The Athletic “Most Fascinating Team Down The Stretch…”

… not in a good way obv.

[Weekend NHL rankings: Red Wings fade, Capitals keep pushing and a new villain emerges](https://theathletic.com/5348325/2024/03/18/nhl-weekend-rankings-red-wings-capitals/)

Excerpt:

“How bad has it been? In the other rankings, the guys summed it up as [“giving early 2010s Leafs,”](https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Ftheathletic.com%2F5344431%2F2024%2F03%2F15%2Fnhl-power-rankings-florida-panthers-carolina-hurricanes%2F) which is way meaner than anything I could come up with.

It’s hard to do a “so, what’s the deal?” section when a team is still in the midst of a season-defining slump. But it’s at least possible that at the end of this, the Wings will still be right where a lot of us figured they’d be: a little bit better than fake-.500, right around the wild-card bubble, playing meaningful games down the stretch even as nobody really considers them a legitimate playoff threat.

The tragedy here, if there turns out to be one, will be in the timing. If the Wings had gone without points in seven straight over the first half and then fought back to get in the race, we’d all be cheering them along. **Instead, this feels like the sort of collapse that has to Mean Something. Were they just not ready? Did Steve Yzerman’s quiet deadline demoralize them? Were they always punching above their weight, and the bounces have just evened out? Nobody knows. (We do, it’s the last one, but let’s lean into the mystery for now.)**

There are still 16 games left, the Islanders are beatable again, the Lightning still look old sometimes, and every team chasing Detroit has been awful at various points. This isn’t over. But we thought it *was* over, in the good way, just a few weeks ago. And that makes the Red Wings quite possibly the league’s most fascinating team down the stretch.”

by Mother_State3121