Here’s an interesting bit of commentary from coach Red Wings Todd McLellan, via MLive’s Ansar Khan, regarding the mistakes that the Wings made last night vs. Montreal–and how the team might fix them:
McLellan cited poor game management, which plagued the team last season and something he stressed coming into training camp. McLellan said his team allowed at least a dozen odd-man rushes. Two directly resulted in goals.
“We took them through game-management moments,” McLellan said. “I think when you’re in it sometimes and you’re playing, you come off, you’re tired, you don’t even realize how often it’s happening and why it’s occurring. You just hear coaches on the bench (yelling) ‘Cover this, do that!’ But when you get to be fresh, sit in a theater room, watch it, it can be pretty humbling when all of a sudden, you’re on the screen, you’re clearly part of this and you know exactly, in that moment, what you did and why you did it and you’re thinking, ‘Man, I wish I wouldn’t have.’ Those are the moments we have to clean up.”
Said Copp: “The mistakes we made were just big mistakes. I think that was the issue in the last preseason game as well (6-5 overtime win over Toronto). So, a lot of stuff to clean up, but those mistakes should be relatively easy to clean up. Can’t ruin our confidence just because of one game. So had a good meeting today, had a practice to hopefully flush those thoughts and then come to the rink tomorrow, excited, ready to go.”
Continued (paywall)
