Is “The Dark Age” of Red Wings hockey upon us?

Are things about to get even worse in Detroit?

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 6 years ago
Is “The Dark Age” of Red Wings hockey upon us?
Keystone Press

In his latest article for The Score, hockey writer Josh Wegman takes a deep dive analysis on the Detroit Red Wings and comes up with a singular theory: things are about to get much, much worse.

As bad as the Red Wings may have been last season, Wegman argues that they haven’t truly hit rock bottom and may do so as early as this upcoming season. With an aging core of players like Henrik Zetterberg, Niklas Kronwall, Justin Abdelkader, Frans Nielsen and Darren Helm, the team’s biggest ticket players are all clearly on the downslopes of their careers. Worse than that, the cavalry, as it seems, is not coming.

The team’s “next generation” is filled with players who have flashed potential, but have failed to become everyday impact players in the NHL thus far. Players like Anthony Mantha, Dylan Larkin and Andreas Athanasiou have all had mixed results in their careers to date.

But what hurts the Red Wings the most is the amount of bad contracts the team currently has in their stable. For a team that’s this bad, quite frankly it’s shocking that they currently sit $3 million OVER the NHL salary cap. Dollars aside, it’s the term that’s really holding the Wings back with a lot of its players. Zetterberg, Tatar, Nielsen, Abdelkader, Johan Franzen, Helm, Luke Glendening, Danny DeKeyser, Jonathan Ericsson and Trevor Daley are all on the team’s payroll for the next three seasons at least. How would you like hitching your wagon to any of those players for that long?

With the news recently, courtesy of a poll from The Hockey News, that Red Wings fans had lost confidence in its team’s management staff, you have to wonder how long it will be until general manager Ken Holland is finally shown the door? 


Source: Josh Wegman