Red Wings Round up. Season 2013-2014
Well playoffs are officially here and the Detroit Red Wings have yet again made the playoffs for 23 straight years. This season was much different for those who watched all season long as you know the Red Wings battled injuries on game to game basis. To be specific the Red Wings lost more than 425 man games throughout this past season which is incredible given their place in the standings. The Red Wings finished the season with a record of 39-28-15 that amounts to 93 points.
One big stat that the Red Wings have this season is not one player off the team has more than forty nine points. In the past ten seasons Detroit hasn’t had their top score under the fifty point mark. It is worth noting that two players have forty nine (Alfredsson, Zetterberg), two players also have forty eight (Nyquist, Franzen). Not too many teams in the NHL have their top scorer under the fifty point mark, let alone being a team that is in the NHL playoffs. One thing the Red Wings always rely on is spreading scoring throughout their lineup during the course of a season, which is rare in today’s NHL.
The Red Wings were injury ridden all year, which in turn had to make call ups from their AHL affiliate the Grand Rapids Griffins. In total over the course of the season Detroit had to make twelve call ups from the Griffins. Out of those twelve, nine made their NHL debuts those being: Tomas Jurco, Luke Glendening, Adam Almquist, Landon Ferraro, Mitch Callahan, Teemu Pulkklinen, Alexey Marchenko, Xaiver Ouellett and Ryan Sproul. Each one of these players contributed to the team whether they played one game or twenty five plus.
Red Wings who shined all season when Datsyuk, Zetterberg and Howard were down due to injury were: Tatar with thirty nine points, Gustav Nyquist with forty eight points and lastly Niklas Kronwall with a team leading forty nine points. Kronwall was key to Detroit winning games this season as he anchored the blue line all season and lead the team when others were absent. When Jimmy Howard went down and out for a few games goaltender’s Jonas Gustavsson had no problem stepping up as he won sixteen games.
It is clear that the Red Wings had a very tough year this past season. The big reason why Detroit made playoffs were due to players who were committed to winning and younger guys willing to step up to the challenge.