Wings Blog

Wings avoid worse season start, but check the stats

With a victory over Vancouver last night (OK, early this morning), the Red Wings finished their first 10 games with 10 points and avoided having their worst season start since 1993, when they had only 6 points in their first 10 games.

As the Wings have said, any 10-game stretch should be viewed as just a small snippet of a long season. Though the Wings haven't had a great start, it's been just six seasons since they had a similar beginning. In 2003, they started with just five wins and 10 points. They went on to finish first in the division with 109 points and made the playoffs (and lost in the second round to Calgary).

If you want to find a similarly awful 10-game stretch, you don't have to look far at all: the last 10 games of last season. The Wings sputtered down the stretch, battling injuries and complacency as they had just three wins while giving up 32 goals (and scoring just 25). They rebounded well, getting to the Stanely Cup Finals before losing game 7 to Pittsburgh.

Perhaps a bigger concern is the goal differential. In 2003, they still scored three more goals than their opponents over 10 games. This year? It's 35 for the opponents, 30 for the Wings. They've had negative goal differential in just two other years in the last 20: 1993, when they gave up a whopping 46 goals in the first 10 games, yet still made the playoffs. But in 1989, the last year in which they did not make the playoffs, they gave up 43 and scored only 35, a trend that continued throughout the year. It spelled the end of Jacques Demers' tenure.

Playing .500 hockey won't cut it, though. It's taken from 91-95 points to make the playoffs recently and the Wings will have to get better if they intend to extend their current league-best streak of having a shot at the Stanley Cup.

The first 10 games, over the years