The list of things that have gone right for the Detroit Red Wings this season is short.
They always had a tough task in front of them to improve on the team’s big step forward last season, but the reality of that challenge has hit hard. They have felt the weight of lost depth this offseason. Their free-agent replacements have struggled for the first two months. And the Red Wings’ place in the standings — they entered Wednesday night’s games with the league’s sixth-worst points percentage — has reflected all of that.
But on that short list of things that have gone right for the Red Wings this season, the good news is that many of them involve players who are going to be around for a long time.
And while that’s probably only small solace to fans hoping to see an eight-year playoff drought finally end this season, it’s still a significant storyline in the franchise’s big picture.
Here’s a deeper look into how the Red Wings aged 23 and younger have fared this season.
Lucas Raymond
Raymond had his big breakout last season, leading Detroit in scoring with 72 points in 82 games. This season, he seems to have leveled up once again, producing more than a point per game with 11 goals and 19 assists through 28 games so far.
That would be impressive in any context (it’s an 87-point pace), but it’s even more so considering the Red Wings’ team scoring has dropped by .78 goals per game this season. That team-wide dip has affected virtually everyone on the team, including star center Dylan Larkin (23 points in 28 games) — but not Raymond.
And even after a slower start in the goal column, Raymond has recently gotten hot there, too — now up to 11 after tallying nine in his last 10 games.
“I haven’t really changed anything in my game,” Raymond said. “Kind of what I said: keep playing the right way, keep playing the way I do, and hopefully good things happen.”
They are, and it’s a big deal for the Red Wings. Perhaps there’s some slowdown on the horizon related to his 18.3 percent shooting percentage, but it is worth noting that’s actually lower than he shot last season (19 percent). This may simply be the natural evolution of his game — and it’s come with pretty solid underlying defensive numbers, too.
If he can keep this up, Detroit may soon have an 85-point forward on its hands — something the team hasn’t had since Pavel Datsyuk’s 97 in 2008-09.
The eight-year, $8.075 million AAV contract he signed this summer looks like it will be tremendous value for the Red Wings. He looks like a star building block.
Moritz Seider
The story of Seider’s 2023-24 season was all about him taking the NHL’s toughest minutes — playing elite competition every single night, but having to mostly survive those minutes as a result.
This season, the workload hasn’t eased up much (although Seider’s quality of competition now ranks third among NHL defensemen, close behind Tampa Bay’s Ryan McDonagh and Erik Cernak), but his performance in it has ticked up, showing real growth.
That shows up in his five-on-five expected goals numbers, where his xGF percentage is now up to 47.2 percent (up from 43.3 percent last season), but even more dramatically in actual goals share, with Detroit scoring 60 percent (!) of five-on-five goals with Seider on the ice.
And that only tells part of the story. If you just take Seider’s minutes alongside his new defense partner Simon Edvinsson (a swap Detroit made midseason), the pair surges up to a five-on-five expected goals share north of 52.5 percent and a staggering actual goals share of 68.72 percent. The latter number is a top-5 mark in the league, which considering their minutes is remarkable.
That alone is already making good on Seider’s new $8.55 million AAV (through 2031). He’s playing like a legit No. 1 defenseman.
Simon Edvinsson
As you could glean from the Seider section, Edvinsson has been a revelation on Detroit’s top pair.
It’s tough to really isolate his and Seider’s respective impacts from each other, considering how much they play together. But still, the way Seider’s underlying numbers took off once Edvinsson joined his pairing speaks to how well the two have fit together.
One key, Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde noted, is that Edvinsson can be a sort of one-man breakout. His length and ability to get stops in transition obviously mirrors a huge strength of Seider’s, but Edvinsson can also then pick up a puck and get it up ice.
“Those two have been spectacular, because they’re not spending time in their zone,” Lalonde said.
Edvinsson’s production, too, has surpassed the expectations Detroit’s coaches had for him at this stage, already close to half a point per game. Right now, though, the staff is thrilled at how effective the pair has been tilting the ice, and Edvinsson deserves plenty of credit for that.
Whether he and Seider will be stapled together for years to come, or split up to spread out their impact, remains to be seen — but having that question at all is a luxury going forward.
And while Raymond and Seider’s continued elevation was a bit more expected, Edvinsson being this good, this fast is probably the biggest win of the season for Detroit.
Marco Kasper
There’s a tier gap here, obviously, but Kasper’s season has been a positive development, too. He hasn’t had the flashy production, with seven points in his first 24 games, but he’s been consistently noticeable as a puck transporter and retriever. And recently he’s been Detroit’s choice to center Patrick Kane, which speaks to the trust he’s earned from his coaches in his young career.
At 20, just being in the NHL full-time is a vote of confidence, and he’s shown some flashes of what he may become. The next steps will be upping the production a bit — though it may never be overwhelming — and, perhaps more importantly, keeping up his strong underlying defensive numbers against tougher competition. He’s been fairly sheltered in that regard so far.
“He’s still figuring out the NHL game a little bit, but he competes really hard and he skates well,” Larkin said recently. “He moves around the ice really well. He’s someone that I’m very optimistic about, and I think that he’s earned his position here and earned his stay. Someone that I could see having an engine for our team, and someone that brings it every night.”
Albert Johansson
The standard here is a little different, as the other four players on this list were top-10 picks while Johansson was a find late in the second round. That’s why he’s still so early in his career despite actually being the oldest of this group. He’ll age out of the “23 and under” category in just a few weeks.
But while he doesn’t project as a cornerstone piece like the top names on this list, he’s taking strides toward becoming a regular for the Red Wings.
The first step will be building a bit more trust from his coaches, which has been hard to come by in the early going. Johansson has been in and out of the lineup, playing exactly half of Detroit’s games so far, and getting the team’s most sheltered matchups when he’s in. That part isn’t within his control.
He hasn’t been flawless in that role, either — Detroit has scored just 28 percent of five-on-five goals with Johansson on the ice and under 50 percent of expected goals — mainly owing to the size he gives up against most NHL forwards. Adding weight, certainly, will continue to be a focal point for him going forward.
But for a player so young, continuing to earn reps and minutes, and then learning from his experiences, is what this season is all about. Long-term, I could see Johansson as an Olli Määttä type of steady presence on the back end, giving up a bit of size to Määttä but countering it with better skating. He’ll need to defend with his brain and his stick, but if he can do that, it’s not hard to envision him as a player who can thrive in third-pair minutes.
That may not be the splashiest profile, but it can be an important one.
(Top photo of Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)
