Anthony Mantha spent the first couple months of this season going nowhere, a train stuck in the station. He's finally picking up steam.
What a relief that is for the Red Wings, so long as he sustains his momentum. And what a relief it must be for Mantha, who was such a non-factor for such long chunks of time earlier in the year that he was scratched from the lineup just a few months after signing a $22 million deal.
Mantha produced five goals and nine points in his first 23 games. He has three goals in five points in his past five. He's moving his feet, moving the man in front of him and slowly moving the needle again for a team -- and a rebuild -- that needs him.
"I knew when we started the season I wasn’t playing good, so I had to figure something out," Mantha said Monday. "I think it’s been two, three weeks that I’ve been playing way better."
This five-game surge started March 2 in a loss to Columbus. Mantha scored that night and earned praise from Jeff Blashill for the way he competed. If he kept playing like that, Blashill said, kept winning battles, kept leaning on the opposition, kept bending his knees and churning his legs, the pucks would keep going in. There's an old saying in hockey that you earn your luck.
So it was that Mantha threw a puck toward goal in the dying seconds of Sunday's loss to the Hurricanes and watched it carom into the net off the skate of a Carolina defenseman. It was the reward for arguably his most complete performance of the season, one that earned him 22:29 of ice time.
We talk about Mantha's ice time a lot. It's down a full minute from last season when he played a career-high 18:54 per game, but it's on the upswing of late. It tends to fluctuate because Mantha's level of interest tends to fluctuate, or so it appears when a player with the capability of taking over games allows games to fall by the wayside.
"There’s very few players in the league that have the talent to drive lines. When he’s on his game and he’s using that skillset he has, he can really drive a line," Blashill said Monday. "When he’s really on his game, he’s moving his feet."
And when he's moving his feet, well ...
"It shows in the time of ice," Mantha said. "Blash sees it right away and he uses me way more."
It's hard to overstate Mantha's importance to the Red Wings as presently constructed. They need him to play like a first-line forward to be consistently competitive. They need him to play like an All-Star to even think about sustained success. This is a team with a points percentage of .345. That jumps to nearly .500 when Mantha scores a goal.
It might be even harder to overstate his importance looking ahead. Where else are the Red Wings getting 30 goals a year? With his size, speed and shot, Mantha is a better bet than any player on the team or in the pipeline. For the record, each of the last five Cup winners -- and each of the last five full-season finalists -- had a 30-goal scorer.
And, for the record, that's what Mantha said he was aiming for after inking his new deal.
"Everyone talks about that magic 30, and I think it’s something that’s reachable for me in the real near future," he said. "That’s the goal I’m set on right now."
He won't be getting there this season, and he probably wouldn't have anyway in a shortened slate of games. But it would be encouraging to see him score at that pace the rest of the way, which would be 10 goals in Detroit's final 27 games. That would help quiet the notion -- and not a totally crazy one -- that the Wings might make Mantha available in the offseason.
It would surely lead to a few more wins and a bit more optimism about a rebuild that feels stuck on the ground level. From a performance perspective, Mantha admitted this has been the most trying season of his career.
"It’s been the hardest being healthy," he said. "Obviously there’s been tougher years (with injuries), but being healthy, it is really hard. Losing is the worst thing that can happen. It affects the whole team. We need to figure something out, and we’ve been saying it, saying it, saying it, but we need to really figure out something soon.
"I think we’re playing good, but we’re just losing too many games by one goal or we’re not scoring enough. We need to figure out how to change that quick."
The quickest way to change that is for Mantha to play at the level he's played at of late, the level that can make him a premier power forward in the NHL. That's not to say he can't score pretty goals. Eric Lindros scored plenty of pretty goals. Eric Lindros also drove the net as fiercely as any player in his prime because he knew no one could stop him.
This is Mantha's prime. He's 26 years old. The goal he scored last week against the Lightning when he outraced and outmuscled 6'3 defenseman Jan Rutta and basically willed the puck past netminder Curtis McIlhinney is a goal few other players in the NHL can score, because few other players have Mantha's natural gifts. It was the perfect example of what he can do at his best.
"Anthony is a guy who when he feels good about himself, his game is brought to a whole other level," said Blashill. "I think he’s feeling good about himself (right now). He’s feeling confident."
It took Mantha time to get going this year, longer than anyone would have liked. Now that he's found his game, it's crucial that he keeps it at the level it belongs.