Detroit Red Wings and Tampa Bay Lightning Feel the Heat At Opposite Ends of Competitive Cycle
The Detroit Red Wings and Tampa Bay Lightning have been some of the NHL's hottest teams since Jan. 1, but they're under tons of pressure to make the playoffs, and there's no room for comfort in the battle.
The Detroit Red Wings and Tampa Bay Lightning are at different ends of their competitive cycles. And the way things are stacking up in the Atlantic Division and the Eastern Conference, there likely won’t be room for both in the post-season.
The Red Wings are trying mightily to get back into the picture for the first time since 2016, and the Lightning are desperately trying to avoid falling out of the playoff mix for the first time since 2017.
The urgency of winning right away has propelled Detroit and Tampa Bay to be two of the hotter teams in the league since New Year’s Day. Detroit is the league’s third-best team by points percentage since the beginning of the calendar year, while the Bolts are the fourth-best squad.
But in the larger sample size of the entire regular season, the Wings and Lightning are remarkably similar: both teams have a goals-for average of 3.48 per game, and they're subpar on defense. The Red Wings have allowed 3.22 goals per game – 11th-most in the league – and Tampa has the 10th-most goals-against average at 3.28. Both their defenses have improved of late, with the Red Wings ranking seventh and the Lightning ranking 15th in 2024 alone, but when it comes to a well-balanced attack, Detroit and Tampa Bay need better performances in their own zone.
The Lightning are activating defenseman Mikhail Sergachev off the league’s Long-Term Injured Reserve on Wednesday. With that move, their cap space vanishes. They’ve also got to worry about the long-term status of star winger Steven Stamkos, who will be a UFA at season’s end.
The Wings, on the other hand, currently have $7.4 million in cap space. They can and should be in the market for a defenseman, such as Calgary’s Chris Tanev, if only to keep him from being dealt to an Atlantic rival such as Toronto or Ottawa.
For the moment, though, the Wings and Lightning are two of the more unpredictable teams in the league. Tampa Bay technically has one more standings point than the Maple Leafs, and Detroit is tied with Toronto. But the Leafs have two games in hand on both, so we believe Toronto has a slightly higher degree of comfort in the playoff battle. The Leafs also will be a player on the trade market, and on paper, at least, they’re a better squad than the Bolts and Wings.
Of course, that doesn’t mean things can’t change. But there’s definitely a scenario in the multiverse where Tampa Bay and Detroit are fighting it out tooth and nail for a wild-card berth. It may very well come down to the final weeks and days of the regular season, and again, we’re talking about two teams in very different places in their competitive cycle.
If Tampa Bay falls short of the post-season, Lightning GM Julien BriseBois will have some crossroads-related decisions to make on his group of players. If Detroit doesn’t qualify for the playoffs, it will be a crushing blow to Wings fans who’ve had it with disappointment.
Both teams will reel from not getting into the post-season, but the ramifications for each of them will be different if they don’t get in. Wings GM Steve Yzerman will face more heat than at any point in his career as an executive, while BriseBois will begin to be questioned about his long-term blueprint for success. The NHL is a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately business, and Detroit and Tampa Bay are going to be dealing with all sorts of blowback if they can’t at least qualify to play for a Stanley Cup.
As a player and executive, Yzerman has a solid history with the Bolts and Wings. But given the state of parity in the game, his current team is as under the gun to win as is his former employer in Florida. Hockey’s top league can be a cruel operation, and we’re getting the sense one of the Lightning or Red Wings will be left in the lurch by the time the playoffs roll around.