Wings Starting to Soar

The Wings entered this season with hope to be a bubble team in their conference, after being one of the worst team's last season. The Wings entered this season with some new faces hoping to add some depth and spark to the team. Brought in was Scott Gomez to add some leadership and some veteran presence to the young Wings. Also brought in were two rookies in the "Milk Man" Melker Karlsson and Jonathan Drouin. They also didn't lose anyone to Free Agency which was another reason for some hope coming into this season.

A lot of the writers said the Wings would most likely be a bottom 5 team again this season, but at the 20 game mark, the Wings are beating expections. They currently sit 14th overall in the league and currently sit 6th in the Lemieux conference and only 5 points out of them moving into 3rd in the conference. 

The Red Wings entered this season with hopes of their 2 top lines carrying the team, On paper they had their 1st line of Tatar Steen and Tarasenko carrying most of the work load, while the 2nd line of Hoffman Sheahan and Kucherov would not have to worry about facing other team's top defensive unit every night. 

Out the gate, jeez before the gate could even be open, the injury bug hit the Wings hard, Sheahan who would be centering that 2nd line was injured in preseason with a dislocated left elbow keeping him out for almost 70 days, Great the Wings would for sure be a bottom 3 team by the time Sheahan was back, the Wings did see some light thinking okay this is why we brought in Scott Gomez, but coach Mike Yeo saw something in rookie center Vince Trocheck and went with his gut feeling about giving the kid a chance to center that 2nd line that way he could leave the veteran Gomez centering the 2 kids Drouin and Karlsson. 

It has paid off big time, Trocheck had put up 13 points in 22 games with a +8 putting him 5th in scoring on the Wings team. A big help this season for Yeo's team has been the play off LW Hoffman who is currently leading the team in assists (15) and points (21) in 22 games to go along with 3 game winning goals. 

The Wings also didn't catch a break when they also lost star winger Tarasenko for a handful of games but has since gotten his grove back giving him 13 points in 16 games.

Kucherov who quitely has been leading the team in goals with (9) playing RW on the 2nd line said " It's easy when your playing with a kid like Trocheck and then you have either Hoffman or Tatar on the other side of you, they have made it easy for me, by dishing me the puck and making it super easy for me to finish".

The Wings feel they are finally heading into the right direction with their star players Tarasenko (23) Kucherov (22) Tatar (25) Hoffman (26) Trocheck (22) Sheahan (24) Vatanen (24) Krug (24) Mrazek (23)  all being under 26 years old.

Not to mention the rookies and prospects like Drouin, Karlsson, Strome on offense, Fleury, Honka and Hagg on defense and best off all goalie prosepct Hellebuyck (22)

The Wings time will come for them to be one of the top teams in the league, will it be soon or will it take a few seasons? It doesn't matter cause GM Valle said "We have a great young team right now to build around, we will keep to our philosophy and build our team around our young stars and continue to build through the draft".