Morning news: recaps, the blame game and an unpleasant statistic

Of Red Wings-related note this morning:

1. MLive’s Ansar Khan filed a morning recap of last night’s 5-1 loss to the New York Rangers:

“Our start felt really good,” [coach Derek] Lalonde said. “I was very confident the momentum of that start is going to lead to a good night. And then even despite being down 2-0, our second period start again, we had pop, we had energy. We get the early goal (from Moritz Seider at 1:27), we have some looks, and then bang, bang on the power play and you’re down 4-1. It turns into a bit of a frustrating night.”

It’s early, but the Red Wings haven’t looked like the improved defensive team they need to be to progress this season.

“It’s not something you just flip a switch and it happens,” Ben Chiarot said. “It’s not just guys knowing the structure. We have a lot of offensive-minded players, guys that want to go on offense, to get those kind of guys to buy into playing defense, it takes time. Talk about buying into what the coaches are preaching and we’re in that process right now. It doesn’t just happen one night, two nights. It takes time. And you got to have lessons like tonight to make you change in a hurry.”

2. The Free Press’s Helene St. James also filed a morning recap:

As tough as the early schedule looked, the Detroit Red Wings have made it even tougher on themselves.

They head to Nashville, Tennessee, on Saturday to play the Predators smarting from two straight losses, the latter of which exposed their special teams and their team defense. The Wings are 1-3-0, their sole victory coming against the Predators a week ago at home. Like the New York Rangers, who beat the Wings twice in a four-day span, the Predators were a preseason Stanley Cup favorite, though they’ve started the season winless in four. But the Wings can’t be worried about the Predators’ problems — they have too many of their own.

“We’re playing stiff competition, which is good for us early in the season,” defenseman Ben Chiarot said after Thursday’s 5-2 stinker. “It’s a good measuring stick. It shows us where we have to get to, and we have a lot of work to do. Thankfully it’s early in the season and we can kind of learn our lesson early as opposed to fooling ourselves early on, winning a couple easy ones, and then facing teams like this down the stretch when we really need those points.”

3. The Athletic’s Max Bultman is already laying blame at the feet of GM Steve Yzerman’s roster-building, or the lack thereof:

But when general manager Steve Yzerman went into the offseason, he did little to address it, at least with respect to the roster. When offense-minded defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere left in free agency, Detroit replaced him with a similar player in Erik Gustafsson, who has already been scratched twice in this young season. It brought in a new defense-minded forward in Tyler Motte, but he’s not used high enough in the lineup to make a major difference. The Red Wings did bring in a heavier top-nine scoring forward in Vladimir Tarasenko — at the expense of an even heavier top-nine forward in David Perron, who was also one of the team’s core leaders the past two seasons.

On paper, after the dust had settled on the Red Wings’ offseason, it didn’t look like much had changed.

And on the ice, so far, it’s looked the same way.

Again, it’s early in an 82-game season. And Thursday night, as coach Derek Lalonde made a point to emphasize, the biggest culprit of the latest lopsided loss was special teams. The Rangers scored on their first three power-play attempts and raced out to a 4-1 lead by the middle of the second period. The score was 5-1 soon after.

4. Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff reports the following…

Their 1-3 record is the worst start to a Red Wings season since the 2018-19 campaign. That year saw Detroit stumble from the gates 0-5-2. The team ended up 32-40-10, missing the playoffs.

It’s just the second time in 30 years that the club has found itself with a losing record four games into a season. In 1993-94, the Wings opened 1-5.