DETROIT -- For someone who is not always effusive with his praise, Detroit Red Wings coach Mike Babcock gave his team quite the affirmation this week.

Babcock said this might be the best Red Wings team he has seen since the 2008-09 season, which, in case you can't remember, was the last time they made the Stanley Cup finals.

And Babcock wasn't just in a generous Christmas spirit. Overlooked and underestimated to start the season, the Wings have emerged as one of the biggest surprises in the league.

With a point earned in Wednesday night's 2-1 shootout loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs -- a game the Wings dominated and should've easily won had it not been for the stellar performance of Leafs goaltender James Reimer -- the Red Wings earned sole possession of first place in the Eastern Conference. They have since fallen into a tie with the Tampa Bay Lightning. But, still.

"Where we are in the playoff picture, we have to be really happy with how we've started," Red Wings goaltender Jimmy Howard said after Wednesday's game.

The Red Wings, regarded as a team in transition with an aging core and a promising crop of young talent, were largely expected to compete for one of the wild-card spots. There were doubts about Howard's play after an underwhelming 2013-14 season. Some wondered whether stars Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg could continue to produce at a high level. There were questions about how the team's defensive corps would fare as well as whether a certain level of regression could be expected from young guys Gustav Nyquist, Tomas Tatar and Tomas Jurco.

So far, the Red Wings have silenced pretty much all of those concerns.

Jimmy Howards 2.15 goals-against average through 23 games is an improvement over last season's 2.66 goals-against average. Rick Osentoski/USA TODAY Sports

Though shootouts have been a sore spot (1-5), Howard has been mounting an impressive bounce-back season with a 13-5-6 record, .918 save percentage and 2.14 goals-against average. Datsyuk, in particular, has been simply superb while healthy, with 23 points in 19 games. And Zetterberg has been a strong catalyst on offense as well, pacing the team with 26 points. Defensively, the Wings have surrendered little, yielding just 2.30 goals per game, while ranking fifth in overall offense. And the kids are more than all right, with Nyquist (14 goals-18 points), Tatar (12 goals-21 points) and Jurco (2 goals-11 points) continuing to prove they can be consistent contributors.

"It's those young legs," one NHL scout said of the team's daunting speed and skill.

The team's venerable organizational depth was clearly evident last season, as the Red Wings were absolutely ravaged by injury (a whopping 421 man-games lost, according to mangameslost.com), yet secured their 23rd consecutive playoff berth. But that depth has been a huge coup in more ways than one. It helps that Babcock has a bevvy of talented prospects to dip into should injuries arise, but when healthy, like this season, it has also bred strong internal competition.

"We have a really good team. I don't think anyone's feeling safe," Nyquist said. "You've got to be ready every game and bring it every game to be in the lineup on this team. I think it's good -- good competition for guys to grab spots, and it keeps everyone sharp."

Roster spots are not handed out in Detroit. They are earned. The name on the back of the jersey and the annual cap hit on the ledger seems to have no bearing. Just ask veteran center Stephen Weiss, who had to work his way back into the lineup after missing almost two full years with injuries.

Never mind that the four-time 20-goal scorer with the Florida Panthers carries a $4.9 million annual cap hit through 2018, he was thrown back into play as a wing with the message being: Take what playing time there is to be had.

"One to four, all of our lines and defensemen, [we] are very deep," Weiss said. "You can be in and out of the lineup any given night. That's huge for a team. There are no really guaranteed spots besides Pav and Z. And [defendeman Niklas] Kronwall, obviously. That's huge to have for a team. It keeps guys honest and it keeps guys on their toes all year."

From an analytics perspective, the Red Wings' results seem consistent with the numbers. According to hockeyanalysis.com, the Wings control 53.1 of the shot attempts at even strength, good for fourth in the league. Their PDO, a metric essentially used to gauge whether a team is overachieving or underachieving, is a solid 100.2, which indicates that they are not due for a major regression.

"They're a team that likes to play with the puck, because they don't like to give it up," Leafs coach Randy Carlyle said. "They're a model for consistency. That's the way they've been playing for the last 10 to 12 years."

The key moving forward is most likely whether the team can stay healthy. That played a major role in the personnel decisions last season, and is the unknown variable that makes it hard to predict just how long this Red Wings team can keep the train rolling.

"All you need is to lose one of your [defensemen] for 10 days and things change overnight," Babcock said. "The worst is getting hurt right off the get-go, and then you don't feel confident at all and then you never know if you're any good. At least we know we're a pretty good team. And so now, we're going to get our bumps and bruises. Ideally, we're going to have enough depth to overcome it. We're going to find out in a hurry."

While the Red Wings might find their mettle tested soon, there is one thing that might not be resolved so quickly -- Babcock's future with the team. Speculation has been rampant through the first two months of the season about whether Babcock will sign a contract extension or if he'll see what's out there following this season.

Both he and general manager Ken Holland have vowed not to address the situation publicly, though Babcock took a brief respite from that policy Thursday afternoon when he refuted a report that a new deal was "imminent."

"Guys, this is just a fantasy world or something like that," Babcock said. "Ken Holland and I, we talked before the year. We agreed we wouldn't do this during the year. Our team's doing good. Our team's playing good. I like the way we're playing. We don't need any distractions. We've had tons of people in this room go through contract [negotiations] when I've been here and it's been no big deal. I'm happy here. I like the general manager. They treat me good. I don't know what else I can tell you, but as far as negotiation between Ken Holland and Mike Babcock, there is none."