The Red Wings finished the 2021-22 season with a final record of 32-40. This put them in sixth place in the Atlantic Division. They totaled 74 points this past season. Only the Senators and Canadians had records below the Red Wings. It's been three seasons since the team has played a full 82 games, due to the pandemic. In 2019-20 the team got to game 71 before the season was shut down. That makes it hard to compare the previous years to their record in 2021-22. Fans look to the upcoming 2022-23 season for improvement. New head coach Derek Lalonde was a former player for the Montreal Canadians. He goes by the nickname "Newsey." Team captain Dylan Larkin is about to start his seventh season in the NHL. He played in 71 games last season, with 31 goals by season end. He's recovered from surgery that came at the end of last season.
The Detroit Red Wings of the National Hockey League had a rather “historic” run in 2016-17, but not in a good way. They finished the season with just 79 points, good for the third-worst record in the Eastern Conference, and for the first time since 1990, they missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The team is looking to improve, as they start their first season in their new arena.
The Red Wings did make a series of smaller moves this off-season. First, they signed a pair of defensemen, Brian Lashoff and Dylan McIlrath to two-year extensions. On the first day of free agency, they signed a pair of defensemen, Trevor Daley and Luke Witkowski to three and two-year contracts respectively. Three days later they signed another defenseman, Xavier Ouellet to a two-year contract as well. On July 21 they signed left winger Tomas Tatar to a four-year extension. In the draft, they knew they had to improve their awful offense, which ranked 26th in goals scored and 27th in power play percentage, so they picked Michael Rasmussen from Tri-City, with the 9th overall pick. The bigger question with this team right now is do they have a plan?
After a strike-shortened 2012-2013 season, hockey fans will get the opportunity to see their team try their best to get back to the playoffs once again in 2015. The Atlantic Division is one of the toughest in the league, and the Red Wings are poised to take the top spot once again. Detroit Red Wings tickets for home and away games are always in demand.
Detroit finished on a high note during the strike-shortened season, and their 24-16 overall record got them into the playoffs. Sadly, they had an uphill climb from the start. Detroit defeated the Anaheim Ducks to advance to the Western Conference Semifinals. Sadly the Chicago Blackhawks stopped the Red Wings from advancing any further.
The Little Caesars Arena is the place to see the Red Wings in action. Over the past 34 seasons, Detroit’s home ice has been at 19 Steve Yzerman Drive. When set for hockey, over 20,000 fans can fit into the venue. In that time, the Stanley Cup has gone Detroit’s way four times. Since its opening in 1979, the venue has been updated four times. The last major upgrade added over 80 skybox suites, and a private seating area in one of the corners of the arena. The City of Detroit is hoping to move the team to a new venue, but they have no plans to move out of state. You will find the Red Wings in the downtown area, no matter how long it takes to build the new venue. For fans of the NHL Classic, the team played at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor in 2014.
Two years ago, and for the first time since the 1989-1990 season, the Detroit Red Wings did not qualify for Stanley Cup Playoffs. On top of that disappointing outcome, this past year marked their last season in the Joe Louis Arena. Beginning in 2017, they will play in the brand new Little Ceaser's Arena. It’s an exciting time to be a season ticket holder, but the new venue is the farthest thing from the minds of Red Wings fans. Instead, they wonder if there is any plan to fix this historic franchise.
During the offseason, the Red Wings showed that they are a franchise without direction. The moves they made in free agency made almost no sense. The team signed 33-year-old defenseman Trevor Daley to a three-year contract. They also signed a contract with 27-year-old defenseman Luke Witkowski on that same day. Since graduating from college five years ago Witkowski has played in a total of 54 NHL games. That’s not much to go on to deserve a contract of that length. They also re-signed left winger Tomas Tatar to a four-year extension, right winger Martin Frk to a three-year extension, and defensemen Brian Lashoff along with Dylan McIlrath to two-year extensions. Their biggest off-season acquisition came in the draft. The Red Wings held the second selection in the entry-level draft and used it on right winger Andrei Svechnikov from Barrie. That organization is part of the Ontario Hockey League.
From an analyst standpoint, it appears as if the Red Wings are operating like current playoff contenders, which is not true according to most experts. The team will begin the upcoming season over the salary cap, and they say they will work out those issues after the season starts. That move is often found in the mindset of a playoff contender, but for 2017-18 most pundits have them finishing with the second-worst record in the Eastern Conference. Perhaps this organization has gotten so used to being in the playoffs for so long, that it's become difficult for them to switch gears into a rebuilding mode. The theme of the fan commentary coming out of Detroit is “Rebuild now!” Will the Red Wings surprise us all? We shall see.
