The Final Stretch

As of tonight The Wings are tied for 9th Seed, with 66 points, 27-21-12, with the exact same record as Dallas, 1 point out of The Playoffs. I am still confident that in the last 22 games, The Wings will win at least 12 and find themselves in the hunt. The reality of the situation is that Seeds 1-6 are for the moment out of reach. That leaves the final 2 seeds to be fought over by 7 teams, Detroit, Dallas, Calgary, Nashville, Anaheim, St. Louis, and Minnesota. I will set forth the wild prediction that Detroit and Anaheim kick it into gear and make the playoffs. It is a tribute to the unpredictable season this has been that seeds 4-6 are currently occupied by LA, Colorado, and Phoenix. They are all 10 points ahead of The Wings. And yet I believe they would all struggle with The Wings in a 7 Game series. Not just due to my irrational love of my team, but because we have so many playoff tested war horses.

Right now we are rooting for the chance to face San Jose or Chicago in the first round, wow! Either would be a great series. The most encouraging games this season to me have been the 51 save Jimmy Howard show in LA on 1/07, the shootout loss to Chicago on 1/17, and the shootout loss to San Jose this week. Why do I include two losses on this list? Both were examples of The Wings skating, shooting, defending, goal tending and checking with the two best teams in our conference. The LA game was a sign that Jimmy Howard is not a fluke, he can steal games, and he is not going to just start sucking. The losses to Chicago and San Jose were playoff style hockey. It's clear the main issue with our team is inability to score goals. A lot of that comes back to the 100 goals we lost to free agency, but also the injury situation of course. For The Sharks we had Kronwall, Williams, Holmstrom and Franzen all at the same time. That hasn't happened this season. Next thing you know it we pepper Nabby with nearly 50 shots. That was the team we've been waiting to see all season, and if they can just stay healthy that's a team that would be the kiss of death in the first round. This team is better than their record and hopefully heating up at the right time.