Are the Red Wings Suffering More from Coaching or Construction?

10 games into the season, the Detroit Red Wings are 4-6-1.  That’s not an awful record, and Detroit has had to wrangle with a number of the league’s most formidable teams, including last night against the league-leading Winnipeg Jets.  However, whether through the eye test or the numbers, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that this year’s team is a lesser facsimile of last year’s outfit, which wasn’t good enough to make the playoffs in the first place.

In 2023-24, the Detroit Red Wings (who, as I needn’t remind any hockey fan in Michigan, fell painfully short of the postseason last spring) scored 3.35 goals-per-game while conceding 3.33.  Their power play converted at 23.08%, while the penalty kill succeeded 79.58% of the time.  Through 10 games this year, all those numbers save the PP are worse, and there, the improvement is marginal.  This year’s Red Wings score 2.70 goals-per-game but concede 3.40.  The power play is up to 23.3%, but that gain is more than out-done by the penalty kill’s woeful 65.6% success rate.

In the featured video above, I tried to assess whether the Red Wings’ woes trace back more to coaching or to roster construction.  To be blunt, there is a solid case on both counts.  On the latter subject, amongst the forwards, there seems to be a dissonance between a stated desire for defensive stinginess with a top six desirous of a run-and-gun attack, while the churn on the blue line suggests a deficiency in pro scouting.  On the former subject, Detroit looks like a team without a five-on-five identity, and for whatever deficiencies.

In other words, when I look at the present state of the Red Wings, I see blame to be shared between architect Steve Yzerman and coach Derek Lalonde.  Check out the clip above for more analysis as to why.

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