Wings Preview

[WpgMikos 17]

Since I'm in Lansing and usually attend the most Wings games, I was given the Detroit season preview:

The Detroit Red Wings last season were one game away from repeating as Stanley Cup Champions. The wounds from that loss are still fresh and should serve as motivation for this season. They would have been the first team to repeat since the Red Wings of 96/97 and 97/98. GM Ken Holland has been very busy all summer ensuring that the Wings will be back on top of the Central division this season.

And quite the busy summer it has been for the GM. The Wings lost a ton of scoring; Marian Hossa left for Chicago (40 goals), Jiri Hudler left for the KHL (23 goals), Mikael Samuelsson went to Vancouver (19 goals) and Tomas Kopecky, who joins Hossa in Chicago (6 goals).

However GM Ken Holland did what he could to stem the tide as he added a couple of former Wings Todd Bertuzzi & Jason Williams, Patrick Eaves, Doug Janik and two Leafs prospects in Jeremy Williams, Kris Newbury.

Now the Wings lost a lot of scoring (88 goals from the above listed players) and while the new additions are not even in the same stratosphere in terms of scoring, you don’t make the playoffs every year since 1989/90 and win 13 Central division titles (technically 12, as 1 was a Norris) by not learning to use the resources you have at your disposal.

So the Wings have some big questions to answer this upcoming season, namely; 1) How will the loss of all that scoring power be offset? 2) Can they regain a top tier penalty kill? and finally 3) Can the improvements by their Central Division competition, knock them from the top?

To read my entire Wings preview, click here.

So am I off? Was it fairly bland? Agree/disagree? Let me know as I value the input. (feel free to head over to IC and comment there as well if you think I've gotten something wrong or even if you think I've gotten it right).