By Jeff Moss
April 8, 2012
DetroitSportsRag@gmail.com 

For the last twenty years or so I have convinced myself every spring** that the Red Wings were going to raise the Stanley Cup in early June.

(**- Well, every spring EXCEPT 2005 when that little midget, Gary Bettman, canceled the entire season so he could impose a salary cap as hard as Tie Domi’s head.)

And it isn’t like I am some crazy, delusional person (well, I am actually) with unreal expectations considering the team has been one of the favorites to raise Lord Stanley’s hardware pretty much every season since Nicklas Lidstrom and Sergei Fedorov crossed the pond to play in the NHL.

And while Detroiters have enjoyed a parade down Woodward Avenue about 20% of the time I was convinced we’d win it all there also have been a multitude of disasters that include, but are not exclusive to:

Nikolai Borschevsky
Jamie Baker inducing Chris Osgood to cry
The New Jersey Devils suffocating trap and Sean Burr & Paul Coffey’s traitorous behavior
Claude Lemieux’s best impression of Nip/Tuck on Kris Draper’s Grill
The Bill Ranford Experiment
The Injury Debacle in Los Angeles
The Mighty Ducks Sweep
The Alberta Daily Double
The Phantom Datsyuk Penalty vs. Anaheim in the WCF
Brad Stuart’s 2009 Game 7
Back-to-Back Shark Exits

I can remember pretty much every detail of every Wings playoff exit over the last three decades like Marilu Henner from “Taxi” can recall what she had for lunch on October 12, 1973.

So on the verge of the Wings traveling to Nashville to start the postseason on Wednesday you would think that I would be excited for the NHL playoffs to commence. But I am not.

As many Downriver residents adorn their trucks with Red Wings flags as I write this article, I am here to tell you that for the first time since 1991 I don’t think our city’s hockey team is going to win the Cup.

Fuck, I don’t even think they are going to get out of the first round against the Predators and their shitkicking ** fan base.

(** – I once went to a regular season Wings/Preds games down in Nashville. After Detroit won in overtime, the twenty-something season ticket holders sitting next to my friend and me basically threatened to kick our asses while hollering, “The South WILL rise again.” And they weren’t joking. I would advise any Wings fans going down south for the games to remain inconspicuous and maybe take a couple cans of Skoal in an effort to assimilate.)

But I can’t delude myself into thinking this current Red Wings team has ANY shot of making a serious run at their fifth title in the last 15 actual seasons.

Kenny Holland had multiple chances to solidify this roster over the summer, then during the first few months of the season and finally at the trade deadline. Yet when the music stopped playing in his dangerous game of “Musical Chairs” the Wings GM didn’t have a place to put his ass.

So the team was left with about $5 million in cap space and the addition of defenseman Kyle Quincey who since the deal was made has actually been a HEALTHY SCRATCH on occasion.

And THAT is when he wasn’t elbowing people in the head and getting suspended or turning the puck over in his own zone like the 2011 version of Brian Rafalski.

I would bitch about the trade to acquire this pile of garbage, but the first round draft choice that they gave up probably wouldn’t have made it to Detroit until 2025 anyway which leads me to my next point.

This current collection of Winged Wheelers isn’t exactly the 2002 squad when the team had two future Hall of Famers playing on the FOURTH LINE. So what the fuck is wrong with infusing some goddamn youth into the lineup?

Can someone PLEASE tell me why Brendan Smith is in Grand Rapids? When Holland epically failed at the deadline to add some depth or scoring assistance, he told the media not to fret because the team was recalling Smith (the team’s best prospect) from the AHL and that was basically like a trade deadline acquisition.

Putting that convoluted logic aside for a moment, why did the team send their “TRADE DEADLINE ACQUISITION” back to the Griffins after he scored seven points in 14 games while putting up a solid PLUS THREE?!?!?!

Are you telling me that Brendan Smith RIGHT NOW isn’t a better option than either “The Medical Examiner” or Jakub Kindl???

(And little known fact about Kindl. I went to my German to Czech Translator on Google and discovered that “Jakub Kindl” is actually Slavic for “Willie Huber.”)

I don’t want to say that Kindl is a TURNOVER waiting to happen, but Jeremy Lin and the Human Recourses department at Quicken Loans laugh at the Wings young defenseman.

I mean, does Ken Holland have a future bet in Las Vegas on the Griffins winning the Calder Cup or some shit? And as maddening as Brendan Smith’s exile to Grand Rapids is, it pales in comparison to the constant shuffling of Gustav Nyquist.

This current roster cannot put the puck in the net. They are awful on the power play and the once high-flying team now has a harder time scoring than Peter Dinklage in a one-on-one basketball battle with Anthony Davis.

There are two options with Nyquist. You either put him on a Top 2 line or send him back to West Michigan with Smith because placing the offensively gifted Swede on a line with Tomas Holmstrom or Cory Emmerton is the equivalent of pairing Eddie Van Halen in a band with vocalists Carl Lewis and Roseanne Barr.

(I wonder if the Wings difficulty in scoring goals has anything to do with Holland’s systematic elimination of drafting ANY Russian hockey players? I mean, it isn’t like the team has had any success with guys from the old USSR. Oh …. right ….)

Call me manic-depressive, but if we are going to go down I’d rather do it swinging, with Nyquist on a line with Johan Franzen and Datsyuk instead of a guy (Todd Bertuzzi) who could only muster 14 goals ALL SEASON LONG playing on the #1 line.

The same amount that Drew Miller tallied playing with Justin Abdelkader, Darren Helm and Jan Mursak all season long.

The degree of difficulty between those two accomplishments would be similar to the disparity in an Olympic diver attempting a cannonball versus a “Triple Lindy.”

So now the Wings are about to face a Predators team that a lot of the team’s fans seem to be discounting because of Nashville’s piss-poor playoff history.

I am not sure what Nashville’s past playoff failures have to do with this current matchup. The Predators have loaded up for bear this season knowing full well that one of their best defenseman (Ryan Suter) will probably be in Traverse City in five months preparing for the 2012-3 season with the Wings.

And even if Detroit can somehow figure out in the next 72 hours a way to win on the road and how to get their anemic power play firing on all cylinders and defeat the Predators they will still have THREE more series to win.

And we know all too well that there is ZERO chance of playing three months of playoff hockey without suffering a multitude of “upper” and “lower” body injuries.

Remember when Nick Lidstrom’s groin got separated from the rest of his person a few years ago or how Marian Hossa couldn’t hit the net from the crease in 2009 because of a devastating wrist injury?

There is absolutely ZERO depth on this current roster to offset the inevitable injuries that would occur through a long playoff run and you want to know why?

A combination of lousy recent drafting, the organization’s refusal to roll the dice with the youngsters that they HAVE developed and, well, about FIVE MILLION more reasons that I have already discussed ad nauseum.

Look, there are very few things in this world that I enjoy more than being right, but I do hope that this opinion on the Wings playoff viability is dead wrong.

I just don’t see this team that has sputtered through the last few months of the regular season suddenly righting the ship and adding another banner to the JLA rafters.

I am sorry, but Brett Hull and Vladmir Konstantinov aren’t walking through that door.