It goes without saying that the Detroit Red Wings have had obscenely abysmal luck in the NHL Draft Lottery of late, especially a few years back when they were by far the worst team in the League. Their reward for having been eliminated from playoff contention over a month before any other squad was the 4th overall selection. Meanwhile, they’ve missed out on the chance for any players truly considered to be “generational” talents in the same vein as Connor McDavid, Auston Matthews, Alex Ovechkin, and others.
The consensus first overall selection later this year will be phenom forward Connor Bedard, and while there are those in the Red Wings fan base who wanted them to lose as many games as possible in order to boost their odds of getting the 1st overall pick, that’s something that just isn’t going to happen – especially with Detroit having won four of their past five.
“Winning is important; some of these habits from a good team game which have led to our winning of late are important,” head coach Derek Lalonde said. “I know some fans out there are probably frustrated. We’ve literally jumped up six spots on the draft board in the last week.”
“We’re going to play to win because I think it’s important,” Lalonde said. “We went through that really tough 5-6 game stretch (0-5-1 from Feb. 25-March 5), it felt like it was three months long. You talk sometimes about how seasons can drag along. We go on this streak of late — winning, rolling, playing the right way, everyone’s getting good reps — all the sudden we only have five games left, it slowed down, which is part of the experience.”
The Red Wings made the difficult call after a pair of blowout losses to their Atlantic Division rival Ottawa Senators to part ways with several assets on the roster, including the likes of Tyler Bertuzzi, FIlip Hronek, Jakub Vrana and Oskar Sundqvist, moves that Lalonde called “the right thing” to do.
“We were in a unique situation after the deadline,” Lalonde said. “We did the right thing, and no one is going to apologize for it. That’s us taking care of the long-term picture and we had to figure out how to handle the last part of the season. I’m very proud of the way the guys have handled that. They’ve played the right way, they’ve competed hard.”
