With tonight’s 6-2 slaughtering of the Minnesota Wild, the Detroit Red Wings have won four straight games, the longest winning streak in all of hockey, and sit in a lazy-boy-comfy six point lead ahead of 9th place Calgary Flames for the final playoff spot with just eight games left in the season.
The win also puts the Wings in a tie for the 7th spot with the Colorado Avalanche, a spot that would most likely receive the honor of playing the Chicago Blackhawks in Round 1.*
* Of course, Colorado has played one less game than the Wings; and the Blackhawks, who only trail the Sharks by a measly point, have played one less game, as well. It’s entirely possible that the Blackhawks leap frog the Sharks – a team that hasn’t won a final regular season game since 2003-2004.
The Wings also trail the Nashville Predators by just two points and have played one less game than them. If they beat them on Saturday night (8 PM EST puck drop), then they could jump as high as 5th in the standings, earning the privilege to play the red-hot Phoenix Coyotes. That, of course, contingent on the Avalanche and the LA Kings not collecting any points (Kings play the Stars on Saturday and the Avs play Phoenix).
While the Wings haven’t clinched, yet, and it might be a little early to get greedy by starting to make wishes as to who we’d like to see our beloved Wings play in the first round of the playoffs, weighing out the potential first round match ups is exactly what I’m going to do. It’s cocky, but somebody needs to display a little swagger.
So, assume the Wings stick where they are, as do the Sharks, then those two would be teeing off in the first round as a classic 1/8 match up. As I said before, the Sharks haven’t finished a regular season with a win since 2003-2004, meaning they typically go into the playoffs with a losing taste in their mouths, and were just ousted from the playoffs last year by a No. 8 seed. Add in that the Wings beat the Sharks 3-1 in the season series, then this looks like a classic No. 8 upset over a No. 1 seed. However, I don’t know if the Wings want to mess with a team who won’t be taking a No. 8 seed lightly again (although no team is going to take a team whose been to the Stanley Cup two years in a row too lightly), and playing with a purpose to prove they actually deserve the No. 1 seed for once.
Then what if the Wings jump to the No. 7 seed and take on the up-and-coming Blackhawks? The season series is 3-2 in favor of Chicago and they have Hossa, who will either finally beat an old team in the playoffs or choke like he did in the Stanley Cup Finals last year. The ‘hawks have some injury problems and still might be too young to handle the Wings when the pressure is on, but I think it’s safe to say this would be the most entertaining first round series of the playoffs. I’m not so sure I want the Wings to be a part of any “most entertaining first round series” with (ideally) three rounds left to play.
If the Wings capture the No. 6 seed, they’ll almost certainly play the Vancouver Canucks, who I honestly believe is the third best team in all of hockey. Henrik Sedin is a stud (and his brother is not too bad, either), while Luongo holds it down between the pipes (remember he helped Canada to a Gold Medal? Ugh). Now, the Wings are 3-1 vs. the ‘nucks in the season series, but they lost 6-3 at the beginning of March and it took a last second goal in OT to beat them last week. This isn’t a team I want to mess around with in the first round.
If the Wings win tomorrow night and other teams stay put, they’d be tied for the No. 5 spot in the Western Conference, and lined up to play the Phoenix Coyotes. The Coyotes are the only other team in the NHL right now who share as good of a record as the Wings in their last 10 games (8-1-1) and that’s with a current two-game losing streak (I know, I think that sounds weird, too). While the season series is deadlocked at 2-2, one of the Coyotes wins was the result of a shootout and another took an utter collapse from the Wings (granted, one of the Wings’ wins was in a shootout, too). Factor in, though, that their goalie, Illya Bryzgalov, hasn’t goaltended a playoff game since 2007 and has only 16 games of experience total in his career (the last five coming during the Ducks Stanley Cup run in 2006-2007 because Giguere was home with his wife for the birth of their son).
Of course, the Red Wings goalie, Jimmy Howard, has ZERO playoff experience seeing as he’s only a rookie, so any goalie the Red Wings face will have more experience than their own. The biggest key is not running into a hot goalie, because as the Wings have experienced in the past (Arturs Irbe still gives me nightmares from hockey playoffs past), a hot goalie can dictate the outcome of any series. It seems the Canucks and Coyotes have two goalies very capable of getting hot in the playoffs. Meanwhile, the ‘hawks have a similar situation with Niemi and the Sharks have a goalie who just barely holds an above .500 record in the playoffs in Evgeni Nabokov.
So I’d hate to see the Wings have to cool off for this to happen heading into the playoffs, but I think I’d much rather them finish with a more underdoggish No. 8 or No. 7 seed and take on the Blackhawks or Sharks, if they want the best odds of advancing, and hopefully, earn another shot at the Holy Grail.
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