Consistently Incosistent

The Red Wings kicked off the season with 5 straight wins. It was reason to be excited as we were all happy to see the Red Wings we have grown use to over the years show up to start the season. Then we follow that up with 5 straight losses...

Blame: Who can we blame for the struggles? It can't be Conklin, even though he roughed through the first two losses, he hasn't played in the last three. Hudler? He hasn't put up a point since the 4th game of the year. Still passing up opportunities to shoot. We sat him last game though and still lost... Bertuzzi? Big Bert has struggled mightily, picking up loads of dumb penalties. But your PK hasn't been awful and he isn't supposed to be the driving force to our offense...

Considering we have only lit the lamp a total of 5 times in 5 games makes me want to look at the offense. Our defense has pulled together a bit the last couple of games but our forwards, even though they are getting opportunities, just aren't able to put it in the back of the net.

Is it a leadership problem? A coaching problem? Are we finally too old to hang with the younger legs of the NHL?

I'm leaning towards none of the above, at least being a main point for the problems. I'm sure you can point to several things combined that might add up, but I believe we are doing things right. It's a bad streak of games where we only played maybe 2 bad games out of 5. We deserved a win in 2 and 1 could have been a coin flip. This is called...

Parity

The Red Wings are still a great team and a cup contender. In 3 months we will hardly remember this bad streak and at the end of the day, be glad the struggles are happening at this point in the season and not in May. We are loosing the close games, the ones we need  to win. The players and coaches need to take from this what they can and translate it into a winning to when the time matters.

Tonight's game:

Detroit VS. Calgary
7:30 pm

The Flames are where we expected them to be, straddling that line of .500. The Red Wings are not. This is a great game for the Red Wings to get back to there winning ways so we can see some more of Gustav Nyquist. Commodore is in for Kindle and Eaves is out with a sore back.

Prediction:

I'm going to predict a win at a score of 5-1 for Detroit. They have been getting there chances, just gone up against some hot goaltending.