All-Star break is nearly here. Wings have one more game before it. Another loss today came at the hands of the really good looking and old rivals, the Avalanche. A 6-3 loss that concluded with an empty net goal. Pretty par for the course for the 2019-20 Wings.
Still have the most goals against and still have the least goals scored. A quality recipe for being last in the league, which they are. I don't really want to dwell too much on what's bad as this team is fully in their rebuild. The goaltending is very rough and that's not helped by the defense being bad like it was last year. Kronwall is retired, Danny DeKeyser has barely played this year. So we are putting our defensive faith in Mike Green and Trever Daly as the leaders of that crew. As such, you get what you get. But here we can also start with the positive. Filip Hronek has stood out this year. He's a very young player who is looking pretty good and has been a key offensive contributor which no other d-man seems to be at this point. He also gets plenty of ice time. Young defensemen usually take longer to develop as dependable players you can trust in all situations, but Filip is on track. This is his breakout year and when the old guard is not resigned, it's he who will be surely taking a top 3 spot on the Wings D in terms of salary.
Offense - Is there any vet that is bringing much of anything to the table this year? No not really. Helm, Filppula, Abdelkader, Nielsen. There likely isn't any room for them in the league once their contracts are done. Anthony Mantha is having a very nice year despite injuries. It's a big deal as last season Larkin rose to the occasion and Mantha seemed stagnant in his development. This year Larkin is putting up less points per game. He won't come close to his season total last year, but it will be another solid year. Who knows. If the Bertuzzi, Mantha, Larkin line can stay together for the rest of the year he might not even be that far off. Speaking of Bertuzzi. He is positively surprising. Current point leader on the team. That's not a good thing when you assess the team, but it's impressive on Tyler's part. Fabbri is another positive surprise. A young player who had bad luck with his knees. He gets plenty of time here as opposed to St. Louis. What's his long term outlook? Mmm I can't really say. Let's see if he notches 20 goals this year. Lastly, Filip Zadina is now on the regular roster. Anticipated to be a scoring machine, he has a lot to learn and this year is a crash course for him. 24 games played. 6 goals so far. There's about 30 games left. You would like to see him finish with high teens in goals this year. He just has so much to learn. Keep him playing you know.
I heard some hype around the players who played at the under 20 World Championship this December/January, but man I never keep track of prospects until I hear they might be called up or they have huge buzz about them in the league they play in. So I have nothing to add to that.
Tl;dr - Wings are awful and the old vets are gonna have a hard time finding an NHL gig after their contracts are up with us.
edit - forgot abut Frans Nielsen originally when talking about the forward vets. I think he is used on the PK at least.