When you’re a smitten Detroit Red Wings fan, you never stop following them, even in the dregs. Smitten as in rabid, smitten as in dedicated, smitten as in desperate to see how things will evolve into the future. Smitten like the readers of this pages-hard core fans, the very opposite of the front-runners.
If Hollywood wrote the script for the Detroit Red Wings rising from the ashes, the tipping point would have been Z to Z. That is, Zetterberg’s surprise retirement yielding and blessing young and talented Zadina as the team skates happily off into a sunset that makes us smile. That didn’t happen, of course. And the point is the tipping points are unpredictable. We can imagine we know where they are, but we really don’t.
That is why sports in general and hockey, in particular, fascinate us so. It is the ultimate reality TV, never mind silly teens living together on the beach in Santa Monica. We don’t know how the story will be written, but we can’t resist speculating.
After a stellar year with the Grand Rapids Griffins, we thought Filip Hronek would outshine other defensive prospects for the one available slot. And why not? A right-handed shot defenseman with sorely needed AHL-proven power play skills? But a smooth-skating, unblinking Dennis Cholowski quietly had something to say about all that. Where Hronek hesitated, a confident Cholowski inserted himself.
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Where is the prime tipping point for this shiny new season? Right now several injuries to a veteran defensive corps are front and center. Nothing is random about Niklas Kronwall or Jonathan Ericsson growing brittle with the years, as every beer league hockey player knows. We become more frail with age.
We dream of Wally Pipp to Lou Gehrig transitions in our defense, but Hollywood scripts are just that. Jeff Blashill foresaw maybe a few prospects making the team. Right now we are talking about six new arrivals coming aboard, two forwards and four defensemen. Michael Rasmussen made the team last year as a pimply 18-year-old, but was ripe for more seasoning. Christoffer Ehn made the team as a sleeper pick, the old fashioned way, outworking and outplaying others, now unexpectedly on the roster.
Dennis Cholowski parlays power play potency. Libor Sulak power skates pucks out of trouble. Filip Hronek scrappily manages a second power-play unit. Joe Hicketts passion inspires other players to play bigger.
They bring promise but still make mistakes. How good are they really? The proof of the pudding is in the eating. And the NHL will eat you alive if you are unprepared for the best hockey competition in the world. The most fascinating foreseeable team tipping point is when the veterans heal, how many jobs can the young defensemen take? When a handful of them stick in our notoriously weak defense, we will then know the Detroit Red Wings are in full transformation.
This isn’t the only tipping point. Can veteran goaltenders Jimmy Howard and Jonathan Bernier become more than the sum of their parts? Can these two vets as a tandem egg each other on to make a better omelet?
Thoughts like these make our pulse race at a new season’s start despite most assuredly finishing outside the playoffs.