Red Wings clean out lockers with disappointment, uncertainty

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(Photo by Michael Caples/MiHockey)

 

By @SKubus

DETROIT – “It’s a lot tougher to take when you feel you should be playing right now.”

That was Niklas Kronwall’s reaction Friday afternoon, as the Detroit Red Wings cleared out their lockers for the summer with a bitter taste in their mouth from the heartbreaking Game 7 loss at the hands of the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

One of the elder veterans on the time at 34, Kronwall was forced to watch Game 7 after being suspended for his hit on Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov late in the second period of Game 6 in a series he felt the team had a grasp of.

“It’s still something I can’t really take in,” Kronwall said. “It’s been a rough few days to say the least.

“It’s another waste year, almost,” Kronwall said. “Any way you look at it, you want to be standing there in June. And when you don’t, especially to go out like this… last year, it’s always frustrating to lose, but this one is way different than last year, just because I felt we had something really good going.”

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As he did following Game 7, Red Wings head coach Mike Babcock – despite his own future with the club looming in uncertainty – continued to convey that the team’s veterans aren’t getting any younger, citing the need for the youth to improve.

“(Henrik) Zetterberg and (Pavel) Datsyuk and Kronwall, in my opinion, are the best leadership group I’ve been around,” Babcock said. “Those guys’ window isn’t as long as a lot of our kids, and at one point this year, we had 15 kids under the age of 28, and we need the push from those kids.”

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(Photo by Michael Caples/MiHockey)

The Red Wings captain said the fact that the team isn’t playing right now proves they’re far enough from where they should be or hope to be as a club, but added that there’s good pieces in place for the future.

“We’re far enough, we’re not playing hockey right now, they’re playing tonight, we’re not and that’s the way it is,” Zetterberg said. “I think we have good pieces here, we played good hockey during the course of the year. Obviously, after that west coast trip, we were sluggish for a bit, but we found a way to get in the postseason. I think four of the seven games we played good hockey, real good hockey, but they found a way to get it done and we didn’t.”

The goaltending dilemma that developed once goaltender Jimmy Howard – the Red Wings’ lone selection for the NHL All-Star Game – headed to the injured reserve and Petr Mrazek stepped in with stellar netminding is one that left the veteran hungry to reclaim the throne.

“Everything was going really well prior to (the injury), but we do a job where injuries happen,” Howard said. “You can’t use them as an excuse one bit, and I’m not going to use it as an excuse. When you come back and you’re healthy, you need to perform and I didn’t.”

“I can only control what I can control, and that’s myself. I’m going to continue to do what I do, and that is work extremely hard and try to get better.”

Howard said his mentality heading into the off-season is no different, despite some uncertainty on who the No. 1 masked man is.

“Every single summer, I go and I work hard. I work extremely hard in the gym and try to get better, so my mentality isn’t going to change. My confidence in my ability is not going to change.”

Red Wings general manager Ken Holland touched on the situation, as well, saying that having two goaltenders vying to be the best heading into their training regimens and preparation for next season is a healthy situation.

Obviously, a huge focus of the day – arguably the biggest – was on the future status of Babcock as bench boss. And now that the season is over, it appears negotiations are beginning and we’ll have an answer sooner than later. The Red Wings general manager likened the situation to dealing with a pending-unrestricted free agent.

“Mike and I talked, he said he briefly talked with his wife…we really felt, I think when you’re on the inside every day, you’re grinding away, trying to figure out how to make your team a little bit better and dealing with the issues of the day,” Holland said. “Things were going pretty good at the 60-game pole, and then all of a sudden the wheels come off, we were wobbling down the stretch and leaking oil. Obviously we wanted to make the playoffs, we wanted to get out of the gate in October and November, and things were going pretty good, so we respected each other’s thoughts that it was best to try to wait until the end of the year, and I look upon Mike as that he’s an unrestricted free agent in the prime of his career. We’ve had many other people in that situation before, many we’ve kept, obviously the odd one has moved on, so, the year’s over now and we’ve got exclusive negotiating rights from now until the end of June. It will pick up next week.