Systems, or what's left of them
Thinking back to the 2023-24 season, I remember significant highs and devastating lows.
When I think back to their process, the foundations of a system were there midway through the season. Players came together pretty well, but then things fell apart.
Namely, when their captain was out for periods of time, the Detroit Red Wings were a different team. Regardless of who is to blame, it was a huge issue for the team.
Shambles of the system that once danced across the ice dissipated without a trace every second Dylan Larkin was out and the team didn’t recover.
More than Larkin missing time played a factor in the performance (other players faced injuries and illness with a player even spending time in the hospital before a game due to the illness going around), as did overall personnel.
We knew going into the season to not have lofty expectations.
Of course, we have the booing committee who think the rebuild’s expiration date is long gone and we are now left with the sad, sour milk of a general manager in Steve Yzerman.
Are we at the end of the rebuilding tunnel?
Purtineer (as my mom and granny would say), but there’s a bit of road to go.
Based on the systems alone, I’m hesitant to say the group will improve much in the upcoming season. Most of the players will return. Can head coach Derek Lalonde and his crew get the players to buy into his system?
Possibly the illness took a hold, but the Jake Walman prompt exit makes me think more things were going on behind the scenes and things are a bit rocky with the players and the coach. For a guy touted as a players coach, let’s hope he can pull some charm out of somewhere and get everyone on his page again. If not, things will be pretty bumpy, pretty quickly.
A huge opportunity on defense for the Detroit Red Wings wasn’t only about personnel on defense. I understand that a huge factor in defending is literally the defense, but goaltenders, forwards, and communication were questionable at times last season.
When we were stuck in our end for minutes on end, miscues where we didn’t know where the puck was let alone what we wanted to do with it if the puck chose us to play it, or took a moment to communicate with our teammate, things went south faster than my snowbird parents going to Florida after Thanksgiving.
Hopefully these aspects of the Detroit Red Wings will improve, but I want to leave assessment of the goalies and forward groups for next season for a different article. They were things that I wanted to point out for my own awareness when trying to rank the Detroit Red Wings defense.