Red Wings finally free to focus on future after playoff streak ends

It’s that time of the NHL season where a few fan bases start buying playoff tickets while the rest turn their attention to MLB spring training. Elimination is no fun. But it shouldn’t color your whole fandom with tears. Just most of it. Seventy percent of it.

This is the 30 percent: SB Nation NHL Silver Linings, where we send hockey’s eliminated teams into the offseason with five good things to remember from this season.

The Detroit Red Wings won’t be in the playoffs this year.

I’ve never written that sentence before. It sounds strange.

But probably good to die-hard Red Wings fans who saw this coming for years and desperately want a rebuild. It was a dreary 2016-17 season in Detroit, and finding positives wasn’t easy.

But they exist!

As fun as nostalgia can get.

Every time a team visited “The Joe” one last time, old memories were brought back and cherished. When the Avalanche came to town, Kris Draper wrote an article about the infamous brawl that defined the Avs-Wings rivalry. When the Stars visited, former Red Wings and current Stars broadcaster Dave Strader felt good enough to call his first game since his cancer diagnosis. When the Penguins played in Detroit we got to remember those two years of Stanley Cup Final bouts in the late aughts.

That building meant a lot to fans across the league, and every week of its final season brought back fond memories.

The speedy rookie forward has a long way to go to reach his full potential, but his game-breaking speed sent fans home happy more than a few times this year.

He pulled off a similar goal seemingly every month. And you thought Dylan Larkin was fast.

Detroit raised eyebrows when they handed the former Islanders center a hefty six-year contract in free agency. After all, shouldn’t the Red Wings be tanking?

But Nielsen was a great investment. Nielsen drives possession on one of the worst possession teams in the NHL. On a better team, surrounded by better players, Nielsen would easily be a 20-goal scorer and at least a 50-point center. If the veteran keeps up this pace as the Wings improve he very well could be. And there’s something to be said for young guys like Larkin and Athanasiou learning from him.

Tomas Tatar and Gustav Nyquist had a first half to forget, so we won’t talk about it. But once rookies like Anthony Mantha and Athanasiou joined and helped take some pressure off, the veterans started finding their groove little by little.

Nyquist has 13 points in 14 games this month, while Tatar has 13 in 15 games. Zetterberg has been rejuvenated, too: the captain has 26 points in 28 games since the All-Star break. The Wings might be golfing during the playoffs, but there’s enough chemistry being developed lately to give fans hope for next season.

Detroit offered the 25-year-old a real chance to unseat Jimmy Howard as their go-to goalie. Mrazek didn’t exactly run away with it: his save percentage had dipped below the .900 mark by the All-Star break and Jeff Blashill’s confidence in him was clearly waning.

But Mrazek pulled things together in the second half. The wins didn’t pile up, but his stats improved: a 2.78 GAA and a .912 SV% after the All-Star break. Enough to win him another year and another chance and renew some hope that he can be their goalie of the future.