Red Wings' biggest trade deadline need is coming into view at midseason
The Red Wings season has gone about as well as it could so far, but Detroit would benefit from an upgrade on the blue line.
A whole lot is going right for the Detroit Red Wings right now.
Sitting atop the Atlantic Division as they prepare to hit the season’s midpoint Wednesday night against Winnipeg, the Red Wings are on pace for their best season in more than a decade. Their star defenseman, Moritz Seider, is squarely in the Norris Trophy conversation. They have two potential 40-goal scorers in Dylan Larkin and Alex DeBrincat. And they have three rookies contributing in the lineup, giving them plenty of room to keep growing as well.
“I’ve been on good teams,” three-time Stanley Cup winner Patrick Kane said on Tuesday. “And this is a good team.”
How good, though? That remains to be seen. And general manager Steve Yzerman still has a chance to help determine the answer.
In some ways, Yzerman’s relatively quiet offseason last summer is working out for Detroit. Most of the top names on the free-agent market didn’t actually make it to July 1, instead re-upping with their current teams before free agency opened. In the wake of that, the Red Wings opted to make a few additions around the margins. They signed forwards Mason Appleton and James van Riemsdyk to the bottom six, and depth defensemen Jacob Bernard-Docker and Travis Hamonic, then took a swing on one larger move, trading for veteran goaltender John Gibson.
Both of those forwards have been nightly regulars for the Red Wings, with van Riemsdyk’s nine goals tied for fourth on the team. Gibson, in goal, has recently started to find the high-level form Detroit was looking for in trading for him.
Meanwhile, the relative lack of other moves left a path for rookies such as Emmitt Finnie and Nate Danielson to push their way into the nightly lineup, with Finnie spending most of the season so far on the top line.
For a team looking to snap a nine-year playoff drought, while simultaneously building toward the future, those are all important developments. And in the big picture, Detroit’s season is going about as well as it could be.
But as the Red Wings have seen over and over in recent seasons, it only gets harder from here. And not just because Detroit has one of the NHL’s toughest remaining schedules.
As the calendar creeps closer to April, the hockey gets harder, faster and tighter-checking as teams build up toward the playoffs. And while the Red Wings seem to be heading in the right direction in all three facets, they still have plenty of questions to answer about how they’ll fare in those kinds of games.
The largest focus for those questions, right now, is on the blue line.
In Seider, Detroit has a legit Norris candidate as a do-it-all workhorse who is tilting the ice as well as just about anyone in the league. His defense partner, Simon Edvinsson, appears to be taking a leap as well, giving the Red Wings a strong top pair.
On the second pair, the Red Wings have found a solid duo in veteran Ben Chiarot and rookie Axel Sandin-Pellikka. Chiarot is having arguably his best season as a Red Wing, and Sandin-Pellikka has started to tap into more of his offensive potential over the last month. In the regular season, it’s a serviceable pairing.