The Wings split the week's four games with a heartbreaking failed comeback, an ugly performance against Columbus, and two dominating games against solid defensive teams. Next up, Detroit takes a brief western road trip to Los Angeles and San Jose before coming back home for a Sunday showdown against the Blackhawks.

With that, we're going to take a look at the roster from an individual standpoint on a good/bad/neutral perspective and see what kind of trends are working out. We'll be doing this on a week-by-week basis. Everybody will get a good/bad/neutral rating based on what they've done this past week and what we can expect from them for the coming week.

They'll also be ranked in order of strongest-to-weakest in their category.

The Forwards

The Good

1. Pavel Datsyuk - Six points in four games and perhaps the goal of the year for the league's most-complete forward has Datsyuk at the top of the list.
2. Henrik Zetterberg - Trending up since earlier in the week, I'm looking forward to seeing him improve on the pace he set Sunday.
3. Damien Brunner - Brunner worked hard all week and it finally paid off against Vancouver. 10 goals in fewer than 20 games for the Wings gives the team the top-line sniper they've been looking for.
4. Daniel Cleary - The fourth forward for the Wings with five Six points in the four games this week, Cleary is the guy getting it done on the PP for the Wings now and has played much better at 5-on-5.
5. Tomas Tatar - Another goal this week, two points, and two more drawn penalties. Tatar has been the bottom-six spark that the team needed.
6. Jordin Tootoo - Two goals this week for the little fireball and he even got called irrelevant by the indomitable Derek Dorsett.
7. Joakim Andersson - The first Nashville game dragged him down a bit, but he more than made up for it with strong performances in the next three, including a two-goal performance against Vancouver.
8. Drew Miller - The bottom of the "good" forwards, Miller got on the board and played effective PK minutes.
9. Patrick Eaves - Ok, I lied; Miller isn't the bottom of the good. Eaves deserved a goal that he didn't get thanks to a quick whistle against Vancouver. He's kicked ass.

The Bad

1. Justin Abdelkader - It's hard to put people on this list immediately after the weekend games, but Abdlekader continues to play top six minutes and isn't getting results. He has two points one point on the season and, while he's working hard, the minutes he's getting require more results.
2. Jan Mursak - yes, I know this isn't fair because he didn't get the chance he might have needed after coming back. Consider this the weakest-possible bad rating I can give a guy, but he got waived and that sucks.

The Neutral

1. Valtteri Filppula - Flip has looked better playing in all three zones, but it's not coming together for him consistently still. He's trending upward, but needs to build off the momentum.
2. Cory Emmerton - Just shy of making the "good" list, Emmerton's hustle in the last four games had him playing above his season average for minutes per game.
3. All the Injured guys - saying the same thing four times about Bertuzzi, Helm, Franzen, and Samuelsson sucks. They're all neutral. There we go.

The Defense

Injuries

The Good

1. Niklas Kronwall - Back-to-back 3-point games has Kronwall sitting on the league lead for points among defensemen. He's looked much better in his own end as well.
2. Jonathan Ericsson - Ericsson is still the most-solid player in the Wings' zone right now. A few bad decisions have crept in lately though.
3. Brian Lashoff - He still looks like a rookie at times, but he's played big minutes and done so in big situations.
4. Jakub Kindl - He's put up points this week and has made good decisions on the 2nd PP unit.

The Bad

1. Kyle Quincey - He leaves the lineup and the Wings win again... those aren't actually related, but he didn't look good before the injury.

The Neutral

1. Ian White - He's played big minutes, but has neither particularly shined nor horrified in that time. Sounds neutral to me
2. Kent Huskins - Nothing spectacular about his play this week. I can deal with neutral from him.
3. Brendan Smith and Carlo Colaiacovo - Smith is nearing his return-date and Colaiacovo isn't far behind.

The Goalies

The Good

1. Petr Mrazek - I don't like having blank spaces here, so congrats Mrazek!

The Bad

1. Jonas Gustavsson - He wasn't horrible, but he took the loss in the one game he played and then got hurt on a night when Howard should have been given the chance to rest.

The Neutral