Well, it’s that time of year again! With the Holidays coming to a close, it’s time to rid ourselves of our vices and reset ourselves for a new year. The Red Wings have a lot of bad habits that they need to shed and 2019 is a great time to do so.

The New Year’s resolutions should be realistic and achievable. They should be things that can be started today and have positive ramifications into the future. So without further ado, here are my five New Year’s resolutions for the Detroit Red Wings.

The Red Wings are infamous for over-ripening prospects in Grand Rapids, but the last few years they’ve kind of run out of NHL-ers. So the kids get their shot and they play pretty well. Dylan Larkin, Anthony Mantha, Andreas Athanasiou, and Dennis Cholowski have all been given full-time roles. Christoffer Ehn, Martin Frk, and Filip Hronek are more part-timers.

The problem is, when things start to go South, it’s the kids who take the punishment. Cholowski’s ice time has been all of the place this year, but more often than not he’s been over 20 minutes per game. Except for the last five games where he’s been floating with the 15 minute mark. When questioned about it, coaching’s reasoning is always about teaching them good habits and holding them accountable. But what about the veteran players? They are frequently making big mistakes and they are not having their ice time sliced. Where is their acconutability?

This resolution isn’t about playing the kids more, it’s about trusting them more. Put them out for big, important shifts and let them learn through experience. The team isn’t good enough to win anything now anyways. You might as well let them make their mistakes now, when they don’t matter.

This one is pretty self-explanatory, but it’s not just about volume of shots.

This heat map from hockeyviz.com is pretty eye-opening. First of all, the red areas (where they’re shooting more relative to the rest of the league) aren’t even that red. Second of all, they are all on the outskirts. Simply put: they do not take shots from the high-danger areas on the ice. They need to start getting in front of the net and letting the shots go. It’s easier said than done, though. That’s a dirty area and requires endurance, resilience, and a high hockey IQ to own it.

As far as volume of shots goes, the Wings have 906 shots on net at 5v5, good for 21st in the league, but they have the third worst Shots-For Percentage. Basically, they allow way more shots than they take. So, yeah, shoot more to even that out.

They could also try to allow less shots by the opposition, but that would require them to get the puck out of their zone. Earlier this season, I tracked the Wings zone exits in five games chosen at random. Out of a sample of 581 zone exit attempts, 54% of them failed to exit the zone with possession of the puck. That’s because 77% of all of their zone exit attempts were passes. Why is that a bad thing? Well, 58% of the their passing exit attempts were failures while only 24.5% of their controlled exit attempts (when a player carries the puck over the line) were failures.

The success rate is much higher on a controlled zone exit and with the speed that the Wings have up front, they should be doing this more. With the way their breakout is set-up, though, they make the defenseman responsible for ensuring the puck exits the zone. Since none of their defensemen are particularly good skaters, they try to make a pass.

So for this resolution: carry the puck out to ensure a higher success rate in exiting the zone. But then they have to get it into the offensive zone.

You can chalk the Red Wings zone entry strategy up to speed and a lack of speed. It’s a bit of a contradiction. Justin Abdelkader can’t keep up with Larkin, so Larkin has to dump it in. Thomas Vanek can’t follow Athanasiou, so he just dumps it in for AA to chase.

Why you would give up possession of the puck only to have to chase it down and fight for it once again is beyond me. I don’t have the data to back this one up, but just watching the games I get frustrated by how often the team gives up possession at the red line just so Luke Glendening can go chase it down.

Similar to the zone exit resolution, the Wings need to stop dumping the puck in and carry it in. Maintain possession, get into position, and start moving the puck towards the front of the net. I’m sick of seeing the dump and chase!!!

You could probably make this resolution for most teams in the league, but the Wings have taken the fifth most penalties in the league. With 140 minors and 11 majors, it feels like they are constantly killing off penalties.

This happens to teams with a low skill level. Players get caught against opposing players that are better than them, so they cheat and ultimately take a penalty. If the Wings can play smarter, they can get ahead of the opposition.

Whatever the solution is, they just need to stay out of the box. 22% of the goals they’ve allowed this year have been power play goals and they’re tied for third in the league in 4-on-5 goals against. That’s bad. In 2019, let’s stay out of the box, okay?

So those are my five new year’s resolutions for the Detroit Red Wings. Do you agree with them? Disagree? Let me know in the comments below.

Thanks for reading this blog all year and happy new year from all of us at Wings Nation!