NHL Franchise Boys

With the end of the regular season on the horizon, coaches offer optional practices. The more established players usually take a break, that is, the top-9 forwards, the six regular defenders and starting goalie.

But Wednesday noon, among the dozen soldiers at the rink in Brossard, there was Jonathan Drouin. A desire to perfect his game, to work some specific things in the company of rookie Jesperi Kotkaniemi? No, not really.

“I played ten minutes yesterday,” Drouin said. A situation that no one envisioned or wanted at the beginning of the season: Drouin is a fourth-line player. His 10:55 of use, Tuesday in Philadelphia, his lowest total of the season. In the previous game, it was his center Kotkaniemi who had that honor.

Drouin had never been the player least employed by his coach since his arrival with the Habs. It had already happened under Jon Cooper with the Tampa Bay Lightning, but the opportunity in Montreal was to become the spearhead of the offense.

Marc Bergevin got his hands on Drouin in June 2017 to replace Alex Galchenyuk as center on one of the first two lines. However, a year and a half later, as the Habs fight for a playoff berth, he finds himself on the left wing of the fourth line. Right where Galchenyuk hit the bottom of the barrel at the dawn of the 2017 playoffs.

Drouin is trapped in a vicious circle where the decrease in ice time and the lack of production feed off each other. In the first 47 games, he had never seen his ice time fall below the 15 minute mark. This has happened six times in the last 15 games.

“In the end it’s not me who controls that, it’s the coach who decides if I play 10 or 17 minutes,” commented Drouin. “He has the big end of the stick. It’s not me who makes the trio changes.”

Although this new trio would allow Drouin and Kotkaniemi to play against a weaker opposition, Drouin does not believe that it would necessarily bring them more success offensively…. “The fourth lines on the other teams do not really want to score goals, they only think about playing defensive. So when you play against teams that have a fourth line that only checks , the odds are not great to score.”

Kotkaniemi hopes that chemistry will develop with Drouin. “He’s a great center player. I like playing with him, he’s one of the best players in the league. His passing game and his vision are incredible. It’s going to work well. “

“There are different reasons why they are together and for which we move them during the match, but we do the best we can with what we have,” admitted Julien earlier this week.

Too often this season, Kotkaniemi has had to contend with struggling wingers (Armia and Lehkonen) without really supporting him through his own difficult moments. And now he’s paired with the black sheep, today’s version of Galchenyuk.

Nevertheless, Julien has made his choice: his decisions will serve the entire team and not a single player. “I have to do what’s best for the team first and foremost,” he said Monday, two days after limiting Kotkaniemi’s time at 7:56 against the Hawks. “If I do not nail him to the bench and mistakes cost us a goal or a game, will we forgive the coach saying ‘we did not do the playoffs, but at least Kotkaniemi played?’ No! You have to balance things and in the end, you have to do what it takes to win games.”

Julien said he was happy with how Kotkaniemi responded against the Flyers and how he had behaved. As for Drouin, it’s a different story. Julien is trying to find a way to rekindle Drouin’s fire so he can at least finish the schedule on a good note.

“There is no doubt he feels pressure,” said Julien about Drouin. He is a young man from the place and he wants to do well. These things can weigh heavily. We have seen other players go through the same thing in the past. For our part, it is to encourage him to play hard, to show him that we are behind him. We know he can be a good player for us and we will encourage him to try to return to where he was before. “

While Julien speaks of “encouraging him to play hard”, many fans have seen this too often and want him traded before his value diminishes any further.

This Lightning team looks an awful lot like the mid-1990s Red Wings so it’s no surprise that Tampa Bay is chasing the 1995-96 Detroit team that won 62 games (and a record 131 points).

When you have a bevy of talented players behind two top-notch coaches and two organizations that are efficiently run, you get a team for the ages – and that’s what Tampa has. Detroit had Steve Yzerman, Sergei Fedorov and Nicklas Lidstrom. Tampa has Steven Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov, and Victor Hedman, not to mention breakthrough player Brayden Point.

Comparing teams from different eras is challenging, sometimes impossible. But it also makes for a fascinating debate. The 1995-96 Red Wings played before there was a salary cap, allowing them to be conscious-free in terms of adding Hall of Famers in summer sweepstakes. There were different rules, too, as a more physical game was allowed before the 2004-05 lockout ended obstruction.

But what has caught the hockey world’s attention, including members of the 1995-96 Red Wings, is how the Lightning have put up historic numbers in a league that has more parity than ever, squeezing in homegrown talent under a salary cap. Hall of Famer Scotty Bowman, who coached that Wings team, said what the Lightning are doing right now is more impressive than his 1976-77 Canadiens, who won 60 games in an 80-game season and an 18-team league.

Both teams were fueled by previous playoff failures. The Red Wings were swept in the 1995 Stanley Cup final by the Devils after losing in seven games to the Sharks and Maple Leafs in the previous two postseasons. The Lightning lost in the Stanley Cup final to Chicago in 2015, lost in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals in 2016 to eventual champion Pittsburgh and lost in 2018 to eventual champion Washington.

So how would the 2018-19 Lightning and the 1995-96 Wings stack up against each other? Let’s take a look.

Overall

The 1995-96 Red Wings pretty much lapped the league in the regular season. Their 131 points was 27 more than the next best team, the 104-point Colorado Avalanche. The Lightning, with 110 points in 70 games, have a 17-point cushion over the next-best team, the Boston Bruins.

Since these were two different eras, the best way to compare is by how these teams stacked up against the league average. The chart below shows each team’s numbers, league ranking and how much better they were compared to the league average.

Forwards

The star power on the Red Wings was staggering. They didn’t have Brett Hull or Brendan Shanahan yet, but wow. Steve Yzerman (Hall of Famer). Sergei Fedorov (Hall of Famer). Igor Larionov (Hall of Famer). Ciccarelli (Hall of Famer). Slava Kozlov and Keith Primeau. And you can’t forget the Grind Line with Kris Draper, Darren McCarty and Maltby, who was acquired at the 1996 trade deadline from the Oilers.

The Lightning have some high-end firepower up front in Kucherov, Stamkos and Point. Their third line has been a difference-maker with Anthony Cirelli, Alex Killorn and J.T. Miller, though they won’t be confused with the physicality of the Red Wings’ third line.

A good comparative number for forwards is Points Share, an estimated number of points (in standings) contributed to the team based on a player’s offensive and defensive play. Here’s how the top Red Wings and Lightning forwards stack up by Points Share:

Blueline

This is the best blueline the Lightning have had in years, with Hedman and Ryan McDonagh offering a strong one-two punch. The addition of rookie Erik Cernak has rounded out the top four, with talented second-year pro Mikhail Sergachev offering a unique blend of skating ability and offensive instincts.

But the Red Wings? They had Lidstrom, one of the greatest to ever play the game. They had Paul Coffey, another Hall of Famer. Slava Fetisov. And Vladimir Konstantinov, a menacing beast of a two-way defenseman who was on track for a Hall of Fame career before his tragic limo accident, who was a mere plus-60 in the regular season.

You look at the Point Shares of the defensemen from each team, and well, the numbers paint a picture:

Special teams

Both the current Lightning and the 1995-96 Wings had dominant special teams. Detroit’s power play ranked second in the league at 21.32 percent and its penalty kill was first in the league at 88.27 percent. The Lightning’s power play is almost unfair at 28.63 percent, and their penalty kill has gotten a remarkable makeover from 28th last year to No. 1 (85.46 percent) this season.

Goaltending

Both teams boasted a strong one-two punch in net.

The Red Wings had Chris Osgood, who went 39-6 with a 2.13 goals-against average and .911 save percentage in 50 starts. Mike Vernon was the backup with 21 wins and a 2.23 GAA in 32 starts.

The Lightning are led by Vezina Trophy finalist Andrei Vasilevskiy, who could be the favorite to win the award this year. Vasilevskiy is 31-8 with a 2.24 GAA and .931 save percentage in 43 starts. He also has six shutouts. Backup Louis Domingue has won 20 games, including a franchise-record 11-game winning streak. Vasilevskiy and Domingue are the first goaltender tandem to each have 10-game winning streaks in the same season.

Vasilevskiy’s Point Share is 11.1, with Osgood at 7.8.

Coaching

Scotty Bowman is the winningest coach of all time, with Stanley Cup rings for all of his 10 fingers. He oversaw the Canadiens dynasty in the 1970s and the top Red Wings teams of the mid-1990s.

Jon Cooper is the longest-tenured coach in the NHL and has earned a sterling reputation around the league as the top coach players want to play for.

Conclusion

Who would win in a game between the 1995-96 Wings and the current Lightning? It’s an impossible answer.

“It’s hard to compare the two teams in a game,” Lidstrom said. “But I think it would be an entertaining game and the Red Wings would probably play more physical and end up with more penalties because we could use our sticks a lot more!”

But when I asked Stamkos, he chuckled and shook his head. “How many Hall of Famers did they have? Six or seven?” Stamkos asked. “I’ll have to tip my cap to them.”