A poor start dooms the Red Wings in New York, with a late comeback bid falling short and the need for improved consistency glaring

On Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden, the New York Rangers humbled the visiting Detroit Red Wings by a 5-3 score, on a night where the run of play was not as close as the final margin.

Reductive though it may be to turn to poor starts as a theme in the Red Wings' losses, it was impossible to ignore New York's dominance from the opening face-off in a first period that summated the worst of Detroit's habits.

In the game's opening twenty minutes, the Red Wings were poor in puck management, they were lax in their defensive zone coverage, and Ville Husso conceded a soft goal.  The Rangers were the faster and more physical team.  They recorded the first nine shots of the game, but it only took four (and not even two minutes) to find game's first goal.

From a dreadful angle outside the face-off dot, Vincent Trochek beat Ville Husso cleanly with a wrist shot past the Fin's blocker.  In his second consecutive start, Husso allowed his team to fall into an 0-1 hole by conceding on a shot that needed to be stopped.

Against the Bruins 72 hours earlier, comfort could be taken from the fact that despite the deficit, Detroit had played reasonably well in front of their goaltender.  On Tuesday night in New York, the only salvation to be taken from the first was that the Red Wings didn't give up a second despite their performance.

The second didn't start much better, but six minutes into the period, the Red Wings' top line threatened to pull the team into the game.  The trio created a cycle chance for themselves set up by their forechecking, but Jonathan Quick was up to the task of a menacing Alex DeBrincat bid.

That top line—Lucas Raymond, Dylan Larkin, and DeBrincat—was a bright spot for the Red Wings in the losing effort.  For the first forty minutes, they were the only group providing any attacking threat worth discussing—their effort and intensity sticking out in stark contrast to the rest of the team.  

However, instead of sparking momentum for the visitors, what followed was a run of four Ranger goals in six minutes and 37 seconds. 

The first two came just 44 seconds apart on the power play—Christian Fischer went to the box six seconds after Chris Kreider's power play marker, setting the stage for Trochek to grab a PPG of his own.  Artemi Panarin and Will Cullye went on to stretch the New York lead to 5-0 before the end of the second.

In the third, Detroit made the Rangers sweat out the game's stretch run thanks to three goals in five minutes and 55 seconds.  

Michael Rasmussen began the rally with a pinpoint shot off a hitherto rare extended stay in the New York zone for the Red Wings.  From there, Klim Kostin slashed across the face of Quick's goal and deposited Detroit's second for his first goal as a Red Wing just 20 seconds later.

When Andrew Copp scored with just over six minutes to play, it appeared for a fleeting moment that Detroit might salvage the night.  

Husso set the goal up with a banked area pass that played J.T. Compher into the offensive zone behind the New York defense. Compher led Copp in on Quick with no defenders in position to intervene, and the former Ranger cut the deficit to two.  Credited with an assist, Husso earned his first career point on the play.

However, Detroit was unable to draw any closer, and the score would close at 5-3.  The comeback wasn't good enough to recover any points from the game, but it did make it easier to put the night into perspective.

It's clear that the Red Wings can play with any team in the league on a given night; they did so for at best 20 of the 60 minutes tonight at MSG (and they probably didn't even do it for a full 60 against the Bruins Saturday), but the fact remains that Detroit is capable of applying pressure to the Eastern Conference's heavyweights.

It's also clear that the Red Wings have vulnerabilities the league's top teams can exploit.  At the moment, the most glaring of these are poor coverage in the defensive zone and sub-par goaltending at the wrong moments.  And, like any hockey team, Detroit cannot afford to spoon-feed its opponent opportunities via turnovers.

Through 13 games, the Red Wings have also developed something of a power play dependence.  Tonight, Detroit went 0-for-6 on the man advantage—including 0-for-2 in the first period when they might have had a chance to get the game back on track and an unsuccessful five-on-three in the third.  That mark, combined with a 2-for-3 evening for the Ranger man advantage, is far from a winning formula.

Finally, what's most apparent from the season's first 13 games is that the Eastern Conference provides an unrelenting gauntlet, capable of swallowing up any team that plays without purpose on any given night.  It's less a matter of starts or finishes than it is of lapses, whenever and wherever they come.  

So if the Red Wings wish to emerge from that gauntlet with a playoff berth, they will need to find greater consistency in short order.  The first opportunity to bounce back will come Thursday evening in Detroit, when the Montreal Canadiens visit Little Caesars Arena.

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