Detroit Red Wings: 3 Stars from the 2022-23 season
As the 2022-2023 season comes to a close and the NHL playoffs start again without the Detroit Red Wings participating, it is time to honor the outstanding play of three players who battled through the season.
The Detroit Red Wings playoff drought has now officially reached seven years, and too much of the chagrin of the organization and fan base alike, there have still been strides taken in both skill on the roster and the performance on the ice.
Remember when Detroit was sitting in a wildcard spot, and the excitement for the team was so palpable that you could chew it? Then just days later, losing to Ottawa on back-to-back nights? It seemed like management gave up on the season and capitalized on the mayhem of the trade deadline.
The Red Wings then restocked and reloaded with young talent from within their system, with the likes of Simon Edvinsson and Marco Kasper. This allowed Coach Lalonde to see real NHL minutes from players expected to make the team next year.
But ultimately, they came up short of the running in the eastern conference, as expected. Even teams that cannot make the postseason still have performances from players that can be outstanding.
Because of those in Detroit, the fans were given a more entertaining season than they have had in nearly a decade. Let’s give these three players their proverbial lap around the virtual rink with a souvenir stick. Keep your head on a swivel for flying twigs being launched over the glass.
Detroit Red Wings Star #1: Dylan Larkin
Detroit’s captain had himself quite a year. On the ice, he centered the top line, consistently facing the opposing team’s best defenders and scorers. Despite that, since being in the league, Dylan Larkin was able to set career highs in goals, assists, points, faceoff win percentage, powerplay goals, and nearly every statistical measure.
He was able to take his defensive play to another level as well. In addition to being tasked with playing on the first penalty-killing unit in most cases, Larkin stockpiled 53 takeaways and refused to hinder his team by taking less than 0.6 penalty minutes per game.
He picked a hell of a year to hit such numbers, as he was up for free agency at the end of the season. However, Steve Yzerman also took notice of the impact Larkin had on the success that the team was able to experience. Dylan Larkin was rewarded with a new eight-year contract with an AAV of $8.7 million.
That is not too shabby for a player who was occasionally scrutinized by the media and a portion of the fanbase for not being talented enough to be a “first-line center.” He answered the call, put himself at the top of the team in scoring, and showed true leadership skills for veterans and rookies.
Without Larkin on the roster for this season, Detroit would easily have five to six fewer victories to show, if not more, making him the team’s MVP for the 2022-23 season.
Dylan Larkin’s Highlight of the Year:
https://twitter.com/NHL/status/1582380214356967425?lang=en
Detroit Red Wings Star #2: Ville Husso
During the summer of 2021, Steve Yzerman made a move to acquire Alex Nedeljkovic from the Carolina Hurricanes in an attempt to solidify the goaltender position and hold down the net until the alleged prodigal son, Sebastian Cossa is overripened and mature. At the time, it seemed like a steal for a goalie coming off an incredible rookie year with Carolina.
His time in Detroit started off reasonably well but ultimately came crumbling down as the end of the season neared. So, the very next summer, Yzerman again made a move for a goalkeeper. This time he acquired the services of former St. Louis Blue, Ville Husso. This swing connected in a way that he had hoped Nedeljkovic would.
The two goalies split time fairly equally to start the season, but it did not take long for Husso to stand out to the coaching staff as the superior talent. The final few weeks were rough, but let’s look past those few games. He had never gone through the grind of playing that many games in a season during his career.
Between the burnout of playing the large majority of the contests and losing nearly half of the starting lineup in front of him, there is reason to ignore a handful of games. Leading up to that point, he was stellar. Husso started 56 of 82 games; he completed the season with four shutouts and posted 1,436 saves, a career-high, before being awarded rest for a handful of meaningless games down the stretch.
Much like Larkin, he alone won some games for the club with outstanding performances, shutting down the opposition on nights when the rest of the team did not seem to show up to give a full effort.
Husso was given a heavy load of playing time, and at times, Detroit rode him multiple games in a row without rest. He performed admirably and kept this team in the playoff hunt much longer than the city of Detroit has been used to over the past seven years.
The organization has found their man to try and make playoff pushes until Cossa arrives, and even then, could play himself into a timeshare for the future.
Ville Husso’s Highlight of the Year:
Detroit Red Wings Star #3: Jake Walman
For the first time in a long time, the biggest weakness for the Detroit Red Wings is not on the blue line. Moritz Seider got reinforcements in Olli Maata and Simon Edvinsson and found a new defensive partner in Jake Walman. The Seider-Chiarot experiment did not go as the coaching staff had hoped it would, but luckily for them, Walman’s emergence has propelled the play of their top defenseman and the team’s defense as a whole.
Once put onto the top pair, Walman thrived with Seider and vice versa. The scoring chances improved drastically, as well as the goals against while they remained on the ice. In fact, Walman himself had the best plus/minus on the team with a plus-10, while Seider’s former partner, Chiarot, had the worst with a minus-31. Steadying the play of Seider makes the rest of the pairings more manageable to piece together.
The two had immediate chemistry and worked well off each other from the moment they got the opportunity. It might be drastic to say, but I believe it is true that Walman stepped up in a way that has brought the defense to an average level, a far cry from where Detroit was last year.
The biggest problem with the team now is scoring, and Walman has been able to help with that as well. He plays with confidence when the puck is on his stick, and when he is not putting shots on the net, he is pushing the offense by creating space and time for the forwards.
Something that does not get enough attention is fanfare. There is something to be said about winning a fan base over and becoming a favorite player for many of them. Walman gets a bump to earn a star for the season by, from what all accounts show, earning popularity in the locker room.
The moments after scoring a goal or laying a big hit, you can see that his teammates love him, and he loves playing for the Red Wings. Losing Tyler Bertuzzi‘s heart and willingness to go to battle for anyone wearing the same sweater as him stings a little less when Jake Walman is standing in your corner, willing to do the same thing. That alone boosts his intangibles meter for what he can bring to the team and the city.
Jake Walman’s Highlight of the Year:
The 2022-23 season has been put to rest, and certainly not on the best finish with five straight losses after Thursday night’s 5-0 loss in Tampa Bay. But the Red Wings have plenty to look back on from this season, both good & bad.
The future is upon this fanbase; the Red Wings faithful just have to sit back and watch the show unfold; for now, the attention will turn to the summer and all of the work to be done this off-season.