Leaderboard

How dare they. I generally like you but you appear to be playing resident contrarian edgelord these days, almost like you're perpetually grumpy and hate any sort of fun. It's okay to be mildly excited about little things, in fact I much prefer it to the usual pissing and moaning. I'm not sitting here rock hard over the move or anything. God forbid people find little things to be hopeful about during this period of irrelevancy for the Wings.

I bet you friend was happy. Leafs fans love meaningless hockey games.

That's the dilemma for Wings fans. On the one hand, f*** yes we want our team in the 2020 playoffs! On the other hand, conventional wisdom says the Wings need to suck a little while longer so that Yzerman can build a proper foundation for what we hope would be a sustainably good team. The way I've chosen to approach this whole business is "Root for wins, be happy when we win, and be ok with losses."

Well, that's the hope. It's what we tell ourselves to help make the losing tolerable. Mind you, I don't disagree with where you're coming from. (I Like'd your post.) It's just a difficult head-versus-heart thing for me, which is made all the more difficult for me by my pathological ability to play devil's advocate and rationalize diametrically opposed viewpoints (if only for rhetorical sport). Push-and-pull. Want-but-do-not-want. I say it a lot: I don't know how Oilers fans do it. I miss the simpler times. I miss "We have to make the playoffs and win the Cup. Period." For what it's worth, I do believe this Wings team is capable of making the 2020 playoffs. Not because I believe this team stacks up really well against most of the teams in our division (I don't believe that) but because in today's NHL you just kind of expect there to be one or two surprise overachievers every season. Everyone believed Vegas would blow chunks in their inaugural season, and we all know what happened. (And that Knights team was not significantly better than our projected 2019-20 Wings team, on paper.) Everyone believed the 2018-19 Isles would blow chunks, and we all know what happened. (And that Isles team was not significantly better than our projected 2019-20 Wings team, on paper.) All a team really needs is monster seasons from two or three key players. That can be enough to get you into the playoffs. Larkin hitting 80 points would be huge, largely because it'd probably mean we got 20-25-goal seasons from multiple players and at least one 30-goal season from someone. If Mantha can refrain from breaking his hands on third-pairing defensemen's faces, that would be big. Having the Bertuzzi-Larkin-Mantha line in place straight out of the gate could be big. If Hronek picks up right where he left off this past season and maintains that scoring pace over the course of an entire season, that would be yuuuge. Hell, a solid power play may have been enough to get us into the playoffs this past season, so the fact that Hronek is a natural PP QB is exciting. Losing Vanek is arguably addition by subtraction; he put up points, but the 2018-19 Red Wings season often felt to me like one of those Make-A-Wish dream-come-true dealies for a grown-ass man in Thomas Vanek. I'm actually kind of bullish on Nemeth; while we do need more scoring from our back end and Nemeth is in no way a point-producer, I think we've kind of overlooked the importance of having at least a couple of big steady shutdown defenders. I don't mind DeKeyser as our top shutdown guy for the time being, but he can only do so much. Ericsson's had his moments, but they've been few and far between and I believe his body has been falling apart for some time now. Howard will be playing for another contract and I assume he wants to stay in Detroit; I'm expecting him to be pretty motivated. He's capable of getting hot for extended periods of time. We'll need one hell of a season from him if we're going to seriously challenge for a playoff berth.