DETROIT, MI – “We’ve got to figure out what we are as a team and start to get some traction and play toward an identity,” Detroit Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin said after his team fell to 4- on a 4-5-1 5-1. 6-2 defeat on home ice by the visiting Winnipeg Jets. Despite the lopsided margin, the flow of the game was worse than the score, with only Detroit’s power play (which struck twice in three tries) maintaining any semblance of dignity.
Winnipeg defeated the Red Wings 5-0 at even strength. Detroit lacked cohesion and showed a tendency to allow mistakes to fester and spiral, but most troubling of all was the sense that the Red Wings had nothing to fall back on. They created no semblance of sustained pressure, whether outside the forecheck, the rush or the cycle. Their coverage of the defensive zones – which the team emphasized from day one of preparation – once again proved prone to errors. Without elite goaltending (which has proven to be a key part of all four of Detroit’s victories this season), there was nothing to mask the cracks in the foundation.
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“You’ll probably see flashes of it: first period against Edmonton, second period today: get out of our zone, go through the neutral zone, get after them, and we get a little sustained O-zone, some momentum,” said a weary coach Derek Lalonde after the game, dressed in a suitably somber black suit and black tie, when asked directly about his team’s identity “It’s hard to take things out of the rush, and we have guys who take it out of the rush want to get. If it’s there, we’ll get it out of haste. Early in the first one we had a couple of rush plays. .That’s what you get when it’s given, but the other thing: that stuff, we just need more of it.’
Winnipeg’s top line of Gabe Vilardi, Kyle Connor and Mark Scheifele dominated the early stages of the game with blistering speed and decisiveness off the rush. The trio combined for three goals in the first period (one for Vilardi, one for Connor, one for defenseman Neal Pionk with assists from Connor and Scheifele). After Connor and Vilardi converted a two-on-one with ease in the third minute of play, there was little doubt the puck would find the back of the net when they broke again on a two-on-one in the 16th minute. the first to make it 3-0.
Detroit had a chance to salvage the momentum late in the opening period after a stumbling minor by Mark Scheifele, but the power play couldn’t find its groove and boos led the Red Wings to the locker room for the first intermission. In the second, the power play came alive, scoring on both chances, via goals from Larkin and Alex DeBrincat. Despite a terrible first period, the Red Wings had an unlikely chance to take points from the team at the top of the NHL standings.
That chance all but disappeared after ten seconds, when a cartoonish defensive sequence set up a goal for Nino Niederreiter, the puck going through three Red Wing sticks and a pair of Red Wing skates on its way to the back of the net. From that point on, Detroit never looked competitive again.
“I think we had a good mentality going into the third period against a good team,” JT Compher said. “It was still a good chance to get a point or two. I think we can work on the response. It’s a difficult goal to let in, but it’s a bad rebound. That’s all. We are still in a good place.” to fight back.” Winnipeg would add two more to its total before the final horn, at which point there were barely enough fans left in Little Caesars Arena for more cheering.
“We can’t have games like that,” Larkin said. “I think most of the forwards were passengers tonight. We didn’t help ourselves break out the puck, and we can’t be outscored 5-0. [at five-on-five] on home ice, even against a good team with very skilled offensive forwards. We gave them the puck too much. We let them do whatever they wanted in the O-zone, and [they] really exposed us.”
What Winnipeg exposed more than anything comes back to Larkin’s assessment of the need for self-discovery. The Red Wings have now played ten games and it would be difficult to attribute anything resembling a five-on-five identity to them because there is nothing in their five-on-five play that they can consistently rely on to trust.
“It was so sporadic as to who was going,” Lalonde said of his team’s performance against the Jets. “I think some guys had their moments. I think collectively we were sporadic.” That same assessment applies equally to Detroit’s start to the season. Detroit has used emotion, goaltending and the occasional strong power play to claw its way to .500 going into tonight’s game, but while this may be enough to secure the occasional result, these elements do not ensure that a reliably convincing team is created.
As long as that remains the case, the Red Wings will be susceptible to the kind of runs that undid them on Wednesday night, giving up three unanswered turnovers in both the first and third periods to a team with a much clearer sense of goal. . Where the Jets were aggressive, vertical and decisive in forcing and seizing opportunities, Detroit lacked a reliable formula to fall back on, something to prevent the game from slipping out of their hands. There are still 72 games to explore that formula, but if it isn’t done hastily, Hockeytown is in for another long summer without playoffs.
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Game Notes Red Wings 2, Oilers 3 (OT).
