Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff reports that the Red Wings went through a tense practice on Friday afternoon, which is no surprise given the way in which they lost 5-1 to the Montreal Canadiens on Thursday.
[Andrew] Copp described McLellan’s message to the team before practice on Friday as “very stern.”
And entirely deserved.
“The mistakes that we made were unacceptable,” Copp said. “And I think everyone in here knows it. And each individual mistake, everyone knows it.”
Watching the video of the game, [coach Todd] McLellan felt like he was viewing a horror flick.
“I was actually shocked when I looked after the game and saw that they had 17 shots on goal and only 12 even strength, because they’ve had at least 12 outnumbered rushes,” McLellan said. “So they didn’t convert on a number of them. But that didn’t diminish the fact that we erred in a lot of those areas. It’s so much easier to fix if it’s one player or maybe one line. This was team-wide.”
Duff is less than convinced that the Red Wings can salvage their season, already…
McLellan described the poor quality of his team’s game management. The fact of the matter is that this team has been lacking in the area of game management skills long before McLellan became coach. That it never seems to improve is an alarming indictment of the player.
“It’s not going to ruin our year because we lost the first game,” Copp said.
It will if they continue to play like they did in that first game.
And that’s a little too much for me. I know that the Red Wings haven’t proved to anyone that they’re anything but the pumpkin as opposed to Cinderella’s carriage, but jeez, it really was one game after a perhaps-too-easy exhibition season. I still believe that this team can improve.
