After a 2-1 home loss Saturday night to the Avalanche, the Red Wings have lost five straight games, and as Moritz Seider put it, "I think no one is happy in the locker room. Why should we?"
After a 2-1 home loss Saturday night to the Avalanche, the Red Wings have lost five straight games, and as Moritz Seider put it, "I think no one is happy in the locker room. Why should we?"
DETROIT—On Saturday night at Little Caesars Arena, the Detroit Red Wings lost 2-1 to the visiting Colorado Avalanche, bringing their losing skid to five straight—all of them one-goal defeats. After the game, coach Derek Lalonde couldn't hold back his disappointment.
"You [can] all save yourselves some time and just copy and paste the same write-up you've had the last five games," the head coach counseled the assembled media, before he'd finished listening to the press' first question. "Some positives, probably take our five-on-five game tonight against a team like that, hold 'em to two goals, probably out-chance them fairly good, just gotta do more to find a way to flip some of these games. That's a frustrating one."
It's not that the Red Wings were run off the tracks by their guests. As Lalonde said, there were genuine positives to Detroit's game. His team ensured the game remained structured, rather than turning into the track meet they feared against a team of the visitors' firepower. The Red Wings were mostly effective at corralling the Avalanche's top gunners in Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen. Ville Husso delivered another strong performance (23 saves on 25 shots) in the absence of Cam Talbot and Alex Lyon.
By the end of the second period, Detroit had built momentum, culminating in a Lucas Raymond goal (deflecting home a Dylan Larkin point shot) with 1:47 remaining before intermission. The Red Wings weren't creating an abundance of chances by any means, but they were carrying play and with Raymond's goal, they halved Colorado's lead entering the third. However, in winning time in the final period, Detroit fell flat—silenced for most of the frame before a desperate empty-net push created the sort of chaos that might have produced an equalizer but didn't.
That end-of-game six-on-five flurry aside, offense proved painfully difficult for the Red Wings to find. There were a few good chances—Moritz Seider off an odd-man rush in the first, J.T. Compher all alone in front of the net after a rare Colorado breakdown in the second—but they stuck out as exceptional on a night when the Avs tended to deny access to the scoring area. Far too often Saturday night, Detroit tried and failed to send a pass into the slot, instead turning it over, or fired a shot straight into an Avalanche shin pad. The end result was another toothless night at five-on-five.
"People own the middle of the ice," pointed out Lalonde. "You gotta break them down. A lotta times you gotta break 'em down by just getting pucks to the net. I think that's one are of our game that can be a little better." He would go on to re-emphasize this point, saying "People defend so well in today's NHL: video, repetition, owning the middle. Just getting pucks to the net and getting in some foot races, we gotta do more of it. I know it's not in the DNA of some of our guys, but it's gotta be."
As for the prevailing emotion following a fifth straight loss? Predictably disheartened.
"I don't see how it can't be," replied Lalonde, when asked whether confidence had started to wane for his team. "I think they're playing some pretty responsible hockey, going through a stretch where we give up two in 60 minutes to Boston, we give up two on the road and one was a minute left in the game, we give up two tonight. We're doing some quality things, but we gotta do a little more offensively."
A few minutes earlier, Seider painted a similar picture. When asked whether frustration was setting in for the group as the pile of losses grows taller, the 23-year-old replied, "I think no one is happy in the locker room. Why should we [be]? We're losing games that are winnable, and we just can't find ways to get it done. Obviously that's really frustrating, and we shouldn't be lying to ourselves. We need to be better."
It's blunt and sober analysis from coach and stalwart defenseman, but as both alluded to, it's also undeniable, the only possible response to Detroit's increasingly dire circumstance. The Red Wings will have their first chance to alleviate their collective frustration Monday night in Buffalo against the Sabres.
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