The Detroit Red Wings dropped a disappointing 5-3 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets on Monday night, and the team has to turn around and learn from its struggles to hold onto their lead as they play the Dallas Stars tonight (8:30 PM EST on ESPN+/hulu/97.1 FM).
MLive’s Ansar Khan and the Free Press’s Helene St. James are out with their morning articles in the wee hours, and Khan took note of coach Jeff Blashill’s remarks regarding his team’s defensive deficiencies…
“Our first (period) was good and after that I didn’t think we played good enough hockey,” Blashill said. “I thought we were fortunate to have the lead. We made a couple of mistakes and the next thing you know it slips away. But we’ve got to play better hockey than we’ve been playing. We won a few games in the last little bit that we haven’t been playing quite good enough. We’re giving up too many chances. We have to be a better team defensively if we want to have success.”
The Red Wings (8-7-2) are allowing 3.24 goals per game, which ranks 24th in the NHL. They finished last season 20th in the league in goals against (3.00).
The regression isn’t due to the goaltending tandem of Thomas Greiss, who made 33 saves Monday, and Alex Nedeljkovic.
“Our goaltending’s been there every night,” Larkin said. “We rely on them big-time, but we got to make it easier. We got to find ways when they’re swarming us to get pucks out, find a way to get an offensive-zone shift to give them a breather.”
As did the Free Press’s St. James:
“You get the lead late, you have to buckle down and at the very least make them earn it,” Blashill said. “Those last two goals, they didn’t really have to earn them. We gave them away. You’re underneath that six minute mark, no way you should walk out of here without at least a point. We’ve got steps to take still. The bigger picture is that in general, we do have to get better defensively. We have to tighten up defensively.”
Lucas Raymond scored the third-period go-ahead goal, but Yegor Chinakhov turned a bouncing puck into a breakaway goal two minutes later, and Zach Werenski flung a puck at the net that eluded Greiss with 1:19 to play. An empty net goal by Alexandre Texier left the Wings packing their gear up and looking to tighten up defensively as their trip continued onto Dallas, Vegas and Arizona.
“We got away with it a little bit,” Blashill said. “We won a few games in the last little bit that we haven’t been playing quite good enough. We’ve talked about learning lessons while we’re winning, but sometimes you have to get slapped in the face. We got slapped in the face.”
