Detroit Redwings are Leading Early In The Season, But Babcock Wants More
Added on Oct 27, 2010 by J Merrill in
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Its hard to argue with the number one team on the ESPN ranking that came out today. The Detroit Redwings are playing great hockey, and I’m sure Hockey Town is loving every minute of it. One thing every hockey fan should do, is to go to the Joe Lewis Arena and see a game. The town lights up on game night, and its hard to have a conversation with anyone that isn’t about the Redwings, or the team they plan on beating that night.
They are off to a great season, and stat you can’t argue with is that they are 100% when it comes to penalty kills at home, and 83% on the road. Thats right, 100% at home. They have only allowed two players to score on them in the power play in 7 games. You have a whole lot less to think about as a coach when times find it almost impossible to score on you when you are a man down. When you add in they are fourth in the NHL for face off wins things get even more frightening for opponents.
The only real problem Coach Mike Babcock has is with a few players who aren’t producing that well. Jiri Hudler, Mike Modano and Dan Cleary just aren’t playing as well as the Wings want them too. “They’re going to warm up tomorrow together,” said Babcock.
He wants to make changes to improve their chances of doing well, but he also understands he could be making things worse. That’s the problem — or the good thing, Maybe I could change it and fix both, and maybe I could change it and not fix both. I haven’t been forced, because we’ve been winning, but we’ve got to get them going.” He also added “Now, the other thing is, I can say, ‘We’ve got to get them going’ — don’t they got to get themselves going? That, to me, is part of the problem, too.” These are problems most NHL would like to have.
Mike Modano isn’t sugar coating things either, and understands they haven’t been meeting expectations. Modano said “We all had high expectations going into it, were really excited, talked about how big an impact the line could have, But we still feel we’re on the verge, and we have some opportunities, we’ve just had a stretch of bad luck defensively.”
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November 3, 2:20 am
Well, maybe you should find a major league goaltender! Then maybe your defenceman & even forwards will not have to hustle back to swat pucks away from the crease because Howard is on his knees & out of the plays.