Expectations - Regular Season/Playoffs

[RedWingedKitten 9]

It's August, and I want to know how you think your Detroit Red Wings will do in 2009/2010. I will give you my thoughts first.

The Offense

-Will not be as potent as it was in 2009.

-Much younger which will be good and bad.

The Defense

-On paper it looks unbreakable, but will it play that way?

-Should have no problem feeding our forwards passes.

-A full season of Ericsson is exciting!

I'm hoping for the regular season to be much like 2008... top 5 offense with an amazing defense. I think if the team is motivated it should finish...

1st overall

As for the playoffs I feel surprisingly calm. Who will beat us in the West? Chicago? San Jose? I am not so sure. I am sure that it the Wings stay healthy they will be damn hard to beat.

[Echolalia 2,961]

i still expect them to win the Cup. Just because they aren't going to have 3 solid lines of all-stars doesn't let them off the hook.

[skacore 2]

6th in the west, 2nd in the central to chicago, injury plagued reg. season leads to early round playoff exit, joe is empty every single night and no one really cares about this joke of a team

[gcom007 1,465]

They'll be as competitive as many other teams will be in the West now. I don't think they are that much better than some of the other teams going into this year. Last year I feel like it was a given that we'd go to the Finals and compete. It's not out of the realm of possibility by any stretch this year but the West is going to be a lot tougher. I'm thinking the difference between 1-8 in the West is 10 points or less. I don't think any team will run away with anything in the West either. I still have a gut feeling Chicago will go to the Finals. I'm not sure they'll be ready to win, but my gut's telling me they're the team coming out of the West. But again, I think there will be 8 teams that make the playoffs from the West that will have about as good of a chance as any team to go the distance. That's the difference this year.

[MadMan Mark 0]

Wings theme this year is DEFENSE. PK can do nothing but improve over last year. We may not generate as much offense, but neither will our opponents. Wings win Central by doubl-digits over Chicago, who turns out not to be as good as many thought (Huet blows and D still very average). Wings take out Anaheim in 5 games to go Finals and dispatch the Caps in 5. This year DEFENSE WINS CHAMPIONSHIPS!

[Lidstrom for life 20]

Honestly our odds of winning are the same they were last year. I know we lost Hossa and omg Williams is back but once the playoffs start its just about who is healthy. There are probably 7-8 teams with a legit shot at winning the cup and we are one of them, I cant wait for the season to start.

[tommingthepuck96 1]

If wings can stay healthy, they should have no problem finishing top 2 in the west.. Its going to suck if i see some games with meech playing on the first power play unit like last year.. Team defense just has to step it up, and so does osgood..

[MadMan Mark 0]

Honestly our odds of winning are the same they were last year. I know we lost Hossa and omg Williams is back but once the playoffs start its just about who is healthy. There are probably 7-8 teams with a legit shot at winning the cup and we are one of them, I cant wait for the season to start.

Amen to that!

[uk_redwing 495]

6th in the west, 2nd in the central to chicago, injury plagued reg. season leads to early round playoff exit, joe is empty every single night and no one really cares about this joke of a team

Id probably say 4th or 5th in the West at worst. 2nd or 3rd if we have a largely injury-free season.

JLA is going to be reeeeally empty and reeeeally quiet.

[dat's sick 1,002]

The only thing I'm worried about is that this team is much more vulnerable to injuries than we were last year or even the year before that.

You can't go through an entire season without injuries, so we just have to hope many players don't get hurt at the same time because we don't have the depth to roll with it like we did this last season.

As long as everyone is healthy I expect them to do fine. Like so many others, I expect us to score a little less but be tighter on defense and Ozzie to be more solid.

We still have as many offensive weapons as any other team in the league, and there's no reason our defense shouldn't be able to bounce back from last season.

My expectations in the end: Top 3 in the West. As for the playoffs, even with the losses we've had this off-season it's difficult to see what team is going to beat us in a 7 game series (once again, IF we're healthy). I think we have a real good shot at winning the cup. Especially if we can make some kind of pick up at the trade deadline.

4 years in a row in the WCF and 3 years in a row in the SCF would be amazing, and I'm sure the entire organization and the players will be gunning for that.

[10 Minute Misconduct 104]

Top 3 in the West regular season, Conference finals.

[Snazzy 0]

6th in the west, 2nd in the central to chicago, injury plagued reg. season leads to early round playoff exit, joe is empty every single night and no one really cares about this joke of a team

Wow, just wow.

Red Wings are the most winningest team the past two decades; won the cup back-to-back and just recently made it back-to-back finals, one which they won the cup, the second appearance lost it by one goal and an assist. And now they are a "joke of a team"?

******* pathetic! People out there would give their left AND right nut to have a team as successful as Detroit. We get to witness one of the most spectacular things of this generation and we have pathetic and ungrateful fans like you. Wow!

[skacore 2]

People out there would give their left AND right nut to have a team as successful as Detroit.

that actually explains A LOT.... thank you

[jollymania 162]

I agree people won't go to games as much but not because of a crappy product, its funny how people try to affirm orgasmic love for fighting by saying that people won't go because fights are the only entertaining part of hockey and there's not many during the Wing's season.

[gcom007 1,465]

Wow, just wow.

Red Wings are the most winningest team the past two decades; won the cup back-to-back and just recently made it back-to-back finals, one which they won the cup, the second appearance lost it by one goal and an assist. And now they are a "joke of a team"?

******* pathetic! People out there would give their left AND right nut to have a team as successful as Detroit. We get to witness one of the most spectacular things of this generation and we have pathetic and ungrateful fans like you. Wow!

We also appear to have fans who are utterly and completely unable to pick up on blatant sarcasm...

[SouthernWingsFan 854]

They'll make the playoffs like in the past years without much difficulty again despite roster changes. After that, who knows...

[ShanahanMan 473]

Overall, theres just very little to be excited about for this upcoming season. Many major subtractions, no solid additions (maybe Eaves) and no cool changes to look forward to. We're smaller, weaker than ever before and and this just leads to little anticipation among fans. If you thought the Joe was empty before, I guarantee you're in for a BIG surprise next season. They'll be lucky to fill half the seats.

I say 5th place finish followed by second round exit.

Edited August 7, 2009 by ShanahanMan

[Heroes of Hockeytown 694]

Wings continue to assert their dominance against the overmatched Hawks, win Central.

Random playoffs are random, I wouldn't make a prediction.

[Aussie_Wing 354]

We'll take the Division and finish top 2-3 in the conference.

We'll be a very, very good side once again.

[Detroit # 1 Fan 2,204]

Since we lost in the Finals I've been saying very low expectations, I dont give a s*** if we finish 8th, with Ozzie in net, and if we make a signicant move at the deadline, anything could happen.

[hockey&beer 16]

WIngs take the Central,Chicago and St Louis have the only chance to change that and both are missing MAJOR components to do so.

If I could predict playoffs I would be a millionaire.

[xtrememachine1 795]

If the Wings can get the same kind of playoff performances that they have been getting from Ozzy, stay healthy and can do better on the PK, I expect them to be in the final four again.

[digitaljohn88 4]

The Wings will play better because they'll NEED to play better. The offense will score about 240-250 goals instead of 290+. The defense will be much better than last year. They know they can't coast through games on an insane offense anymore. Also, I think Ericsson helps our core more than expected. Osgood showed in the playoffs that the last regular season was a fluke. He'll be back, motivated and he'll have a much better year - closer to his performance in 07-08.

104-110 points. 1st in the central, 2nd in the west. Chicago will be between 96-102 points. Not far back, but never seriously challenging for the Central. I don't see how they've improved so much. Instead of a full season of Havlat, they'll have half a season of Hossa. Havlat had more points than Hossa last year. Huet/unknown instead of Khabibulin/Huet. Go look at Khabi's record vs. Huet's record last year. Of course their kids will improve, but I just don't see that overcoming the other obstacles.

Playoffs I won't try to predict. For the Wings, I think with our long playoff runs and the olympics coming up, playoff success COMPLETELY depends upon which of our guys are healthy.

[Pavel Hossyukstrom 2]

i still expect them to win the Cup. Just because they aren't going to have 3 solid lines of all-stars doesn't let them off the hook.

yeah check 2008. didn't have em then.

[Doggy 130]

6th in the west, 2nd in the central to chicago, injury plagued reg. season leads to early round playoff exit, joe is empty every single night and no one really cares about this joke of a team

To the mods of the forum, I'm curious -- would the above post not be considered baiting?