Flip

After last nights game in Colorado, Red Wings fans really felt the impact Valtterri Filppula has on the game. Flip was injured early and by the end of the game it was noticeable we didn't have a dynamic second line without him on the ice. He has finally grown in to the high-octane forward Wings fans all hoped for. 

It can be argued he is our second most important forward, only behind Pavel Datsyuk. Val controls the pace in the offensive zone and consistently prevents and breaks up plays in the defensive zone. He's on pace for over 70 points on the year and should, barring serious injury, easily surpass his previous career high of 42 points.

At the beginning of the season I predicted this line for Filppula:

82 GP
17 G
35 A
52 P

Flips current state line: 

25 GP

8 G

13 A

21 P

Looking back, the 82 games was a bit of a stretch... I did expect him to surpass his previous high but I didn't think he would look as good as he has. In my opinion, he has made it quite easy to forgive Zetterberg for his underwhelming production. Now, if we can manage to have them both clicking? Look out NHL.

It sounds like his injury last night wasn't anything serious and there is a real possibility they can get him in the game tomorrow evening. They simply need to modify his skate to make it comfortable on the 1-inch gash he received while being slew-footed by an Avalanche player. 

If Filppula can keep up this pace, potting even 60 points with his stellar two-way play, this will be chalked up as another Holland steal. His cap hit is sitting pretty at 3 million. That's about 3 million less than Zetterberg and 250,000 less than Jonny Eric$$on. 

Let's just hope he can avoid the injury bug.

Here is a list of the past Predictions&Portraits:
Zetterberg
Lidstrom
Kronwall
Ericsson
Datsyuk
Holmstrom
Hudler
Franzen
Bertuzzi
Player Predictions (No portraits, yet!)
Red Wings Season Prediction 

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.

Predictions

With the season beginning on Friday, and not enough time to Illustrate pictures for everyone's prediction, I'm going to jump the gun and lay out the rest of the players season predictions in one post. I'll get around to finishing out the rosters portraits eventually, but want to have my predictions set in stone before the regular season begins.

Here is a list of the past Predictions&Portraits:
Zetterberg
Lidstrom
Kronwall
Ericsson
Datsyuk
Holmstrom
Hudler
Franzen
Bertuzzi
Red Wings Season Prediction

The Rest of the Team:

Forwards
Valtteri Filppula:
82 GP
17 G
35 A
52 P

Dan Cleary:
70 GP
25 G
20 A
45 P 

Darren Helm:
82 GP
16 G
23 A
39 P 

Patrick Eaves:
65 GP
17 G
8 A
25 P 

Justin Abdelkader:
82 GP
9 G
12 A
21 P 

Drew Miller:
50 GP
8 G
10 A
18 P 

Fabion Brunnstrom:
40 GP
6 G
13 A
19 P 

Corey Emmerton:
45 GP
5 G
15 A
20 P 

Defense
Jakub Kindl:
55 GP
3 G
6 A
9 P 

Brad Stuart:
75 GP
4 G
15 A
19 P 

Ian White:
82 GP
8 G
30 A
38 P 

Mike Commodore:
45 GP
2 G
8 A
10 P 

Goaltenders
Jimmy Howard:
65 GP
35 W
3 SO  
2.69 GAA
.908 SV%

Ty Conklin:
14 GP
10 W
0 SO  
2.45 GAA
.918 SV%

Joey MacDonald:
3 GP
1 W
0 SO  
3.10 GAA
.897 SV%
 
Disclaimer: I know most of these predictions may wind up being overly optimistic. I'm going more on potential upside and the ol' "If everything goes right for everyone" logic.

Keep an eye out for individual round-ups and portraits throughout the season.

Predictions!

Looking ahead to the 2011-2012 season.

With Training Camp looming, I want to take a quick look ahead to the upcoming season. I'll refrain from speaking about individuals as much as possible and try to look at the team as a whole because I plan on writing about specific players in the near future.

If I was going to try and sum up what I'm hoping for next season, it would look something like this: "Please, for the love of god, try to keep the injuries to a minimum!". And I know all the naysayers want to be the first to jump at the "Too old" argument because without having an inch of knowledge of our past injuries, that might be the first thing that comes to mind. It wouldn't be that we had a good number of freak accidents. Stuarts shattered jaw, Datsyuks broken wrist, Osgoods old, stretched out groin... Okay so there were a couple age-related injuries. That said, we have been on the wrong side of the coin the past couple of season and hopefully our fortunes change as the team gets a bit younger and some of the older members move on to the next stages of there lives.

Changes
Who's in? Commodore, White, Mursak, Emmerton, Conklin
Who's out? Rafalski, Draper, Modano, Osgood, Salei

We also made some under the radar changes in the coaching department as Brad McCrimmon and Paul MacLean have moved on to bigger things and Jeff Blashill and Bill Peters find themselves working alongside Mike Babcock. I can't say I know a whole lot about the way either guy coaches but this should bring a bit of new life into an old system as well as some fresh voices. It was a change which I saw as necessary and might make a bigger impact than we initially think.


Another thing to look at is the Improvement of other teams within the conference and division. Teams like Los Angeles and San Jose look to have made strives to improve there teams, along with Vancouver which for the most part stayed steady with there President Trophy winning team from last year. There is plenty of high-end competition for the Red Wings this season.


In the Central it looks to be an even tougher year than we have seen in the past. Starting with the Blues, whom have a young core of players that are always tough to go up against. Notably I'm a fan of Pietrangelo, Halak, and Oshie. They also picked up the up-and-coming power forward Chris Stewart and defenseman Shattenkirk in there late season trade with Colorado last year. Columbus made some nice additions to there top 6 adding Jeff Carter and along the blue line they added James Wiesniewski. I'm convinced there season really relies on what version of Steve Mason we see though. Nashville, always bringing a "blue-collar" style of play to the arena, never an easy game, especially with the brick wall they have built up from the net out. Suter, Weber, Rinne are all players to watch. They may be an underdog(when are they not?) to fight for the Central crown this season. Then there is Chicago, our little brothers. They blew apart there Stanely Cup winning team from 2 years ago and looked like a shell of themselves last season. I don't believe they added much quality outside of Brunette but that is off-set by the loss of Campbell. That said, they are always dangerous with there young and improving core. Watch for them and Nashville to battle with us for the top in the Central.


As for the Red Wings, I have high hopes. I'm a firm believer that when the trade deadline comes around we will be looking to add a piece to the puzzle, whether it works or not remains to be seen. For now, I think a top 6 winger would be ideal, but who knows who steps up or falls back as the season begins to unfold. Maybe we find ourselves with a higher quality version of Hudler this season instead of the black hole that wore the number 26 last season. Maybe Ericsson somehow lives up to the astronomically high contract he signed. Wishful thinking, I know. But at least we know even our dead weight has much higher potential than we have seen as of late.


Our blue line is the biggest question mark heading into the season, with the retiring of Rafalski. We will be looking for Kronwall to step up and fill that void and White or Ericsson to fill the spot left by Kronwall. A lot of "what-if's". The 6-7 spots will be a dog fight between Commodore, Kindl, and Smith. I'm a firm believer that Smith will be playing a full season in the AHL with limited call-ups if injuries begin to pile up. Our nucleus is still among the best, and our core has been playing together for a number of years. The largest adjustment will be seen in the coaching changes and the players reacting to a new system.

Prediction: 101 Pts. First in Central and 3rd in Conference. 


The quality of competition in the Central rises as the quality in the Pacific drops. Points are hard to come by but we continue our consecutive 100+ point seasons to 12 and our playoff appearances to 21.


Be excited, hockey is just around the corner!