Mike Brophy

Veteran hockey columnist Mike Brophy writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Friday on Sportsnet.ca and appears regularly on Hockeycentral.

Kris Draper.

The top teams in the West want no part of Detroit in the first round of the playoffs.

The scariest team in the NHL – the club no other team wants to come up against in the opening round of the playoffs – isn’t sitting atop the standings in either conference.

Rather, it is perched in the No. 9 spot in the Western Conference and they would be the Detroit Red Wings.

Can you imagine how the San Jose Sharks, with all their previous playoff failures, might feel about facing the suddenly red-hot Red Wings in a best-of-seven showdown? Gulp!

Even the Chicago Blackhawks, who have been one of the NHL’s best and most exciting teams this season, have to be keeping their fingers crossed that the Red Wings stay exactly where they are now – in ninth and on the outside of the playoff scene. When the Hawks and Red Wings met in Chicago March 7, the hosts jumped out to a 2-0 lead only to have the visitors explode for five goals in the second period in a 5-4 Detroit victory.

Some may suggest you can’t read too much into one game and really, all it did was even the season series between the two clubs at two wins apiece, but it might also be taken as something of a statement game. With the Red Wings healthy for the first time this season, they are starting to flex their muscle and other teams had better take notice.

Not that they are perfect by any means.

The Calgary Flames skated into Hockeytown and delivered something of a statement game themselves on Tuesday, beating the Red Wings 4-2. Also, the Vancouver Canucks, who have high expectations of a long playoff run themselves, doubled up the Wings 6-3 in Detroit on March 3.

Still, the Red Wings are finally feeling pretty good about themselves after a mostly up and down season. Injuries, coupled with two long seasons highlighted by a Stanley Cup win and then a loss in the final, have contributed to knocking the Red Wings off the rails.

And, as much as coach Mike Babcock likes to go pedal-to-the-metal from the get-go, there was probably a little more pacing involved in this year, an Olympic year.

With the playoffs only a few weeks away, it is important to note the two players the Wings count on most, veterans Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg, are both hitting their stride. While you won’t find them among the league’s top scorers, where they usually are this time of year, they have both heated up at the right time.

Datsyuk has nine goals and 19 points in his past 16 games while Zetterberg has seven goals and 19 points during the same span. Not only is Datsyuk putting up good numbers, he continues to be one of the league’s best two-way players and also the NHL’s biggest thief.

He has recorded 102 takeaways – remarkably 34 more than Ryan Kesler of the Canucks who is second with 68.

Of course the Red Wings will need more than those two players going if they hope to make it back to the final for a third consecutive season. Even then, it certainly won’t be easy.

At 39, Nicklas Lidstrom has slowed down and isn’t quite the offensive force he has been the past decade. However, with two goals and 10 points in his past 10 games, he is finding his comfort zone, too. Lidstrom can’t go on forever, but one more solid playoff performance is well within his grasp.

Perhaps Detroit’s biggest strength is its supporting cast. The likes of Tomas Holmstrom, Johan Franzen, Dan Cleary, Brian Rafalski, Brad Stuart, Jason Williams, Todd Bertuzzi, Valtteri Filppula, Niklas Kronwall, Darren Helm and Kris Draper are a group of individuals who are capable of being game-breakers on any given night.

Naturally, the big question is between the pipes where Jimmy Howard has finally found a home in his fifth pro season. Veteran Chris Osgood has been relegated to backup while Howard, 25, has been pretty consistent on a team that was anything but.

He is 25-15-8 with a decent 2.35 goals-against average and .924 save percentage.

Fans love to chew up and spit out goaltenders in Motown so Howard will be under the spotlight. A good playoff run will go a long way towards his gaining acceptance from an otherwise tough crowd.

Nobody is suggesting the Red Wings will automatically knock off the teams that finish ahead of them in the standings, but my guess is many of those teams are praying they don’t have to go up against Detroit in Round 1.