The Detroit Red Wings have lost 2 straight games now in the form of Saturday’s 5-1 loss to Tampa Bay and Sunday’s 4-1 loss to Dallas.
Marco Kasper scored the Red Wings’ only goal, a tip shot 12:01 into the 3rd–after Detroit was down 3-0 thanks to 3 1st period Dallas goals–and the Stars got their 3-goal lead back on another rush play against Alex Lyon, who was solid in goal despite stopping 21 of 25 shots.
Regrettably, the Wings were unable to dent Jake Oettinger more than once despite taking 35 shots and 71 shot attempts, and the Wings just lost puck battles and gave up chances on the rush all evening long.
It was an incredibly frustrating process of watching an inevitable outcome take place, and now the Wings have to regroup and try to earn a road split–after losing 2 straight under coach Todd McLellan for the first time–by winning on Tuesday in Philadelphia.
It also bears mentioning that Moritz Seider was tremendous, taking 5 shots and 11 total attempts, landing 6 hits and having a takeaway and a blocked shot in a team-leading 22:36.
For the Dallas Stars, as the Dallas News’s Lia Assimakopoulos noted, the game was all about bouncing back from a difficult 6-3 loss to Colorado on Saturday, snapping their own 2-game losing streak, and not letting losing “seep in” to what has been a strong season for the Stars thus far:
“We talked about it before the game, to stop the bleeding of these streaks,” Stars coach Pete DeBoer said. “In my time here, I don’t think we’ve lost three in a row. … I thought we had a good formula to win. We had some early goals, got a power play goal, and then I thought we had really good detail to our defensive game the rest of the night.”
In back-to-backs, Dallas often looks to its depth players to step up when many of its top players may be dragging. That’s what happened Sunday, as two of its rookie forwards contributed goals in the opening frame.
Matej Blumel — who played in his sixth game for Dallas this year Sunday after being called up following injuries to other Stars forwards like Mason Marchment — scored his first goal of the year and the second of his NHL career on a scramble in front of the net. His goal came just a day after he had one taken off the board against Colorado because it was offside.
“I was nervous until the next puck drop if they were going to call a coach’s challenge or not,” Blumel said. “Luckily they didn’t, and I’m happy it went in.”
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[Jake] Oettinger, who had a night off Saturday in Colorado, looked well-rested in his 33-save performance. The only goal he let in was one he couldn’t do much to stop.
“These guys play every night,” Oettinger said. “I give them so much credit for playing when they’re tired. I feel like I’m always playing fresh. I come in and try to play well early and let the boys get their legs under them, and I feel like that’s kind of what happened tonight.”
As for the story of the game’s first three goals, we’ll let the Hockey News’s Taylor Newby deal with that unpleasant set of events…
Almost immediately to start the game, Detroit went on the power-play due to a tripping call against Evgenii Dadonov. The first place Stars penalty kill was able to hold off the Red Wings, but Detroit fired off four shots and looked dangerous.
Shortly after, the Stars capitalized on Detroit’s inability to take the lead when Matej Blumel scored his first goal of the season. Blumel cleaned up a rebound in tight to Wings goalie Alex Lyon, and Justin Hryckowian picked up his first NHL point with an assist. It was fitting for Blumel to score after getting a goal called back against Colorado due to an offside call.
The Stars got their first attempt at the power-play soon after, which at the American Airlines Center has been almost non-existent. But this time, it didn’t take long for Jason Robertson to sweep in a rebound from a Matt Duchene slap-shot into an empty net when Lyon got caught out of position.
Dallas has also struggled with allowing the opponent to score within a couple shifts of a goal, but they made sure that did not happen when Mavrik Bourque scored after just over a minute had passed. Defenseman Ilya Lyubushkin joined a 3-on-2 rush up the ice and fired across a pass to Borque who once again had a wide open net staring back at him.
Up 3-0 and a near perfect period from the Stars put the Red Wings behind the eight-ball for the rest of the night.
And NHL.com’s Taylor Baird will pick up the Stars’ narrative from there:
“I think the teams that let [losing] creep in, that’s how you dig yourself a hole. Every team is going to lose a couple of games in a row. We’ve done a good job of not digging ourselves a hole and losing three, four, five in a row,” Oettinger said. “It’s all just response. Everyone’s going to have bad nights here and there, no one is perfect. We’re not always going to have our best … we’ve just got to buckle down and make sure it doesn’t get away from us.”
Dallas has not lost three games in a row in regulation since coach Pete DeBoer was hired prior to the 2022-23 season.
“We’ve done a really good job of stopping the bleeding. We were a tired group tonight, running on some fumes. I thought we had a good formula to win,” DeBoer said. “We got some early goals, got a power-play goal. I thought we really had some good detail to our defensive game the rest of the night. Coming off the Colorado game, we were just too loose. We gave up way too much. We can’t play that way. We’re not going to outscore teams with Roope (Hintz), (Mason) Marchment, and (Tyler) Seguin out of the lineup. We’ve got to play a tight, detailed game, and I thought we did that tonight.”
And Baird will allow us to discuss the Red Wings’ side of the story, too:
Marco Kasper scored, and Alex Lyon made 21 saves for Detroit (21-21-4), which has lost three of four after a seven-game winning streak.
“I think it’s a mentality thing. You’ve got to be sharp in practice, sharp in morning skate,” Lyon said. “It’s easy when you go on a good run like that to maybe take your foot off the gas. It always seems like maybe some things start to creep in, at least personally for me, those last few games we were winning, and now they’re showing up. Now you’ve got to put the foot back on the gas. It’s a good learning lesson that you’ve got to have the foot on the gas all the time.”
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Robertson made it 2-0 with a power-play goal at 13:05. Lyon made the initial stop on Duchene’s one-timer from the right circle, but Robertson spun around Ben Chiarot and tapped the rebound into an open net from the edge of the crease.
“From my perspective, we look at it from the defensive side and what we gave up. Some real egregious errors by individuals again, and the whole group pays the price for them,” Detroit coach Todd McLellan said. “I think the first goal is real preventable. The second one on the penalty kill is one that we win a draw and, I know the puck is bouncing, but we’re down and out. Then we have another chance to kill it. We’re a good hockey club, we’re not a great one yet. Great ones can overcome that stuff, good ones struggle with it.”
J.T. Compher agreed with his coach, especially as the Wings look forward to Tuesday’s game in Philadelphia:
“We saw in the second and third period stuff we can build on. That’s what we’ve got to do, build on it and be ready right from the start against Philadelphia (on Tuesday),” Compher said. “Checking the right way, being on top on rushes, picking up guys, making sure that there’s nothing easy against. When you make teams earn it, that’s when you have a chance to win. When you give up easy stuff, odd-man breaks or easy goals, it’s hard to win in this league.”
Compher expressed frustration as to how Sunday’s game went while speaking with the Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan…
“That’s a good team over there and they had good intensity to start the game,” forward J.T. Compher said. “We made a few mistakes that gave them a little bit of life and it was stuff we talked about before the game that we know we didn’t take care of. Against good teams like that, when they make you pay, they get some confidence and it’s hard to build your way back.”
And coach McLellan reiterated his points of emphasis…
“We look at it from the defensive side and what we gave up were some real egregious errors by individuals again, and the whole group pays the price for them,” McLellan said. “We’re a good team but we’re not a great one yet, and great ones can overcome stuff. Good ones struggle with it.”
McLellan shuffled the lines in the second and third periods, and the Wings got a positive jolt. There was pressure around Oettinger and there were some bodies around the net, unlike Saturday in Tampa and its goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy. But the game felt out of reach after the first 20 minutes.
“The second and third periods, we were better,” McLellan said. “But the game rolls out differently when the score is what it is.”
Both Lyon and Compher tried to look ahead to Tuesday’s game…
“They’re a dangerous team top to bottom, they have a good goalie and defense, and a strong forward group,” Lyon said. “It’s difficult when you spot them a few (goals). We came out in the second and third and tried to wipe away the first (period). We have to keep that moment-by-moment mentality and continue to try to improve.”
The Wings (21-21-4) conclude this four-game road trip, on which they’re now 1-2-0, Tuesday in Philadelphia. The Wings are now five points away from an Eastern Conference wildcard spot and would need to leapfrog four teams. They find themselves seven points from last place in the Eastern Conference with only two teams in between. It’s an important part of the schedule, and the Wings need to earn points to stay in the race.
“We knew this road trip, we were going to play some good teams,” Compher said. “We’ve learned some good things about our team that we can build on. That’s what we need to do: Build on it and be ready at the start (of the game).”
But coach McLellan was not delighted with the present moment, as Detroit Hockey Now’s Kevin Allen noted…
“Right now, I think we’re a reactive team when a couple weeks ago we were proactive,” McLellan told FanDuel Sports Network. “We were getting after it and now we’re waiting to see what happens and reacting to it. We’ve got to fix that and we will.”
The Red Wings have only scored two goals in their last two losses, but McLellan is more concerned about the team’s defensive play. The Red Wings have given up a total of 15 goals in these three recent losses.
“I’m looking at it from the other side of the coin, the goals against,” McLellan said. “The start that we had tonight, it’s hard because the team plays the price for a few individual errors. It reminds me a little bit of the San Jose game. We start that way and put ourselves in a hole. We’re not a four-goal team. We talk about playing to three and if we would have kept it at that level maybe we had a chance but I look it more from the defensive side of it, the disastrous mistakes we made that ended up in the back of our net.”
And then there are these stats, per MLive’s Ansar Khan:
The Red Wings (21-21-4) have dropped back-to-back games for the first time since Todd McLellan took over as coach on Dec. 26, scoring just one goal in each game.
They have lost 12 in a row in Dallas (0-9-3) and eight consecutive games overall against the Stars.
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The Red Wings wrap up a tough four-game trip Tuesday at Philadelphia (7 p.m., FanDuel Sports Network), where they have lost 20 of their past 22.
As DetroitRedWings.com’s Jonathan Mills noted, McLellan isn’t a “name names” guy per se, but…
“The tough thing for me is the start [of Sunday’s game] wasn’t that bad except for some individual errors,” McLellan said. “First goal, we’ve got the puck on our tape and, not even really getting forechecked, we turn it over. The second one, we’re on the penalty kill and the puck is bouncing, but boy it’d be hard to do that over again. Third one, a poor backcheck sort of.”
Take from these what you will:
McLellan on what he’s learned and learning about the team
“We’re learning a lot about the group from Day 1 that we got here until now. There’s ups and downs. Players are beginning to react differently with errors and frustration, and we need to know those things. We’re beginning to understand maybe some buttons that we can or can’t push. Whatever we do, the end goal is to get the best out of the player and we’re still trying to figure that out.”
Compher on how much the play of Oettinger influenced Sunday’s result
“Two nights in a row, two really good goalies. We didn’t do enough to get bodies there, get in front of them and make it hard on them. We did at times, but you see the score. Obviously, not enough.”
Compher on this road trip overall and looking ahead to Tuesday’s game
“We knew we were going to play some good teams on this road trip. I think we’ve learned some things about our team that are good and positive that we saw in the second and third periods, stuff we can build on. That’s what we got to do, build on it and be ready right from the start against Philadelphia.”
Lyon on preventing frustration from creeping back in
“It’s hard. On a road trip, you’re playing good teams every night so you just can’t take anything for granted. We got another team that plays extremely hard here in two days, so we got to hit reset quick, move on and just grind.”
Multimedia:
Highlights: NHL.com posted a 10:13 highlight clip:
Sportsnet posted a 10:17 highlight clip:
Post-game: The Stars posted post-game comments from Justin Hryckowian, Jake Oettinger, Matej Blumel and Stars coach Pete DeBoer;
The Red Wings posted a 10:07 clip of J.T. Compher, Alex Lyon and coach Todd McLellan’s post-game comments:
Update: Here’s more McLellan from FanDuel Sports Detroit:
Head coach Todd McLellan believes the Red Wings have become more reactive than proactive in the last handful of games, including tonight's 4-1 loss to the Stars. #LGRW pic.twitter.com/o5oMRjgI4A
— FanDuel Sports Network Detroit (@FanDuelSN_DET) January 20, 2025
Photos: The Free Press posted a 13-image gallery;
The Detroit News posted an 11-image gallery;
And Reuters posted a 79-image gallery.
Statistics: Here are the Game Summary and Event Summary:
