The Grand Rapids Griffins sort of had “opposite night” when compared to their parent club on Friday evening in Winnipeg: Grand Rapids actually scored the game’s first two goals, with Tyler Spezia and Turner Elson opening up a 2-0 lead…into which the Griffins fell like a chasm, surrendering four 3rd period goals (including an empty-netter) to the hometown Moose, ultimately losing a 4-2 decision.

Calvin Pickard was still named the game’s first star as he stopped 38 of 41 shots for the Griffins, but the goalie can’t score goals.

Anyway, here’s the Griffins website’s recap:

The Detroit Red Wings have lost 3 straight games, and they sit at 13-13-and-3 after an ugly 7-3 loss to the Colorado Avalanche, wrapping up a nasty set of back-to-back losses on the road (in both St. Louis and Denver), on top of a bad home loss to the Nashville Predators.

Our friends from Denver now sit at an impressive 15-7-2, while Ken Daniels informed those of us who were paying attention on Thursday night in St. Louis that, in terms of “difficulty of schedule,” the Red Wings, who sit at 13-12-and-3, have the hardest remaining schedule of any NHL team (in terms of their remaining opponents’ win percentage).

Long story long; between the 7-3 loss to Colorado on Friday and the 6-2 loss to St. Louis on Thursday–never mind the 5-2 home loss to Nashville on Tuesday–the Red Wings have learned a lot about what not to do defensively, as well as how not to stage a comeback from multiple-goal deficits.

As ColoradoAvalanche.com’s Laken Barker notes, the Avs’ win was one for the record books, or at least the record-tying ones…

It translates pretty well, given that it’s mostly a highlight clip:

The Red Wings tried to rebound from a difficult road loss in St. Louis on Friday night, heading to Ball Arena to battle one of the NHL’s best teams in the Colorado Avalanche.

The Red Wings lost their third straight game in ugly fashion, dropping a 7-3 decision to the Avs that could have been far closer, had the Red Wings made fewer mistakes…and it could have been a lot worse, had the Avs finished on a few more of their chances.

There were the ironic goals against, like Darren Helm’s breakaway goal on Thomas Griess (who was pulled), there were scares (like Lucas Raymond getting kneed and leaving the ice for five minutes) and there was a lot of learning being done by a Red Wings team that hasn’t played teams like the caliber of the Blues or Avs yet.

The Wings and Avs will meet again at Little Caesars Arena on December 20th, and here is hoping that the Red Wings get their shit together by a week from Monday.

They’ve got a 3-day break to grow upon before playing their 5 final pre-Christmas games, 3 of which will be held at home.

Red Wings prospects Sebastian Cossa and Donovan Sebrango are taking part in the Canadian World Junior selection camp in Calgary this week; Carter Mazur and Red Savage will take part in Team USA’s WJC selection camp in Plymouth next week; Frolunda’s Simon Edvinsson and Theodor Niederbach have been named to the Swedish WJC team; and Eemil Viro has been named to the Finnish WJC team.

According to the Acadie-Bathurst Titan, Red Wings prospect and goaltender Jan Bednar has joined the fray:

Acadie-Bathurst Titan goaltender Jan Bednar has been named to the Czech Republic’s National Junior Team selection camp.

The 19-year-old from Karlovy, Czech Republic is among 28 players invited to the camp ahead of the 2022 World Junior Hockey Championship. The selection camp runs from December 15-25 in Red Deer, Alberta while the tournament itself gets underway on boxing day. The Czech staff will need to make three cuts before announcing the final roster for the tournament.

In his second season with the Titan, Bednar is 9-8-0 in 18 starts with a .898 save percentage and a 3.21 goals-against-average. The big six-foot-four, 196-pound netminder also has three assists this season which is the most among QMJHL goaltenders.

Czech Republic will play two exhibition games in preparation against the United States (December 20th) and Switzerland (December 23rd). They’ll open the World Juniors against Canada on December 26th at 8pm AST.

Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff posted a pre-game Red Wings notebook in which he notes that Red Wings forward Lucas Raymond has been particularly productive away from Little Caesars Arena:

Every day, the Detroit Red Wings and the NHL are learning something new about first-year forward Lucas Raymond. Here’s another nugget to file away – the kid is a road warrior. Of his NHL rookie-leading 24 points, Raymond, 19, has gathered exactly two-thirds of that total – 16 points – while the Red Wings are skating away from home.

“I haven’t thought of it that way,” Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill said. “I judge his game more than I judge his points, so I wouldn’t say that’s how I judge it necessarily.”

Strill, it’s difficult not to be impressed by how well Raymond is performing when the Wings are away for home. He’s definitely taking his show on the road. In 14 home games at Little Caesars Arena, Raymond is accounting for five goals and 3 assists. However, during 14 away contests, he’s compiling 5-11-16 numbers.

Clearly, playing in some tough rinks such as Boston’s TD Garden and Washington’s Capital One Arena aren’t proving to be intimidatng to the Swedish teenager. His teammates think that Raymond’s approach to hockey and to life in general, are probably playing a role in his success any he’s playing.

Continued

The Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan posted a game-day notebook discussing some of the Red Wings’ post-game comments after last night’s loss to the St. Louis Blues:

“We didn’t play horribly,” said forward Robby Fabbri, who scored both Wings goals. “We gave up some things but we worked and sustained some pressure in the offensive zone. We just didn’t get enough bodies at the net.”

That was the stark difference between the Blues and the Wings.

The bigger, physical Blues parked themselves often in front of goaltender Alex Nedeljkovic and made life difficult. Nedeljkovic was pulled after two periods. Blues forward Dakota Joshua (Dearborn) had two assists and was one of many Blues forwards disrupting down low.

The Wings, on the flip side, didn’t do so nearly enough.

“They were harder at the net, and they had a better net presence than us,” Wings coach Jeff Blashill said. “That’s the one thing if you look at all their goals, they did a real good job at the net. We lost our game a little bit in the third, especially in our zone on a couple of big breakdowns. (But) we couldn’t find ways to create good enough chances, because not enough net presence.”

Continued, with several other topics…

Hey everybody, I just wanted to let you know that I appreciated your well-wishes when I was particularly ill earlier this week.

I have managed to recover well enough to at least be able to sit up and type, which is half the battle for this job. I’m going to continue to battle through the fatigue and pain I’m dealing with (I’ve had a lot of weird back pain in particular) as I try to vanquish my sniffles and regain a measure of health.

In the interim, I’ll try to be as consistent as possible content-wise, though I am hoping that the three-day break between tonight’s road game in Colorado and the home stand that opens on Tuesday vs. the Islanders will afford me a bit of rest time.

Please do let me know if you want me to do a prospect catch-up or whether you’re interested in some late player grades over the weekend. I’m still catching up myself (I have over 350 Google Mail alerts to go through), but after spending the better part of four days curled up in bed, it’s good to be back at work.

The Griffins play the Moose tonight at 8 PM EST:

Of Red Wings prospect-related note this afternoon:

In the Swedish Allsvenskan, Filip Larsson stopped 17 of 20 shots in HV71 Jonkoping’s 4-3 overtime win over MoDo;

And Albin Grewe returned to Mora IK’s lineup after battling a concussion for a couple of weeks, finishing even with 2 shots and a penalty taken during Mora’s 3-0 win over Tingsryds IF.