Red Wings will look to add goal scoring to their lineup this summer

There’s no use crying over spilled milk, and in the NHL, there’s no use crying over a lost season. The Detroit Red Wings, who fell short of the playoffs after a late-season collapse, can only look ahead to the upcoming offseason. The pressure on general manager Steve Yzerman and company to get this team back to the postseason next year after a decade-long drought will be immense, and they’ll have to take a cold, hard look at their roster to plug the necessary holes.

There are a few areas Yzerman could look to address this summer, but perhaps foremost among them is goal scoring. Detroit’s 2.91 goals per game this past season ranked 22nd in the NHL, with the Los Angeles Kings being the only current playoff team to rank below them. With forwards such as Dylan Larkin, Alex DeBrincat, and Lucas Raymond, the Red Wings have proven, capable scorers, but it’s clear adding some offensive firepower will be a priority.

On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton were joined by The Fourth Period‘s David Pagnotta to discuss how Detroit will look to add goal scoring this offseason.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Steve Yzerman addressing the media today in his post-season press conference. The one quote “The most obvious area would be we need better players. We need to improve in particular areas, goal scoring at 5-on-5.” Is that the flasing light that the Red Wings want to add someone big this offseason?

David Pagnotta: It should be, and he acknowledged that. He’s going to try. They’re going to try to make a bit of a splash here in the summer. They tried in the season to do that with Quinn Hughes. They tried other areas, they were engaged with other teams with some of their star players. It’s clear that they want to address offense, because as much as they were looking at defense, and they brought in Justin Faulk, they were also pressing hard to try to bring in a top-six guy. It looks like that’s going to be the priority.

We touched on this a few weeks ago, they’ve got a good pool of assets now that they can take next steps with and also package up in order to bring in some immediate help for this club in order to take those next steps. “Disappointment” was the word of that press conference, and they need to get out of that. It’s time to start pushing this rebuild plan and taking the next steps in it. That involves being aggressive this offseason.

You can catch the full discussion and the rest of Thursday’s episode here…