Red Wings Let Little Things Get to Them To Lose Home Opener
· Yahoo Sports
The Detroit Red Wings penalized at least five times in each of their four preseason matchups.
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Tonight, they opened their regular season schedule with six, gifting the Rangers four power plays. While the Red Wings were able to kill the majority of them, it only took the Rangers converting on one to lose.
That’s how thin Detroit’s margin of victory is this year as the Red Wings lost 2-0 to start the year at home.
Red Wings need to clean up act
Head coach Todd McLellan made it clear in the preseason that playing the style of harder, heavier hockey he’s been wanting to implement this season will inevitably draw some penalties when players finish their checks. That’s just a reality of the physicality of the game.
However, the Red Wings came out of the gate making sloppy mistakes, and attempting to be physical doesn’t do a lot of good when it puts you on the backfoot.
“The first ten minutes was one team that was playing their third game, another team that hadn’t played in a week and got in penalty trouble right away.” Said McLellan. “All of a sudden you’re not getting the touches. You’re 100% on your heels.”
The Red Wings found themselves down 1-0 just barely five minutes into the game after Nate Danielson’s holding penalty gave New York the first power play of the game. It might have been 2-0 after the Rangers second power play opportunity, but the referees waved it off after review revealed the Rangers had been offsides, though they would eventually get the second goal back when Detroit pulled their goalie late in the third period.
Still it wasn’t all bad. Detroit’s third line, especially Marco Kasper, brought energy to a team that was struggling to catch up to a tuned up Rangers squad.
“We’ve got a lot of polish to put on the product. We’re in a position to me, and when I first got here I thought that we were mechanically playing.” Said McLellan. “And we’re thinking we’re doing a little bit of that right now. But we haven’t had real reps against real teams for a week.”
Room for improvement
While the Red Wings physicality throughout the game drew their coach’s praise, the team unfortunately was not able to effectively put that energy into scoring goals. New York started a goalie in his fourth game tonight, and the Red Wings forwards seemingly weren’t able to effectively put pressure around the net.
“I think honestly we were just a couple passes away from really connecting to good chances. It’s one chip, one pass out of our own zone and into the neutral zone and getting some odd-mans.’ Said Moritz Seider.
Defenseman Anton Johansson, making his NHL debut, had the Red Wings best shot of the night early in the game. However, the team was unable to connect at even strength and were zero-for-four on the power play tonight. Despite out shooting and out-hitting a tired Rangers team playing the second half of a back-to-back series, the Red Wings collected their first loss of the season.
“The players that are here, they have to understand that they have to expect it from themselves and from their teammates.” Said McLellan. “You can’t just rely on three or four guys. Because when they are dry, somebody else has to step up.”
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