Heading into Tuesday night, the Detroit Red Wings are 14-4-1 under head coach Todd McLellan with just one small slip-up to date. Yeah, they still need to improve in a few areas if they plan on making the playoffs in 2025, but it still doesn’t take away the fact that the Wings have gotten better in so many facets. Even if one small metric is to blame, but more on that later.
Get this, when Derek Lalonde was still the bench boss in Hockeytown, the Wings scored just 88 goals, they had a Corsi For of 46.7, their offensive-zone starting percentage was a meager 47.7, and the Wings found themselves facing a crazy 30.0 shots on goal per game.
Yeah, those numbers are hard to fathom, but they explain why the Wings were such a bad hockey team for the longest time. So much, that it was easy to air quite a few grievances against them by the time the calendar year died and things looked hopeless.
Enter Todd McLellan, who, for the sake of all those residing in the Motor City and for Detroit’s great fans around the world, may’ve saved what looked like that can’t win, no-way-out situation. Yeah, the Wings are scoring more, but let’s look more at those underrated statistics mentioned above that define why this is a better hockey team.
Red Wings night-and-day difference can be summed up by one small metric
Forget the 14-4-1 record and the 29 points that’ve come with it for a second. Forget the fact that the Red Wings power play has been one of the league’s best in that span, too. Instead, let’s look at the Corsi For Percentage, the number of shots, blocks, and misses a team takes.
No, it’s not at that ideal number of over 50.0, but it’s close, at 49.7, a full three percentage points higher than what it otherwise was under Lalonde. It’s also led to a nearly three percent increase of offensive zone starting percentage, which is at 50.6 percent.
Those two factors, but with Corsi For more than anything else, probably had something to do with the Wings scoring over three goals a game recently and averaging nearly 29 shots on goal per game. They’re simply creating more chances, much like they did last season when Lalonde still looked like a viable coach.
Case in point? We knew the Red Wings were a high-octane team last season when they found ways to create opportunities for themselves because they constantly knew how to finish sequences. And while that 49.7 Corsi For can certainly be improved, it’s been a difference-maker when you take a deeper dive into the numbers.
For the Wings, it should be simple: Create more opportunities and maximize your team’s strengths in the offensive zone, and the playoff drought will end in mid-April. It’s that simple.