The Detroit Red Wings lost 5-1 to the Boston Bruins last night, dropping their record to 4-5-and-2, and losing their 4th game in a row (0-3-and-1).
This morning, the Free Press’s Helene St. James and MLive’s Ansar Khan offer post-scripts which wrap up the coverage of the Wings’ loss.
St. James notes that the Red Wings are amidst a stretch of 11 games to be played over the course of 17 nights–and a set of 3 games to be played over the course of 4 nights, presently–so the Wings don’t have the time to sulk about their inferior record of late:
“In Montreal, we just weren’t good, we just played a really bad game,” alternate captain Marc Staal said after Thursday’s 5-1 loss to the Bruins. “Boston came out ready to go and played with a lot of pace and tempo and we just caught ourselves defending a lot and then found ourselves in the box. It’s tough to climb out of a hole like that. We have to stay positive as a team and look to improve on ourselves.”
Captain Dylan Larkin played in the 5-4 loss at Toronto but missed the 3-0 loss at Montreal and the Buffalo game for personal reasons. As big a part of the team as he is, it doesn’t explain why the Wings have been steamrolled at the start of the last two games. Against the Bruins, they managed just three shots in the first period.
“You’re on the road, teams are going to come out strong,” Staal said. “I think just playing a smart road game with the puck, just being simple, being hard, winning battles down low, all the little things that halt momentum for a home team off the start, we weren’t doing. That’s definitely something we can be better at and get ready to jump on teams early on.”
The Wings have played from behind in five straight games. They seemed to show something on Oct. 27, when they stormed back from a two-goal deficit to win in overtime Oct. 27 at Washington. The Wings then came home and rallied from another two-goal deficit to earn a point against the Florida Panthers.
Now the Wings have lost three straight in regulation, outscored, 13-5, and outshot, 116-68.
The Red Wings have one more road game, Saturday in Buffalo, and then they come home to play the Vegas Golden Knights on Sunday night.
Coach Blashill offers this take on the Wings’ struggles of late:
“Success is an every day thing in this league,” coach Jeff Blashill said. “You have to be on top of your game every night, and you earn your swagger with how you play. I think the game we lost against Florida, we played well, we battled back and had a chance to win. We lost in overtime. Toronto game was too chaotic. Montreal game was no good. (Boston), we lost on special teams. We’re going to have to wake up tomorrow and find a way to win Saturday. That’s the reality of this league.”
And MLive’s Ansar Khan penned a similar article discussing the Wings’ struggles on special teams:
“We have a lot of games in a short period of time. We have no time to feel sorry for ourselves,” defenseman Marc Staal said. “We need to play as a team really well and really hard every night to have success and we can’t do it for 20 minutes or 40, we got to do it for the whole game. That’s the recipe for us.”
Coach Jeff Blashill said that unlike two nights earlier in a 3-0 loss at Montreal, he couldn’t fault his team’s effort or compete level.
“I didn’t see a lack of readiness off the start, I didn’t see a lack of want off the start, I didn’t see a lack of compete,” Blashill said. “In the end, the game comes down to special teams. … You got to stay out of the box, but you also got to kill a penalty. Their power play hadn’t been clicking a whole lot. Obviously, it clicked tonight. There were moments of execution where we just got to be better.”
Blashill said they were prepared to defend Bergeron in the slot area but missed assignments on two of his goals. Offensively, the Red Wings could have applied more pressure.
“You got to shoot to create chaos, and I just thought that we passed up tons of shots,” Blashill said. “We’d have times where we’re in their end and we didn’t shoot enough pucks. We didn’t create enough chaos at that spot. It wasn’t that we didn’t have opportunities to create more shots. We don’t create any chances because we didn’t want to shoot the puck enough.”
I agree with Blashill regarding the Wings’ shots or the lack thereof–there’s not a shooting mentality on this team yet, and the Red Wings need to start shooting to forecheck–but that’s a coaching issue, too. The Wings need to apply the lessons their coaches are preaching, but we’re at a point where the special teams problems are so glaring that they point behind the bench as well.
