Overreacting to the Preseason: Young Players are Performing

With the preseason over and done with, fans have only this inevitably-long regular season to look forward to. Not all is doom and gloom with the aging Red Wings though. Two bright spots to watch this season have come forward within the past eight exhibition games.

It is the preseason, so take this with a million grains of salt. But maybe this season won’t be as tedious to watch as previously thought.

One player that will make the 2017-18 Red Wings season a little more watchable is former 20^th overall pick Anthony Mantha.

With a respectable 36 points and 17 goals in 60 games last season as a rookie, Mantha demonstrated his goal scoring ability clearly – two goals in four preseason games did that as well. There is no need to be hesitant in predicting that Mantha will exceed 17 goals this upcoming season and potentially even lead the Red Wings in that category.

It all depends how willing Blashill is to put him out on the ice for offensive opportunities. Last season he was on the ice for 15:54 a game – seventh in last year’s group of forwards. Becoming even just top-5 in forward ice-time should see his offence grow.

Mantha’s defensive game should grow as well as he told MLive at the beginning of training camp this year. “I need to get Blash to have confidence in me in the D-zone when I have the puck, when I don’t have the puck,” Mantha said. “I think I did a pretty good job last year, I need to keep going that way. It’s still a learning curve.”

In four preseason games, Mantha put up a solid CA/60 of 40.4. This should show Blashill how Mantha should play a much more prominent role and play those “important minutes” that players want to play.

If this upcoming season is going to feel extremely long, then we might as well watch some slightly entertaining hockey. Mantha is fascinating to watch and the other player with a quality preseason should be looking for a bounce-back year.

A lacklustre 2016-17 season has been followed by a much-improved showing in the 2017-18 preseason. A tally of one goal and three assists puts him third in team scoring just behind Nyquist and Mantha – all three having played four games.

A strong point-per-game preseason against weaker competition is expected for the 15^th overall pick in 2015. But at a team-leading CA/60 of 35.8, and a CF/60 of 66.1, Larkin showed this preseason that he can contribute and produce at both ends of the ice. This puts him in the same all-around balance of defence and offence this preseason as Johnny Gaudreau (40.7/63.3), Jamie Benn (38.5/67.8) and Marcus Johannson (39.4/64.8).

 

If the “FML” line of Frk, Mantha and Larkin stay together this season, there is potential for them to become a strong possession line for the Red Wings.

Not only does it benefit with on-ice product, but keeping the young kids together can let fans see an extremely-slight glimpse into the future of this team’s offence.

I know, it’s an overreaction to a very small sample size and overall meaningless games. Do we all think that Beau Bennett is an elite defensive forward with a CA/60 of 27.6? No, of course not. But good players generally perform well in these games. There is a much bigger blurred line in the preseason between the sure-thing productive player and the lucky winger who is riding a shooting percentage tsunami-sized wave.

If this Red Wings preseason has shown anything, it is that the next line of young players on this roster should have a greater role on the team this season.

At some points, this season will predictably be hard to watch, but Mantha, Larkin and the other young players give me hope to at least be entertained during the next 82 games. They will give us something else to watch – to distract us from the overshadowing contract details when we see some significant Red Wings slowly skate up the ice.

Here’s to a new (hopefully younger) season!