The Detroit Red Wings won seven games in a row for the second time this season. This recent streak has pushed them into a wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference with 61 points. The Red Wings have not made the Stanley Cup playoffs in eight seasons. In conjunction with this seven-game winning streak, the team has also won four straight road games. The last time the Red Wings did this was in 1996, and the roster included such players as Steve Yzerman, who is now the team’s general manager, Nicklas Lidström, and Sergei Fedorov.
Three of the four games on the Red Wings’ recent road trip went to overtime, with two of them ending in a shootout. Patrick Kane ended the fourth game of this road trip with a shootout-winning goal, the 53rd of his illustrious career. Kane was one of the voices on the Red Wings that was critical of former head coach Derek Lalonde. Todd McLellan recently surpassed the number of wins that Lalonde had this season prior to him being let go.
The NHL trade deadline is on March seventh, and the question for every team is whether they should buy or sell at the deadline. The Red Wings have history to look back on when it comes to giving up future assets to prolong a 25-year playoff streak. In that time, the Red Wings won four Stanley Cup championships, including back-to-back championships in 1997 and 1998. The Red Wings recent form makes it more difficult to decide whether they should buy or sell at the upcoming trade deadline.
The Red Wings have a top five prospect pool in the NHL, according to Scott Wheeler of The Athletic. The Athletic states that “to be considered a prospect, a skater must be under 23 years old and not established as a full-time NHL player with their club. The latter qualifier is the arbitrary section of the criteria.” Right-handed defenseman Axel Sandin Pellikka is the number one prospect in the Red Wings’ system at 19 years old. Sandin-Pellikka will make his debut for Team Sweden at the Euro Hockey Tour after the World Junior Championships recently ended.
I have previously written that Yzerman declined a trade with the Buffalo Sabres involving Dylan Cozens. Cozens is a 23-year-old center who would solve the Red Wings’ inability to score. Cozens is a former 30 goal scorer in the NHL. The Red Wings have scored 2.85 goals per game through the first 54 games of the 2024-25 NHL season.
One thing that has improved in these two seven-game win streaks is the Red Wings’ goaltending. Alex Lyon and Cam Talbot have split time in the Red Wings’ net during the streak. These two goalies have taken the bulk of the workload in the Red Wings net as Ville Husso has often been injured in the past two seasons. This is despite Husso starting the first game of the 2024-25 season for the Red Wings. Yzerman placed Husso on waivers after this game.
At 30-years-old Husso was replaced by goalie prospect Sebastian Cossa during a Red Wings’ game last month. Husso was assigned to the Grand Rapids Griffins, the Red Wings’ AHL affiliate, in January. In eight games for the Griffins this season, Husso has a record of 6-1-0, two shutouts, and a 1.86 goals-against average. This is similar to Husso’s record for the Griffins last season, in which he had a record of 7-1-0 with a 1.64 goals-against average and a save percentage of .942.
The Red Wings lost their final game prior to the Four Nations Faceoff to the Tampa Bay Lightning. Two Red Wings, Captain Dylan Larkin and young star winger Lucas Raymond, will play at this upcoming tournament starting on February 12th. Yzerman will need to decide whether the Red Wings can not only make the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time in eight seasons but also advance.
ITR 30: Down The Stretch – Inside The Rink
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