From The Silky Mitten State: If Detroit can find its way into the playoffs, what problems can the Red Wings pose in a potential first-round matchup?
From The Silky Mitten State: If Detroit can find its way into the playoffs, what problems can the Red Wings pose in a potential first-round matchup?
When he spoke to the media for the first time since suffering a mid-January injury, Detroit winger Patrick Kane proclaimed that he believes the Red Wings can prove a difficult matchup in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, should they find a way into the dance.
"The teams I've been on that have won, that go far in the playoffs, you have depth, guys that can produce all over the lineup and step up on any given night, and we have a lot of that in here," Kane told The Hockey News back on February 8th when asked about why he believes Detroit could cause an opponent problems come playoff time.
Of course, Kane has every reason to pump the tires of his team on its present push for the postseason, but that doesn't mean his observation is invalid. The Red Wings are a team built around the idea of depth, which has been a central talking point around the organization since the first day of training camp (before Kane had even signed in Detroit).
On Tuesday night in Edmonton, Joe Veleno became the 11th Red Wing to crack the 10-goal plateau, and Kane scored his eighth of the season, putting him in line to make it a dozen double-digit scorers in short order.
You only need to look as far as last year's postseason for an example of a depth-driven team causing problems in the first round, when the Seattle Kraken knocked off the Colorado Avalanche despite a significant disadvantage in top-end talent, instead relying on the ability to command games through the quality of each player in their lineup.
In the most recent episode of The Silky Mitten State, my co-host Connor Earegood and I discussed Kane's comments and, at the risk of getting ahead of ourselves, the idea that Detroit might just prove a tricky first-round matchup. Here's a snippet of that conversation:
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