from Ansar Khan of Mlive,

The Detroit Red Wings have a potentially dominant top line with three young players who meshed well late last season and must do the same this year for this offensively challenged team to have any chance of taking a significant step.

Dylan Larkin, Anthony Mantha and Tyler Bertuzzi are coming off their most productive seasons, individually. They finished with a flurry, all three ranking among the league’s top seven scorers over the final eight games.

Coach Jeff Blashill scrambles lines frequently but realizes he has something special with this combination.

continued

from Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press,

They are fed up with losing, tired of coming up short, sick of seeing themselves predicted to be one of the worst teams in the NHL.

The Detroit Red Wings enter the 2019-20 season intent on surprising, determined to demonstrate that they can be a team that’s hard to play against. Those “60 minutes of hell” T-shirts were last year’s mode but remain this year’s mantra: The Wings aren’t going to conquer with their offense, but maybe, just maybe they can be stifling defensively.

“Hopefully we give the other teams the hardest games and even more so when they come into our building,” Anthony Mantha said. “We just want to surprise a lot of people. I think we have the group of players to do so, to win games.”

Mantha is among the bright young rebuilding blocks, but there aren’t enough of those (yet) to win on star power.

cotninued for Rising Up and Bottoming Outg topics...

added 10:31am, Below, watch the top line talking with Brad Galli.