Detroit's Surprising Goal Scoring Leader

Filed under: Red Wings

Through their first 30 games of the regular season the Detroit Red Wings are, as usual, one of the top teams in the NHL. Not really a new development. Something that is a new development? The name that's at the top of their goal-scoring leaderboard entering Friday's game against long-time rival Chicago. On a team that boasts goal-scoring threats Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg and Johan Franzen, it's veteran Dan Cleary that is currently pacing the Wings in goals with 14, well on his way to setting a new career high (his previous personal best is 20).

The Red Wings have a well deserved reputation for being one of the best -- if not the best -- player development teams in the NHL, but player development isn't always just about the draft and bringing young players up through your farm system. It's also about improving players that are already in the NHL and helping them to fit into a role and a system. Coming out of the lockout the Red Wings picked up a pair of veteran NHL players that had bounced around a couple of different stops in the league, struggling to find consistent success, and turned them into usable cogs in their machine: Cleary and Mikael Samuelsson.

Samuelsson went on to become a 20-goal scorer with the Wings and a key playoff performer during their Stanley Cup run in 2007, using his success in Detroit to land a three-year $7.5 million contract in Vancouver. Cleary, on the other hand, remains with the Wings, and is scoring goals at a pace unlike any other time in his 13-year career. Always a strong two-way player and penalty killer, Cleary's new ability to light the lamp has pretty much come out of nowhere.

 

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Source: http://nhl.fanhouse.com/2010/12/17/detroits-surprising-goal-scoring-leader/

Steve Stricker Steven Gerrard Thierry Henry Thomaz Bellucci Tim Clark