Red Wings’ Losses a Product of Poor Defensive Play Catching up with Them
According to David Perron, the Red Wings' losing streak is a product of poor defensive play catching up to them. To end it, they'll have to polish their defense in a big way.
Mandatory Credit: Timothy T. Ludwig-USA TODAY Sports - Red Wings’ Losses a Product of Poor Defensive Play Catching up with ThemWhen David Perron drove to Little Caesars Arena this morning, he couldn’t help but hear a familiar voice playing back in his head: Ken Hitchcock, one of his former coaches when he played for St. Louis.
“Like a lot of the players, I felt like he was tough on us,” Perron said Wednesday. “He always said that when you gotta find your game, (when) you think you're better than you are, or you play better and get results that maybe you don't deserve, it usually takes like two to three weeks to get it back. That's exactly what’s happening right now. And I just couldn’t help driving in this morning to kind of have his voice and my ear again, thinking about that.”
Right now, the Red Wings are on a six-game losing skid that has sapped their playoff hopes, but that doesn’t mean they all of a sudden started playing bad. According to Perron, the defensive issues seen in this losing streak were around during the six-game win streak directly preceding this. The only difference is that the Red Wings outscored their defensive flaws back then. If they want to end the streak, they have to start by defending better.
From a surface level view, there’s no doubt that Detroit’s defense has played poorly in this losing streak. The Red Wings allowed seven goals in two of the games and at least four in every one of them. Those aren’t results becoming of a winning hockey team, let alone one that wants to win in the playoffs. So it’s understandable that Detroit’s defensive lapses have brought a reality check to their playoff hopes.
A lot of the blame can be put on the defense as a whole, such as the Ben Chiarot and Jeff Petry pairing that was on the ice for five goals against in Tuesday’s loss to Buffalo. But they don’t shoulder the entire defensive effort alone, and instead the lackluster performance belongs to the whole team — forwards and defensemen.
“We don’t close quick enough in the corners and we don’t support (the) second layer quick enough,” Perron diagnosed. “I also think it starts way before that. It starts on our forecheck — the lack of forecheck, the lack of team game that we have at times feels like it puts so much pressure on our neutral zone and our defensive zone coverage. We let teams just skate right through from their hash marks all the way to our zone, and after a while I think any team that you spend enough time in the D-zone, they’ll find a way to make you pay.”
If that’s the case, Detroit has been going bankrupt. In Buffalo, the Sabres bullied the Red Wings in transition and skated right to prime shooting locations, including on Alex Tuch’s breakaway goal to a pair of first-period one-timers from right near the hash marks. Those are just the plays that led to goals, let alone others that didn’t convert in the already egregious 7-3 loss.
Games throughout this losing streak could’ve gotten uglier if not for some defensive luck, if you can believe it, and that’s saying something considering how badly the defensive results have already been. The Red Wings are not only making defensive mistakes, but they’re making an abundance of them. Therein lies a major difference between some poor defensive performances that previously ended in wins, and the poor performances that have left the Red Wings tumbling. Even if Perron is right and Detroit just outscored its problems earlier, the issues are too prevalent now to even try and outscore them.
“To an extent. I mean, I think that's too broad.” Lalonde said when asked about Perron’s belief that the Red Wings were previously outscoring their problems. “We played some really good hockey in that stretch. You don’t get yourself 13 games over .500 by accident. But with that said, there was plenty of time within our game that we were scoring and we got just outstanding goaltending from a huge long stretch for both Alex (Lyon) and the games that (James Reimer) pitched in.”
Regardless of the exact timeline of when these defensive issues spawned, they’re here and they’re prominent. Beating them, in part, comes down to effort all over the ice. Detroit has lost too many races and battles in this losing streak, and many of those wins are the variety that its skaters should be able to handle.
Defenseman Moritz Seider noted that there were qualities to Detroit’s defensive game that excelled during the previous win streak.
“First of all, I think we trusted our instincts in a very good sense,” Seider said. “We didn’t allow as many shots from up top. We were gritty around our net. Our arrivals were on point so that means we weren’t allowing any pull ups from the D, from the forwards hitting the late guys who were in the right spots. And that's definitely something that’s slipped. We've given up too many easy looks for the opponents, obviously some really dangerous attacks, and I think that’s something we have to correct.”
If the Red Wings can get back to those tenets, they could expect a better outcome. However, that’s easier said than done when caught in the whirlpool of a slump.
Fixing such results is a major undertaking. When nearly the entire team is failing to turn in an adequate defensive effort, how do you pinpoint where to make effective changes? Lalonde believes he found some different looks that might work, putting all his lines and pairings in a blender at Wednesday’s practice. Evidently, it worked, as an intense practice gave way to Lucas Raymond and Chiarot nearly fighting, as well as enough buy-in for Lalonde to give some praise.
“It’s so cliche, it’s easy to say, but our last defensive zone drill — if we had half that intensity last night, I think it’s a little bit different outcome,” Lalonde said. “But we’ll have that opportunity tomorrow.”
Because eventually, results catch up to you, just like Hitchcock told Perron long ago. If they want to end this losing streak, the Red Wings have to address the issues that they’ve carried all along.
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