The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan filed a practice notebook article in which he finds that Red Wings coach Todd McLellan was particularly displeased by his second look at the Wings’ 5-1 loss to Montreal:
“A lot (of evidence), too much evidence,” said McLellan Friday, after viewing the video and meeting with his team. “They’re all guilty.”
The head-scratching mental mistakes, which often led to outnumbered rushes by the Canadiens early in the game, were too much for the Wings to overcome. They never gave themselves a chance and disappointed a loud crowd at Little Caesars Arena to usher in the Wings’ 100th season.
There was plenty to go over Friday and correct heading into Saturday’s home game against Toronto (7 p.m./FDSN/97.1).
“It’s much easier when you need to fix one player or one line, but this was team-wide,” McLellan said. “We dealt with it (Friday at practice) and we talked about managing the game much better.”
Andrew Copp didn’t disagree with his coach:
The Wings have talked about being more aggressive, playing relentlessly, and that possibly came back to haunt them against Montreal. Aggressive is good, but there needs to be a bit more alertness.
“They’re such big mistakes that led to two-on-ones and three-on-ones,” Copp said. “We’ve preached being aggressive and we ended up careless. We have to be smart with it, but that’s not going to change the way we want to operate, but maybe be a little bit smarter.”
Continued (paywall)
