Toronto Maple Leafs: Eye on the Enemy, Part Seven

It’s time to take a brief look at the Toronto Maple Leafs divisional competition, the Detroit Red Wings.

The Toronto Maple Leafs outdoor game rival.

Seriously, they’ve played each other twice outside and both times the Leafs prevailed, so we have that.

I’m not a big Red Wings fan I must admit, especially with the departure of Pavel Datsyuk, one of the most iconic players in the game.

Anyways, here’s the seventh and final installment of my seven-part series where we take a look into the Atlantic Division for the 2017-18 season.

Let’s take a look at how we arrived here.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

There’s no need to give my prediction for the team of conversation at the end of the article because through observation, one can tell that I think the Red Wings will finish in the last place spot in the Atlantic.

I’m glad you stuck around for all seven articles in the series, it’s been a fun ride getting to the final team.

Onto the analysis.

Detroit Red Wings

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There’s no lack of talent on the roster, it’s just that the talent’s aging something fierce.

Henrik Zetterberg, Frans Nielsen, Justin Abdelkader, Johan Franzen and Darren Helm are all at least 30 years of age.

Two of those guys are already above 35.

Now, they can still contribute to this teams success or lack thereof, but I’m looking at the younger guys to provide the fire power.

Tomas Tatar and Gustav Nyquist have shown flashes of brilliance and I’d like to think that’ll continue.

Riley Sheahan, Dylan Larkin, Anthony Mantha and hopefully, Andreas Athanasiou look like studs.

It’s just a matter of Athanasiou’s contract to deal with.

The other three only have this upcoming season left under contract, so they’ll have to be resigned as well.

Looking back at the blueline, you’ll notice a similar pattern with the forward group, an aging core.

Continued

Mike Green, Niklas Kronwall, Jonathan Ericsson and Trevor Daley are all over 30.

The difference is that defenseman have longer durability, so a player like Green should be able to stick around for more time.

Then you have Danny DeKeyser who’s alright, but not great.

Their prospect pool isn’t made up of the flashiest of names, but Detroit’s been a good drafting team for 20+ years, so I’m sure they have some good gems in there that I’m just not aware of.

Still, the team is obviously on the decline (probably since Mike Babcock left) and will most likely need to do an overhaul before getting back to the playoffs.

After all, former Leafs legend David Booth has been given a chance to crack the lineup with a professional tryout.

There you have it, we only have one team left that hasn’t been talked about.

I predict that the Leafs will finish in second place in the Atlantic this upcoming season.

Next: 2020 Vision

That concludes this series.