Wings Weekly 10/15/2017: A Hot N’ Ready Start

Photo credit:Matt Kartozian-USA TODAY Sports

6 years ago

Hockey is back and with a new season comes a new column! Welcome to Wings Weekly, a weekly review of the Detroit Red Wings season released every Sunday.

After an incredibly fun offseason that had some good (Marty Frk), some surprises (Michael Rasmussen), and some frustration (Andreas Athanasiou), the Red Wings hit the ice on Thursday, October 5 to open Little Caesars Arena against the Minnesota Wild and got off to a great start to the season. So let’s get into it, shall we?

THE RECORD

Through their first five games of the season, the Wings went 4-1-0. Oddly enough, four of those games were decided by a score of 4-2. They beat the Senators in a shootout, extending their shootout streak to 11 going back to the 2015-16 season. As it currently stands, they haven’t lost a game in the shootout since February 20, 2016 against the Ottawa Senators. Not bad, but completely unsustainable.

The other highlight this week was delivering the Vegas Golden Knights their first franchise loss. The Golden Knights were the last undefeated team in the league and had the Red Wings on their heels at the end of the second period. Then, Henrik Zetterberg went into beast mode and lead the Wings to a 6-3 victory.

Their only loss came to the Dallas Stars on Tuesday. It was Petr Mrazek’s first game of the season and he turned away 29 of the 32 shots thrown his way. There was definitely a softball that he let in, but overall, the Stars dominated the play. Detroit went 20% on the powerplay, failing to convert on four of their five attempts.

THE STATS

The Regular Stats

Leading the charge offensively for the Red Wings is… a defenseman!? Mike Green has points in three of the first five games. He opened his season with a monster four point night and added two more multi-point games against Arizona and Dallas. Four of his eight points have come on the powerplay. Green playing at this level is a huge win for the Red Wings. He’s on an expiring contract and will likely be a valuable asset at the trade deadline. The more points he puts up during the season, the more the Wings can get in return for him in February. Let’s hope the 32-year-old can keep up this pace.

All three members of the FML line find themselves in the top-5 in points on the team. Marty Frk has unleashed his slapshot on the league, scoring two of his three goals with it, one of which was in the season opener. Anthony Mantha continues to show that he can be a power scorer in this league. Mantha’s size, speed, and hockey smarts are really turning him into a force on the ice. What’s most encouraging about this is he’s putting up these numbers without being on the ice with Henrik Zetterberg. Mantha’s spent the majority of his 5-on-5 minutes on the FML line or on a new line with Dylan Larkin and Justin Abdelkader.

This brings us to Larkin, who leads all Red Wings forwards in assists. After taking a step back in his sophomore season, Larkin needs to bounce back big this year to make an impact on this team. He’s seen time on the powerplay (where he scored his only goal) and the penalty kill. He’s been moved permanently to centre, where he’s leading the team with a 56.36% 5-on-5 faceoff win percentage. The work he put in this offseason working on his draw really seems to be paying off so far.

As far as the goalies go, Jimmy Howard has been amazing. He’s carried over his strong performance from last year to this year and has gone undefeated so far, posting a .955 save percentage and 1.62 goals against average in three games played. As for Mrazek, he’s had an average start, posting a .898 SV% and 3.08 GAA. In his defense, Detroit’s defense has been pretty poor to start the season and Mrazek has had to bail them out multiple times. In fact, with a 49.77 CF% and an average of 34.4 shots against per game, the team is not doing much to help their goalies.

The Fancy Stats

Don’t worry – this chart will be much more interesting the more games that are played. But what can we take out of it now? Well, the Wings had only one game where they were over 50% CF. Against Vegas, they were even and every other game they were chasing. These numbers are very similar to last season and if they don’t turn this around soon, they will regress back to where everyone expects them to be.

From a Relative Corsi-For perspective, Frk and Mantha find themselves leading the pack. This is nothing new for Mantha as he led the team in this stat last season, but it’s quite encouraging to see it coming from Frk as well. Blashill promised to give the young players big minutes at important points in the game this year. So far, he’s followed through on it. And so far it’s paid off.

Surprisingly finding himself in the negative is Tomas Tatar. Normally, Tatar would be closer to the top of this chart, but he’s had a slow start to the season with a single assist in five games. He did get into a fight in the game against the Coyotes, though. His frustration is starting to boil over.

Danny DeKeyser continues to suck the Corsi life out of this team as Detroit’s defense continues to struggle. The amount of turnovers I saw in our own zone last week was inexcusable.

THE STANDINGS

Well look at that – a four-way tie for first in the division! Of course, we’re five games into the season and the standings mean nothing. We’ll see who starts to pull away with it in the coming weeks.

THE WINGS NATION PLAYER OF THE WEEK

Mar 24, 2017; Detroit, MI, USA; Detroit Red Wings left wing Henrik Zetterberg (40) skates with the puck in the second period against the Tampa Bay Lightning at Joe Louis Arena. Mandatory Credit: Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports

The Wings Nation player of the week is Henrik Zetterberg. While our goalies have played great and the kids have shown great strides in improvement, it’s Zetterberg who continues to lift the team on his back and carry them to victory. A perfect example of this was in Vegas on Friday night. The team was down going into the third period and Z comes out with 2 assists to lead them to a 6-3 win. He has the most primary on the team points through their first five games. At 37-years-old, the Red Wings captain is showing no signs of slowing down.

CONCLUSION

Detroit is off to a good, fun start to the season. Their goalies are bailing them out of games, but their young players are showing up offensively. Don’t be deceived by their 4-1-0 record, though. Don’t forget – they went 6-2-0 to start the season last year. This team is not driving puck possession the way they need to be and their defense is consistently turning pucks over in their own zone. I still don’t see them making the playoffs, but I’m having a bunch of fun watching them win now. With a tough week ahead of them, they’re resolve will really be tested.