Detroit struggled in its two games against the Canadiens, and they’re 1 point down vs. Montreal in the Atlantic Division standings as a result.
Detroit lost 4-3 on Friday and 5-1 on Saturday, and the Wings host the Blues on Monday to close out their pre-Christmas season, having won 3 of their past 11 games.
Things are gloomy and getting desperate for the Red Wings, who also lost defenseman Ben Chiarot in the 3rd period to an “upper-body injury,” so we’re going to cut to the chase here: the Free Press’s Helene St. James asked coach Derek Lalonde if he’s worried about his job security after the game, and here’s what he had to say:
“I think it’s the reality of our profession,” Derek Lalonde told the Free Press at Bell Centre on Saturday. “It really doesn’t bother me. I think 27 coaches have been fired in the last year and a half. You literally just don’t think about it. I know it sounds like a cliché but it’s real. You stay in the moment and you worry about Monday.”
The Wings host the St. Louis Blues on Monday, giving them one last opportunity to go into the three-day Christmas break on a winning note. They’ll have to scrape themselves free of the mess they left in Montreal, where a good start dissipated into being run out of the building.
The Wings also host the Maple Leafs on the 27th, the Caps on the 29th and the Penguins on New Year’s Eve before heading to Columbus on January 2nd and Winnipeg on January 4th, so Detroit’s going to have a slate of 4 home games and 6 total games before their first deep breath in the January portion of their schedule…
“We had some pace, we had some zone time,” Lalonde said. “And then we let it get away from us a little bit. I still thought we were going to be OK, that we could build something in the second. And we just spent too much time in their zone, couldn’t get stops. The momentum their built off zone time was the difference. It’s been our fortune that 70 minutes here — we have a 3-2 lead last night with 10 minutes remaining — and that we find ourselves here in this position is unfortunate.”
Unfortunate, but deserved, given how much the Wings have struggled to get even a semblance of traction.
“The group, for the most part, has had some pretty good compete,” Lalonde said. “It’s just, it’s frustrating. We were building some momentum with a pretty good run here, really good game against Toronto, really good game against Philly, and were up 3-2 in the third (against Montreal) and the last four periods kind of got away from us.”
As far as the game itself is concerned, you would not be surprised to find that NHL.com’s Sean Farrell found that it was a case of two very different locker rooms at the Bell Centre after the game:
Patrik Laine scored his fifth power-play goal in three games, and the Montreal Canadiens swept back-to-back games against the Detroit Red Wings with a 5-1 win at Bell Centre on Saturday. Nick Suzuki and Lane Hutson each had two assists, and Sam Montembeault made 20 saves in his ninth straight start for Montreal (14-16-3), which has won three straight for the first time this season.
“You look at our starts lately, we come in waves, there aren’t a lot of passengers, that’s what it takes,” Canadiens coach Martin St. Louis said. “And when you have that, you give yourself a chance.”
Joe Veleno scored, and Alex Lyon made 19 saves for the Red Wings (13-16-4), who had won three of four before losing 4-3 to the Canadiens at home Friday.
“They just outworked us today,” Red Wings defenseman Moritz Seider said. “They came out with a good game plan, they had good intensity, and we just couldn’t match that over 60 minutes, and now we look at a result like that.”
Laine made it 3-1 at 19:21 with his eighth power-play goal in nine games since making his season and Canadiens debut Dec. 3. He took a pass from Hutson high in the left face-off circle and scored with a low shot that deflected into the net off Red Wings defenseman Ben Chiarot’s stick.
“He’s a threat,” Red Wings forward Patrick Kane said. “Any time you give him a little space over there, with his shot, it’s got a good chance of going in or creating something and it’s a big threat. Obviously, he’s been really good for their team and a big threat over there on the one-timing side.”
Suzuki got the secondary assist on the goal; he and Hutson each has seven assists on Laine’s power-play goals.
“It’s fun, I mean, there’s threats everywhere and we’re tough to defend,” Suzuki said. “So right now the power play is clicking, and we just want to keep that going.”
With Sportsnet’s Eric Engels focusing on the Canadiens’ contributions from one Jake Evans, we’re going to keep the Habs’ portion of this recap brief, and move on to the Montreal Gazette’s Herb Zurkowsky’s brief post-game sample from the Habs’ locker room…
They said it: “We wanted to have a good game at home before the New Year,” Suzuki said.
“I like the direction it’s going right now,” said Slafkovsky, who scored the Canadiens’ opening goal. “The difference is that I’m skating right now. That’s all it is. I’m happy with the way it’s going now. Hopefully, I can bring more and more.”
“I felt not bad today,” Montembeault said. “We do a lot of work off the ice to make sure I’m ready to go every night. Sometimes it’s hard with travel. We played such a good game it helped me to get into it.”
“I’m feeling pretty good about where things are at,” Evans said after scoring the winning goal.
We’ll utilize a simple but stark set of stats from the AP’s recap to transition from the Canadiens’ perspective to that of the Red Wings’ players and coach:
The Canadiens look like a different team with Laine in the lineup. Montreal is 6-3-0 since his debut on Dec. 3.
The Red Wings dropped to seventh in the Atlantic Division behind Montreal. Veleno, a 24-year-old from Montreal, scored in his third straight game after scoring once in his first 26 to start the season. Detroit didn’t have many other bright spots in a difficult game where the power play went 0-for-4.
The Detroit News’s Kameron Goodwill posted a solid recap in lieu of Ted Kulfan, noting the following…
It’s another rough performance for the Red Wings in a tough December when they’ve gone 3-5-2. It has set them second-to-last in the Atlantic division as the two wins put the Canadiens above them, with only the Sabres and their 13-game losing streak keeping them the Wings out of last.
The Canadiens scored on the power play against Detroit for the second straight game, as Patrik Laine scored with less than a minute left in the first period. It was his eighth goal in nine games, with him also accounting for the last eight power point goals for Montreal, and gave the Canadiens a 3-1 lead.
Joe Veleno got the first goal of the night, putting it in off the deflected shot from Jonatan Berggren with 13:19 left in the first period. This was just a few seconds after the Canadiens killed the Wings’ first power-play chance created from Mike Matheson being called for slashing.
“In the first period, I thought we had a really good start. Obviously, we had the goal, but we had some zone time. We had a power play, we had some blocks, (we) let it get away from us a little bit after the end of the first, but I thought we were fine after going into the second,” Red Wings head coach Derek Lalonde told FanDuel Sports Network Detroit after the game.
It was Veleno’s second straight game finding the net, and his fourth overall in the season, giving Detroit an early 1-0 lead. But it would be the only offensive bright spot for the Red Wings as they went 0-for-4 on the power play.
In both losses this weekend, the Red Wings went a combined 0-for-8 on the power play. The two-game stretch is unlucky for a team that relies on its power-play chances so much for goals.
“We’re just not in our rotations, not getting shots, not getting looks. We did hit the post there in our first power play, but we need it,” Lalonde said. “Our margin of error is very thin, and if we’re not getting quality play from our special teams, it just puts so much more on all of us. And that’s been the case again. One more on the penalty kill, over on the power play, it’s something we have to rectify.”
Detroit Hockey Now’s Kevin Allen also suggested that the Wings’ loss to Montreal “suggests a bigger issue” going on with the team…
Going into this series, Detroit had won three out of four. They had scored 16 goals in those three wins.
On Friday, the Red Wings allowed Montreal to come-from-behind to win 4-3. Going into Saturday’s game, Montreal had only won once after giving up the first goal. The Red Wings scored the first goal when Joe Veleno scored for the third time in three games.
But Montreal scored the next five goals against Detroit goalie Alex Lyon who has given up nine goals on 43 shots in two games since returning from injury.
“First period we had a pretty good start,” Coach Derek Lalonde told FanDuel Sports Network. “We had the goal, but we had some zone time, we had a power play, we had some looks. Let it get away from us a little bit at the end of the first, but I thought we were fine going into the second. And just too much zone time. We only gave up a couple chances in the second, I think they only had six shots, but they built momentum off that zone time. We were unable to get a stop and it just got away from us unfortunately tonight.”
While MLive’s Ansar Khan examined what’s next…
Detroit’s power play, also solid much of the season, went 0 for 4 and is 2 for 25 (eight percent) over the past nine games.
The Red Wings, missing top-pair defenseman Simon Edvinsson the past two-plus games due to an upper-body injury, lost another D-man, Ben Chiarot, to injury in the second period.
The Red Wings host the St. Louis Blues Monday (7 p.m., FanDuel Sports Network) before the NHL’s three-day Christmas break.
The Free Press’s Helene St. James, who was in Montreal to question Lalonde (among other players), offered a succinct assessment of the Red Wings’ situation…
That sound emanating from Bell Centre on Saturday was the Detroit Red Wings sliding further down the NHL standings.
Their talk of flushing the previous night’s outing sputtered in the first period; instead the Montreal Canadiens splattered the Wings with goals, running up a 5-1 final that was every bit as lopsided as the score.
That was one night after the Wings’ mediocre performance at home left them to rue a one-goal defeat. When this home-and-home series began, the Wings (13-16-4) were three points ahead of the Canadiens. Now the Habs have leapfrogged the Wings, leaving Detroit second-to-last in the Eastern Conference, buffered from the bottom only by the Buffalo Sabres’ epic 13-game winless streak.
Other than Joe Veleno scoring in the first period, there wasn’t anything to like about the Wings’ performance Saturday.
Special teams failed, Alex Lyon struggled, skaters were careless with the puck. Defenseman Ben Chiarot did not return for the third period; there was no immediate update from the team, but it left the Wings with a short bench and they already had a new defenseman in the lineup in William Lagesson, who made his season debut after being called up from the minors.
DetroitRedWings.com’s Jonathan Mills was also in Montreal, and he found a frustrated Red Wings team after the game:
“Obviously, it’s not fun losing back-to-back games against the same team,” said Joe Veleno, who scored Detroit’s lone goal and his fourth of the season. “It definitely hurts us standings-wise. Bigger picture, obviously it’s a long year. But we got to realize how crucial these division points are and how you can really get a leap on teams by winning in your division. It’s a four-point weekend that we just let slip away.”
…
The Red Wings will play one more game before the NHL’s holiday break, which runs from Dec. 24-26, and Patrick Kane said the group is focused on one thing before getting three days away from the rink to rest and reset.
“We got to come back and have a lot of urgency in that game,” Kane said. “Find a way to get two points.”
Among Mills’ end-of-recap quotes:
Veleno on how the Canadiens earned two points on Saturday
“There’s going to be times in the season where we’re going to go through games like this. Obviously, we don’t want to be in this position, but it’s very simple. They out-competed us, won more battles than we did, got to the net, created energy and built momentum off of it.”
Seider on Saturday’s game
“We just got out-competed and out-worked. That’s a very frustrating feeling. Coming in here, obviously we had a gameplan but couldn’t really emphasize on that. Now, we just have to turn the page and regroup tomorrow. Find a way to win hockey games, especially find a good reason to get to the locker room the next couple of days with a little bit different energy.”
Seider on what he thinks is missing right now
“I think the intensity over 60 minutes. It’s hard to win when you have little dips and lags in your game. Obviously, you’re not going to be perfect every time but we always have to aim for perfection. We’re just not good enough right now.”
I don’t believe that the Red Wings are practicing on Sunday, so we probably won’t know whether Chiarot or Edvinsson might return until Monday morning at the earliest;
As to what happens next?
I’m gonna be the first to say the truth–I don’t know. There are no trades possible until the NHL’s Holiday Roster Freeze opens on the 27th, and it may be hard to imagine Steve Yzerman firing Lalonde or members of his staff over the 3-day Christmas break…
But the Senators just won their 7th game in overtime vs. Vancouver, if you look at the standings, Boston and Tampa Bay now have 18 wins apiece, and are 10 and 8 points ahead of Detroit, respectively, the rest of this month’s schedule isn’t easy, and January is plain old difficult, with 14 games to be played over the course of 29 days…
So the Red Wings are at an inflection point now.
Either they turn the ship around and turn their season around in a hurry, or it’s going to be a very long and difficult second half of the season. With 49 games to go, the Red Wings need to sort themselves out soon…
And the management needs to make decisions as to whether they need to make moves to reinforce the current roster very soon, or it will be too late to press the Miraculous Comeback Button and have a great second half with no gas in the tank.
Speaking of tanking, I don’t believe that the Wings are going to trade every veteran available and simply bottom out for the sake of trying to earn a high draft pick in the 2025 draft lottery. That’s not in the team, players or coaches’ DNA. These guys are professionals, and they want to win.
So then it’s up to Mr. Yzerman and the Wings’ management team to find the right way to give the players a better opportunity to win than they’ve given themselves without reinforcements.
It’s essentially, “Get your shit together, Red Wings players and coaches…or else…” time, and “or else” feels like it’s quickly approaching.
Multimedia:
Highlights: NHL.com posted a 10:13 highlight clip:
Sportsnet posted a 10:11 highlight clip:
Post-game: The Canadiens’ website posted clips of coach Martin St. Louis, Juraj Slafkovsky, Jake Evans, Alexandre Carrier, Samuel Montembeault and Nick Suzuki’s post-game comments;
The Red Wings posted a 5:36 clip of Moritz Seider, Joe Veleno and coach Derek Lalonde’s post-game remarks:
The Free Press’s Helene St. James also posted a 5:22 clip of comments from Seider, Veleno and Patrick Kane…
As well as a 2:59 clip of Lalonde’s post-game presser:
Photos: The Free Press posted a 12-image gallery;
The Detroit News posted an 8-image gallery.
Statistics: Here are the Game Summary and Event Summary:
