from John Niyo of the Detroit News,

“You look at the black-and-white improvement, we improved 11 points,” said head coach Derek Lalonde, whose team went from 35 wins and 80 points a year ago to 41 wins and 91 points this season. “You can also look at it, black-and-white, we missed the playoffs. That's been hockey for 100 years, making the playoffs.”

For Lalonde, that should be the mandate now, even if it’s an unspoken one. A whopping 10 NHL coaches were fired this past season, and though he’s only been in Detroit two full years, Lalonde has a longer tenure than half of his peers around the league. Still, all this talk of improvement inevitably will take a back seat to black-and-white results.

Lalonde gets high marks from players for his even-keeled approach — “You know what you’re gonna get, and I really respect that,” captain Dylan Larkin says — and he and his staff deserve some credit for the way the team responded down the stretch after a disastrous month of March.

“Obviously, we weren't perfect,” Yzerman said. “But the most important thing from my vantage point was that our players are motivated, our players are determined and there's a good atmosphere within the locker room. And part of that is the coaching staff helps foster that or create that. So overall, I'm happy with the direction we're going, the coaching that we have.”

Still, what we have here is a team that improved dramatically on one end of the ice this season — Detroit’s scoring was up nearly a half-goal per game to finish ninth overall in the NHL — yet also allowed the ninth-most goals in a league where none in the bottom 10 made the postseason.

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