Well, that did not go nearly how I thought it would! Game 1, new season, new defenseman/power play coach, new players, home opener, division rival, the only player missing is Bryan Rust…and yet the Pittsburgh Penguins came out against the New York Rangers yesterday looking like nothing had changed from last year. All the familiar clichés were there: Tristan Jarry letting in soft goals left and right, the defense literally falling flat on its face (who are you and what have you done with Marcus Pettersson?), the offense getting nothing going at even strength, and the power play went -1/3 as they allowed a shorthanded goal by Chris Kreider in the middle of the third period. Head coach Mike Sullivan did not waste any time throwing the lines into a blender as if he didn’t have weeks to prepare for this game, even putting Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin out there together a few times. Yes, okay, breathe, it’s just one game…but a very discouraging start for a Penguins team looking to shake off the last couple of years and get back to the playoffs.

The Penguins get right back to it tonight as they play visitors to the Detroit Red Wings for their first game of the regular season schedule. Once upon a time not that long ago the Red Wings were one of the best teams in the NHL. From 1984 to 2016 they won five Stanley Cups, appeared in another two Cup Finals, and made four more Conference Finals appearances, while missing the playoffs just twice. But by the time Detroit was losing their back-to-back championship bid to Pittsburgh in 2009, the Red Wings were the oldest team in the NHL by almost a full year over the New Jersey Devils. It doesn’t help that 47-year-old Chris Chelios was dragging their average roster age way up; nevertheless, the next season they had the second-oldest roster in the League. As is typical of teams with lots of successful years, they weren’t able to effectively replace the production of their aging veterans with talented prospects, and they slowly and gently eroded away.

Eight years have passed since they last made the postseason and, just as slowly as they faded into the Atlantic Division basement, the Red Wings have likewise been slowly improving over these past years (in terms of points percentage, anyway). Their captain, Dylan Larkin, was a rookie and Calder nominee when Detroit last made the playoffs, but he might not even be the team’s best player. Lucas Raymond is entering his fourth year in the NHL and was pushing a point-per-game production last season. He, along with young defensive peers Moritz Seider and Simon Edvinsson are just a few of the up-and-coming prospects general manager Steve Yzerman has been hoping would help bring about a renaissance for the Red Wings and return them to the playoffs once again. At the moment it is unclear if Detroit is back in the playoff discussion quite yet. Part of the issue is that the veteran teams in the division (Boston and Tampa Bay) don’t seem quite ready to relinquish their hold on their postseason aspirations quite yet.

Another issue is that the Red Wings interdivisional peers which too have been rebuilding for the past several years (Ottawa and Buffalo, pretty soon Montreal) are also anticipating their opportunity to crack back into the playoffs as well. Fundamentally Detroit looks weakest in this regard: beyond their top two lines I am curious if they’ll get much offensive production, and besides Seider and Edvinsson their defense is dubious. The make-or-break aspect will be the goaltending, which is where the Red Wings look the weakest compared to their peers. Whereas the Senators went out this summer and made the big splash to acquire Linus Ullmark and the Sabres have their highly-regarded-if-heretofore-unimpressive tandem of Devon Levi and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, Detroit is sticking with Alex Lyon and Ville Husso. The duo faced the seventh-most shots against last season and were up to the task, but still only League average. The Red Wings were as close as you can get to making the playoffs last year, but lost the tiebreaker to the Washington Capitals.

There are two questions then for Detroit: are they good enough to make the playoffs on their own and not at the expense of other teams underperforming, and, if not, is their prospect pipeline cooked and is this as good as it will get for the Red Wings? It would be easier to give them the benefit of the doubt, having been just on the cusp of a postseason berth last April, but their rivals in and out of the division seem poised to usurp their spot.