This Team Is Something Special
We didn't know it right away this season. In fact, many people called for the Wings' downfall this season, like they do most seasons. Most of us knew better, but it still was hard to get really excited for the season. Of course now, those folks are eating their words. The Wings are good, real good. 21 times in a row at home good. And they've got a lot of games at home left.
But this season is more than that, this team is something special.
Hit the jump for my reasons why.
Our defense is an offensive juggernaught...and great defensively too. It's better than 2007-08.
Every damn one of our defense is good this season. All the way down to #7. We've never had a defense quite this good before. 07-08 you say? That season we had Lilja and Lebda as our #6 & 7. This year we have Commie and Kindl. I'll take Commie and Kindl any day of the week. Ian White is damn near as good as Rafalski; Lidstrom is 99.8% as perfect; Stuart is better than 45 year old Chelios and today's Kronwall is ten times the player that 2008 Kronwall was.
Detroit's D has scored 35 goals. Kronwall is second in the league with 12 goals from the blue. Ian White leads the league in defensive plus/minus. Lidstrom is third. You can't ask for anything more.
Our offense is the most balanced as it's ever been.
The Wings have the most 10 goal scorers in the league right now with 10. That's the same amount that they finished the 07-08 season with. Sure, the big guns are down, but guys like Miller are way up. Filppula is now legitimate scoring threat. Any team can win in the regular season with just big guys scoring, but keeping line 3 and 4 scoring is going to be huge.
Plus, this scoring from everywhere allows the team to play like they should. No longer do we have to count on Abby to run the third line. Rather, we can have him where he belongs, on the fourth line, performing like the Dallas Drake he is.
And the depth. Jesus, the depth.
Jimmy F'ing Howard.
Do I have write anything on this? We've never had this luxury as a team, not with Osgood, not with Hasek, definitely not with Legace. Further, I think we've found our backup...he's been with us the whole time. He's not too bad himself.
The team plays like it cares.
From 2008 to 2011, asking for a full sixty minutes seemed like a pipe-dream from Detroit. Sure they could turn it on and win a lot of games with just a good 20-30 minutes, but that sloppy play carried over to the playoffs and boom, no Cup. This year, we can count on the team playing like it cares full near a full 60 minutes for a majority of games. There's that jump that simply hasn't been there yet.
And we have money to spend at the deadline...lots of it(!)...
That should be enough to scare other teams more than a hippie at gun range. Our biggest issue is that we don't know what to spend it on, as everything seems to be working pretty freaking well..
This seems to be pretty special, so much so that I have a feeling that yesterday might not be the only histroy that they make this year. 12 in '12.
Not that I condone the Hawks winning, but it did keep the Rangers from leap frogging us, and I'm not sure that Chicago is going to come back from the deficit they've put themselves in. My wife pointed out that it was hard to decide who you really wanted to win that game. The Squawks have done us a favor, albeit short term. Now they can continue to do us favors and quietly fade into the backdrop, like an extra with one dumb line in a feature film, or a hemorroid.
Yeah, I think it'd be tough for Kenny to go out and pick up somebody that wouldn't upset the apple cart.
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Great post, definitely better defensively now than in 08. Cant wait for playoffs!!! 12 in '12 and 5th for #5
Red a comment on nhl.com http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=617248 which said Nash to Detroit for Abdelkader, 1st rounder and possibly White. Would they even consider sending away White? thoughts? (sorry for spelling and grammar)
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Great post man. I agree this team is special with our without any deadline pick up.
They seem to be playing like they've got something to prove. Maybe they know they only have a short amount of time left with Nik on the back end.
Whatever it is, this is the best team we've had since 2008.
@DetCapC19 Even Ozzy said this afternoon in an interview that this is the best team he's seen take the ice. He claimed that they looked "complete".
@Josh Howard "Complete." I like that. That's a great way to describe this team.
What's so impressive is that we're this good and Z has scored 12 goals. Pav has scored 15. Our PP has been mediocre. Yet we're like 3rd in Goals For?
That's depth.
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@Reddy@Josh Howard If you take our .500 record on the road and the fact that we don't lose at home and apply that to the playoffs, we would technically win every series in 5 games.
Can't argue with math!
@Josh Howard I never thought about it like that, there is no single player that can be marked and shut down and basicaly stop the scoring threat, like Crysby or Ovi. They can stay on Pav or Z and there'll still be the rest of the team who pose a scoring threat. The road games will happen, especially in the playoffs, which is when this team was meant for.
It's a good time to be a Wings fan for sure!
Having 3 20+ goal scorers on our 2nd line is huge. We're 4-1-1 in our last 6 on the road I believe, so hopefully we can build off that here.
@DetCapC19 Yeah, I was just speaking to someone today about that. We are an equal opportunity scoring team... lolz That's actually how we are set up right now. Z and Datsyuk are meant to be the playmakers these days... not the goal scorers. They CAN if needed, but the main thing is to get the other team to focus on the whole team... not a Crosby-like player who can be shut down. It's working. I think we still have time to heat up on the road. We'll see what happens. Jimmy's got this team in the palm of his hand and we're gonna ride him as far as we can because of him or despite a poor outing.
