In Red Wings Land

Five areas of focus for Red Wings after the break – MLive

Establish home-ice advantage

The Red Wings are pleased that attendance is up this season. A flurry of offseason free-agent signings and the emergence last year of young players Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond generated more buzz around this team than we’ve seen in 6-7 years. But the club has lost more games than it was won at Little Caesars Arena (12-10-3), including setbacks against teams not in a playoff position (Montreal, Ottawa, Columbus, Philadelphia). They have 16 games left at LCA and need to establish a better home-ice advantage.

I like this one the most because it might actually be the most-important one.  Detroit should start building buzz in their own building for next season and giving the folks who show up after the trade deadline reasons to not lull into the weird “woo” games where the crowd is dead except for the few people entertaining themselves being obnoxious would be welcome.

(To be clear, the obnoxious people entertaining themselves with the woo-ing are fine.  I don’t hold it against them. You paid for a ticket; woo all you want)

Around the League

Nick Suzuki on winning a year of Chipotle as a result of winning the golf skill event: “We don’t have a Chipotle in Montreal.”

— Taylor Haase (@TaylorHaasePGH) February 4, 2023

I gave up on the Skills comp right around the time they were doing that goalie tandem thing.  I don’t know if it got any better from there, but after reading some reactions online, it doesn’t seem like it did.

Larkin still holds all-time fastest skater record.