Gosh, I really hope that the Red Wings can succeed in winning a game this year

They really tried. This is really the best thing you can say about the 3-1 loss to the relatively unstoppable Red Wings against the Lightning on Thursday night. The Wings resisted the Bolts throughout the match, but were eventually outpaced by an outstanding performance by Andrei Vasilevskiy and a wide winner of Steven Stamkos' match. Honestly, it was one of the best nights in Detroit this year, but I guess it's not too hard to deserve that praise when we played so badly that the Red Wings have to start the season.

Detroit is without a win in their first seven games with two points, and in the league, only the Florida Panthers – who have played three games less – also have this zero in the column of victories. But before you think the Panthers and Red Wings are equal: Florida has a respectable goal difference of -4, while Detroit is twice as bad as anyone with its despicable -18. Detroit was once the destination team for which all veterans looking for a ring wanted to play. Now, the local newspaper has been reduced to writing about the fact that the Red Wings look too sad after allowing goals. I can not even call them a shipwreck because shipwrecks are shocking and unpredictable.

Everyone on this list is too young or too old. In this last category, there are people like Thomas Vanek, a useless buyer during the off season, Frans Nielsen, a spiral money eater, and Justin Abdelkader, a local child, who will be on the list. of eternity pay because he was technically there last time. won the cup. (Darren Helm is another recent beneficiary of the infamous loyalty to Ken Holland's veterans.) Horrendously, 34-year-old Jimmy Howard is still a regular supporter of the net, even though everyone thought that he was the only one in the world. he was crabmeat two years ago, as every Detroit attempt to fall on a young substitute sniffed.

Here's all that's best with the Red Wings: Tyler Bertuzzi's hair; The death of Dylan Larkin; Speed ​​of Andreas Athanasiou; the promising game of rookie defensemen Filip Hronek and Dennis Cholowski in a microscopic sample; and, no doubt, Anthony Mantha's ability to score, even though the kid only found the back of the net once so far this year. Add Filip Zadina, 18, minor league player – for which I have more and more hope, while the season of the Red Wings begins to be even worse than what we feared – and maybe this team could well scratch back to 30 wins and stay on top of at least one of the other teams in the division. This is the best of scenarios.

I would never recommend, ever, to lose voluntarily – it's a massive insult to those who invest time and money in this team – but in reality, the best promising player of the Red Wings is no doubt Jack Hughes, the American cheeky dominant teen who already almost a lock to go number one in the draft next year. If Larkin is a playmaker and Mantha can be like a scorer (we'll fool ourselves if we think young Athanasiou, defensive, is well above average), the Wings still need several more become competitive, and a fully realized Hughes would provide almost all. This season promises to be fierce – and with the exhausted Detroit Blue-liner core, there should be at least some extra 8-2 losses on the horizon – but Hughes would be a deserving reward for a year of suffering. Until then, I would really like to see the Wings beat at least the Panthers on Saturday.