Every NHL season comes with its ups and downs, with one of the most reliable downs being injuries. You can’t really complain about injuries since every team deals with them every year. Or can you?
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Up until recently, the Detroit Red Wings were having one of the healthiest seasons in recent memory. However, the injury bug comes for everyone eventually and Detroit’s remarkable health was never going to last forever. With some really poor timing, the Red Wings are no longer historically healthy, and it could cost them a playoff spot.
Let’s take a look at their lack of injuries, how they were ranking historically, and what has changed recently that has put their playoff spot in jeopardy.
Healthy = Lucky
Their first injury of any significance was back in October when Lucas Raymond was hurt in a game against the Toronto Maple Leafs. However, he returned less than a week later, though he was clearly playing through the injury for a while.
The next injury that stands out for Detroit was Simon Edvinsson’s knee injury which required surgery and a few weeks of recovery. Fortunately for Detroit, this injury coincided with the Olympic break so despite not playing for over a month, they only missed out on seven games of Edvinsson.
That’s two injuries to two of the team’s most important players, both under the age of 24, but neither cost the team significantly.
Lowest CHIP in the league this year
CHIP stands for Cap Hit of Injured Players, and while it isn’t a perfect metric, it can give a rough idea of how much every NHL team has lost in a season due to injury. CHIP is a calculation that takes the cap hit of every injured player, divides it by 82 games in a season, and then assigns that piece of their value on a per-game basis.
Now, the clear limitation of this is that it measures contract value lost, not on-ice value lost, so someone like Jonathan Huberdeau who makes $10.5M each year counts for a lot of CHIP as he misses games regardless of his performance, and someone like Simon Edvinsson who is still on his entry-level contract doesn’t have a significant impact on his team’s CHIP.
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Regardless, CHIP does give a rough idea of how injured each team has been and how impactful their health has been on their season. Up until their big injuries in recent weeks, Detroit’s CHIP was $2.9M, the lowest in the NHL. Currently, they sit closer to $3.5M . . . which is still last in the NHL with the Nashville Predators next with $4.7M. The Vegas Golden Knights have the highest CHIP in the NHL to this point, at a whopping $22.8M, though that number is inflated a bit due to the $8.8M cap hit of Alex Pietrangelo who is on Long Term Injured Reserve indefinitely.
Up until their recent injuries, Detroit was on pace to become the 7th team to finish a season below $3M CHIP in the past 10 seasons, making it one of the healthiest seasons in the past decade. Their current CHIP pace is much less historic, with it being fairly common for two or three teams to finish south of a CHIP score of $5M.
Terrible Timing
Dylan Larkin has already missed seven games since getting hurt on March 6 against the Florida Panthers. His 55 points rank third on the team in scoring and his impact as the captain and first line center can’t be overstated. The Red Wings were going to be in tough no matter what for the final weeks of the season, but every game without the recent Gold medalist is that much more challenging.
Andrew Copp also missed a few games, at a very unfortunate time. However, full credit to the training staff for getting Copp ready to go quicker than expected. He returned to play against the Montreal Canadiens on Thursday night and looked up to the task, even scoring the empty net goal to put the game away in the final minutes.
There’s no good time to get bit by the injury bug, but the final month of the season has to be one of the worst possible times. That’s true without even mentioning the difficulty of making the playoffs in the NHL’s Eastern conference this season, where 95 points might not be enough for a postseason berth. The Red Wings need every bit of health that they can get in the final weeks of the regular season.
