The Detroit Red Wings face a difficult road trip this week, facing the Columbus Blue Jackets (Monday), Dallas Stars (Tuesday), Vegas Golden Knights (Thursday) and Arizona Coyotes (Saturday), all on the road, in a set of 4 games to be played over the course of 6 nights.
That warning being issued, MLive’s Ansar Khan notes that the 8-6-and-2 Wings have turned their ship around over the course of last week’s 4-game home stand:
The mood surrounding the Detroit Red Wings changed dramatically in one week, culminated by Saturday’s 3-2 victory over the Montreal Canadiens on Dylan Larkin’s overtime goal.
Just seven days before, the Red Wings were riding a four-game winless streak, had difficulty scoring and weren’t sure when Larkin would return after being away for personal reasons.
“We sat in Buffalo, and we talked on the ice in practice,” coach Jeff Blashill said. “We talked about the fact that the week prior, we had a ton of confidence. And then all of a sudden, we had not much confidence. I thought that third period in Buffalo was huge, the end of it, how good Tyler (Bertuzzi) played there. We’ve picked up steam from there.”
The Red Wings are 4-1-0 in their past five, improving to 8-6-2 on the season as they head on a four-game trip starting Monday in Columbus. The Canadiens, who has defeated Detroit twice this season — 6-1 and 3-0 in Montreal — dropped to 4-10-2.
“We’ve been a good hockey team at home, we’ve played well on the road at times,” Larkin said. “Through a long season you’re going to go through tough stretches. Our response has been great. It’s something that in the past few years we haven’t had that response, where we weren’t able to dig ourselves out of holes where three games has gone to five or seven games. We came home and turned it around. We didn’t play as good as we wanted to against Washington (2-0 loss Thursday). We responded tonight. We played hard.”
Continued; here are extended highlights of Saturday’s win from AWood40:
