Injuries continue to force two Red Wings veterans out of the line up.

Details inside.

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 5 years ago
Injuries continue to force two Red Wings veterans out of the line up.
Keystone Press

The Detroit Red Wings will be down two men tonight due to injuries to some of their more experienced players, but strangely fans seem to be rather happy with the announcement overall.

According to a breaking news report from Dana Wakiji of the Detroit Red Wings official website, head coach Jeff Blashill has informed her that both veteran defenseman Nicklas Kronwall and veteran defenseman Jonathan Ericsson will be absent for the team's upcoming road trip to California. That means that both men will miss the Sunday night game against the Los Angeles Kings and the Monday night game against the Anaheim Ducks, but again the fan base is taking this news exceptionally well.

Every single response to the report from Wakiji has been positive, and when I say every single one I mean literally 100% of all responses. Now to be clear I do not believe that any of the fans who responded are happy that either man is currently dealing with an injury, I don't think that is the case at all, but rather they are simply content that these older players will be set aside and the next generation of Red Wings will get a shot in their stead. 

The reality is that in the case of of Ericsson in particular fans have seemingly always questioned his position as a legitimate defender on the Red Wings roster. Ericsson is now 34 years old and that is starting to make him an old man by the standards of the National Hockey League and his already questionable level of talent has begun to decrease even more. Over the past 3 to 4 seasons I do not believe that I have heard fans complain about any player more than they have about Ericsson on the blue line.

As for Kronwall here were rumors during the offseason that Kronwall would likely be joining veteran forward Henrik Zetterberg on the Red Wings retirement tour and by the sounds of things it appears that some Red Wings' fans wished that he had indeed stepped away from the ice. That's not to say that the fan base does not have tremendous love and respect for him, he remains one of the organizations most popular players, but it's fair to say that his skills have drastically diminished in recent years. Kronwall's past three seasons have arguably been the worst of his professional career and at 37 years of age it seems extremely likely that he will ever bounce back and regain the form that he once showed.

Even if Kronwall were to retire today he would go down as one of the most popular players in the history of the franchise. He would also be one of the few players to retire after having played his entire NHL career with just a single team, a rare feat especially it today's more modern era of hockey. That being said though it sounds like he will attempt to play for at least one more NHL season at this point although I'm not sure how well that will be received by Red Wings' fans, especially if he becomes a liability in the way that he did at times last season.

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