The Detroit Red Wings continue to struggle to find consistent depth scoring. This comes as the team’s top two defensemen, Moritz Seider and Simon Edvinsson, have stood out as the team’s top blue-line pair. This combination is not a recipe for success. Alex DeBrincat and Dylan Larkin are tied for the team lead in goals scored with 12 goals apiece. Head coach Derek Lalonde has moved right-winger Lucas Raymond further down the lineup to spread the scoring throughout the Red Wings lineup. Raymond has scored 11 goals in 28 games played during the 2024-25 NHL season.
The Red Wings are in sixth place in the Atlantic Division with 28 points. This is four points out of the second wild card spot in the Eastern Conference. The adage is that if a team is more than four points out of a playoff spot by American Thanksgiving, they will likely not make the playoffs. Will this hold for the Red Wings? According to a Sportsnet article from 2021, “From the 2013-14 season to 2017-18, a whopping 62 of 80 of teams in a playoff spot at U.S. Thanksgiving wound up qualifying for a playoff spot.”
Raymond has scored nine goals in the last ten games. Despite Raymond’s scoring streak, this has not led to winning hockey. The Red Wings defeated the Buffalo Sabres in their previous game in a shootout by a score of 6-5. This win ended the Red Wings’ five-game losing streak. Raymond also added an assist in this game on a goal by Seider in the third period. Raymond has proven that he can be a star in today’s NHL. The lineup beyond Larkin and Raymond lacks scoring punch.
One player that has struggled to score this season is Patrick Kane. Kane has scored three goals and added eight assists in 25 games this season. This is the second season that Kane has played for the Red Wings after joining the team in free agency. Kane has just turned 36 and is coming off a summer in which he had a hip-resurfacing surgery before joining the Red Wings. The question regarding Kane and this surgery was how the hip would hold up to an 82-game NHL season.
Kane signed a one-year contract with the Red Wings during the summer, but there were other suiters. “Throughout training camp there are hard days, they’re hard on the body, but it’s not hard on the injury anymore,” Kane said before the Red Wings’ 4-1 loss to the Rangers at Madison Square Garden on Monday (the third game of the Red Wings’ 2024-25 season). “That’s the fun part, not dealing with pain. That’s a huge part of where I’m at.”
In 50 games for the Red Wings last season, his first with the team, Kane scored 20 goals and added 27 assists. Kane scored a game-winning goal against the Chicago Blackhawks, the team where he spent most of his career, to keep the Red Wings in the playoff chase at that point in the 2023-24 season. Kane and the other depth pieces must appear on the score sheet for the Red Wings to succeed as a team. The Buffalo, New York native was brought into the Red Wings roster because of his shooting talent.
Kane is not shooting at the same clip as he has in the past. Aside from his rookie season, when Kane shot 16%, the 2023-24 season was his highest shooting percentage was 13.6%. Kane’s shooting percentage has fallen all the way to 6% through 25 games played this season. That is not entirely his fault though. According to the NHL’s website, “The percentage of shots on goal that go in the net, calculated as goals divided by shots on goal. Shooting percentage does not take missed shots or blocked shots into consideration, only shots that were saved by the goalie or scored a goal.”
“Sometimes it’s OK, other times it can be better for sure,” Kane said of his game. “Obviously, the production hasn’t been there, so it’s been disappointing and probably a big reason why we’re in the position we are as a team.” Andrew Copp leads the Red Wings with a shooting percentage of 20.6%.
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