the future by not trading picks. But we also had to create some kind of buzz here.”
Mike Illitch takes a strong stance on fighting.
“[Mixed Martial Arts] is really drawing. I mean, the guy that started that can sell it now for a billion dollars. The ratings are sky-high. So people like rough stuff. And Don Cherry and people like that over the years have been talking about, ‘Let’s take advantage of what we have.’ We’re the only sport that fights. That gets to be something where it’s real controversial between the league and the teams — a lot of opinions on it. But you get too conservative and too laid-back and you can see what happens.”
There’s a Lloyd Carr dig in there to be had but we’ll keep this Red Wings related.
Bringing Scotty Bowman onboard.
Devellano: “Mike Keenan had been kind of hovering around, wanting to get in here. And I’ll make it brief: I just didn’t feel he was the right person here for the organization. And I had a meeting with Mr. Ilitch, because we were at a crisis. We felt that if we were gonna move the team forward, and start to have some real playoff success, which we really needed, we had to get the best, most proven coach that there was.”
Scotty Bowman on talking to Illitch about joining the Red Wings.
“I got into a bit of a contract dispute (coaching the Pittsburgh Penguins from 1991-93). And Jimmy phoned me and asked whether I would ever be interested in coaching in Detroit. I talked with Pittsburgh, and I think if they had come through, I might not have come here. But then Jimmy said Mr. Ilitch wants to meet you. We talked for about three hours and I knew right away. We hadn’t even talked contract. But Mike said, ‘I really want this team to win. And I think you can pull it off. We want you to come. We’ll do whatever it takes to win.’ So then when he started to tell me what he was going to give me, I had a hard time not saying yes right away.
“Like Jimmy said, the team was on the threshold. They had a lot of good players, a lot of good young players, but just didn’t play enough defense to win.”
The interview also gave some insight into the priorities for the team, both of which will likely help to spur interest in the team. The first order of business is getting rid of the stupid schedule that has division opponents face each other 8 teams a season. It makes absolutely no sense and was done in a misguided attempt to try and manufacture rivalries. The organization has been in Gary Bettman’s ear every chance they get to let the commissioner know they want to move back to the Eastern Conference. Jimmy Devellano is confident it will happen when Las Vegas is awarded an NHL franchise, which is likely to happen within the next four years.
Speaking of Vegas, the odds-makers like the Red Wings’ chances of winning the President’s trophy this season. I’m not a gambler, but it’s interesting to see what people think when they’re willing to make their opinions known in the form of cold, hard cash. James Mirtle agrees to the point that he thinks Detroit will have the best record in the Western Conference.
I’ve added a section of links for Stats-based hockey sites. The section is called “wonkery” and it’s an area I’ll start to delve into a little more this season. Along those lines I took a look at Hockey Analytics’ review of last season. Not surprisingly several Red Wings were featured prominently.
This is a 39 page statistical look at the best players in each area of gameplay. Here are the Red Wings who were deemed best in a particular area.
Top NHL players in even-strength play
First Team: Nicklas Lidstrom
Second Team: Pavel Datsyuk, Brian Rafalski
Top NHL players in short-handed play
First Team: Nick Lidstrom
Second Team: Kris Draper, Chris Chelios
Alan Ryder from Hockey Analytics also awarded the typical end-of-season awards based on his statistical analysis. Many Red Wings fans thought Hank Zetterberg had a good shot at winning the Selke trophy before he was injured late in the season. Well Ryder awarded the trophy to Pavel Datsyuk. Too bad Pavel doesn’t get the real trophy though. Ryder had Lidstrom winning the Norris and Datsyuk winning the Lady Byng.
With Brent Sopel not making the team it seems like a small re-working of my guess on the point totals is in order.
| Forward | Goals | Assists | Points |
|
Pavel Datsyuk |
35 | 72 | 107 |
|
Henrik Zetterberg |
40 | 50 | 90 |
|
Mikael Samuelsson |
23 | 25 | 48 |
|
Tomas Holmstrom |
25 | 22 | 47 |
|
Jiri Hudler |
25 | 20 | 45 |
|
Johan Franzen |
13 | 27 | 40 |
|
Dan Cleary |
17 | 20 | 37 |
|
Valtteri Filppula |
16 | 14 | 30 |
|
Igor Grigorenko |
8 | 12 | 20 |
|
Kris Draper |
9 | 10 | 19 |
|
Tomas Kopecky |
6 | 12 | 18 |
|
Kirk Maltby |
4 | 4 | 8 |
|
Dallas Drake |
3 | 4 | 7 |
| D-Man | Goals | Assists | Points |
|
Nick Lidstrom |
15 | 47 | 62 |
|
Brian Rafalski |
8 | 46 | 54 |
|
Niklas Kronvall |
5 | 25 | 30 |
|
Jonathan Ericsson |
4 | 15 | 19 |
|
Lebda/Meech |
3 | 11 | 14 |
|
Chris Chelios |
1 | 10 | 11 |
|
Andreas Lilja |
0 | 6 | 6 |
My guess with Ericsson is that if Mikael Samuelsson doesn’t work out on the point on the second power play unit then Jonathan Ericsson could get a call up and could fill that spot. He was the last D-man sent down and he’d be able to play with the man advantage, which Kyle Quincey would not be capable of doing.
Gameday posts
Bill over at Abel to Yzerman has the full link-bed from recent posts from the Deep Diggers [TM A2Y].
Matt over at On the Wings is usually good for doing a gameday post so check that out.
Hockey’s Future, Red Wings Central, and Let’s Go Wings have their gameday threads up for tonight’s game.
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[…] Lebda doesn’t seem like an option since he wouldn’t be much of a scoring threat from the point and Samuelsson worked in a pinch in the playoffs; but given the fact Jason Williams didn’t work so well as a forward manning the point, that might suggest that Sammy is only a last-ditch solution. I suggested that Jonathan Ericsson could get the callup with Sopel heading off to Chitown so that is my guess: Ericsson gets the callup, plays a little beside Cheli and auditions for one of the points on the second power play unit. […]
[…] -Pavel Datsyuk doesn’t get nearly enough credit for being an execellent two-way player. I pointed out that Alan Ryder stated the case for Datsyuk winning the Selke trophy last season, and there hasn’t been a better defensive forward on the team. With Franzen being out of the lineup it will be interesting to see if Pavel plays on the PK. He played 1:32 short-handed last night so it looks like he will. […]