As Red Wings Lose Fourth Straight, Can They Still Justify Buying At Trade Deadline?

As Red Wings Lose Fourth Straight, Can They Still Justify Buying At Trade Deadline?

Blog Article

DETROIT — In an 82-game NHL regular season, there is seldom such a thing as a “must-win” game.

But there are certainly big missed opportunities. And right now, the Red Wings are racking those up.

Already, coming into Thursday night’s home game against the Utah Hockey Club, Detroit had lost three in a row — and two of those at home. That had been enough to drop it from the right side of the playoff bubble, to the outside looking in. And with the league’s hardest remaining schedule on tap, it made the game against Utah — a non-playoff team hopping across time zones to Detroit — all the more important.

In the end, though, the outcome was the same — the Red Wings falling 4-2 in their final game before the NHL trade deadline Friday afternoon. It was their fourth straight loss.

“Just can’t find a win,” Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin said. “We’ve lost not playing well. We’ve lost playing well. We’re losing in different ways.”

And he’s right. Just as they did in Columbus over the weekend, the Red Wings dramatically outshot Utah. They even held a 2-1 lead in the second period, after coming out flying in the first. They effectively doubled up Utah’s shot volume in every single period. Those are all facts, but they don’t amount to anything in the standings, where Detroit remains stuck at 66 points with 20 games to play.

Now, all the attention turns to the front office and how general manager Steve Yzerman processes the last two weeks in his final chance to make any moves before Friday’s 3 p.M. ET trade deadline.

Detroit already saw one player leave its locker room Thursday, when depth forward Christian Fischer — a key piece of the locker room — was claimed off waivers by the Blue Jackets.

Still, the big question remains: After Yzerman’s team fought back from irrelevance (and a coaching change) at Christmas to be right back in the race, is this finally the year to make a deadline addition, instead of a subtraction?

Certainly, for a team that has been outside the playoffs for eight years, and has already pulled off a significant mid-year turnaround this season, there will be a symbolic element to whatever Yzerman decides. Larkin didn’t go so far as lobbying for an addition Thursday, but in response to a question about the deadline he did say, “We’ll see what happens tomorrow, but I feel we’ve made a case to continue to push this thing and keep playing for the playoffs and trying and get in.”

At a minimum, that sounds like Detroit’s captain is hoping not to see a major sell-off Friday. And he likely won’t.

But the events of the last week don’t exactly help the case to buy, either. Not when Detroit is seemingly hitting a wall at this time of year for the third straight season — even if the circumstances each time have been different.

The prices on this year’s trade market have been eye-popping, with a shortage of sellers and the cost to acquire players up accordingly.

For a team like Tampa Bay, which traded multiple first-round picks this week, it makes sense to push in those chips because the Stanley Cup is very much in play.

The Red Wings have to work with a different calculus, though, knowing they’re fighting just to get in to the postseason. That’s still valuable, to be sure — it’s the clear next step this team has to take, after eight straight years outside the playoffs — but it by definition entails a different level of caution, knowing the team may not reach late April even with an addition.