Detroit Red Wings Review – January 25-31, 2021
This season we will offer a weekly review of The Detroit Red Wings 2020-2021 season. Each review will be broken up into four sections: Broken Wings, which updates injuries for the week; Wing Movement, which updates transactions for the week; Games Review, Summery of game results for the week; and Talking Hockey, my own take on the Wing’s this week.
Broken Wings – The Red Wings saw forward Darren Helm miss one game this week due to injury and goaltender Jonathan Bernier missed both weekend games with an upper body injury. Tyler Bertuzzi missed Sunday’s game against Florida due to an injury suffered Thursday but still played 2 periods of Saturday’s game. Adam Erne, Robby Fabbri, Sam Gagner, Jon Merrill and Filip Zadina all spent the entire week on COVID protocol. The Wings neither added, nor gained, players from protocol this week.
Wing Movement – All week, forwards Taro Hirose and Givani Smith yo-yoed between the taxi squad and active roster. Calvin Pickard was activated from the taxi squad 1/30 due to the injury to Bernier. Forwards Riley Barber and Chase Pearson were recalled from Grand Rapids to the taxi squad, but both reassigned to Grand Rapids on the weekend.
Game Review – The Red Wings played 4 times this week and finished the week 0-2-2 for two out of a possible eight points on the week. The team holds a 2-5-3 record for the season to date. They finished the week in eighth place in the Central Division and 30th in the NHL.
Talking Hockey – Everything was a struggle for the Red Wings this week. Special teams were abysmal. The team could not score on the PP and could not stop the opponent’s PP. Whenever the team managed to gain any kind of momentum, it was derailed by ill-advised penalties that resulted in goals against. Considering the Wings are missing their entire second line, half the third line, and more players than most teams seeing games postponed, it is a wonder why the Wings keep playing games when disadvantaged like this. The only positive note for the team this week is that the Grand Rapids Griffins, the Red Wings minor league team, began practice this weekend and will begin their season this week.
Player of the Week – Tyler Bertuzzi – Bertuzzi’s goal on Saturday gave him 4 goals in his last 4 games. He leads the team in goals and is tied with Dylan Larkin for the point lead on the team.