Competing for a playoff spot until the final game of the season, the Detroit Red Wings learned multiple lessons about what it takes to win playoff games, including the importance of depth, consistency and defensive buy-in
Competing for a playoff spot until the final game of the season, the Detroit Red Wings learned multiple lessons about what it takes to win playoff games, including the importance of depth, consistency and defensive buy-in
Throughout their playoff race, the Red Wings preached the educational value of these games. The pace, the stakes — none of it can be simulated anywhere else. All these lessons have to be learned through experience.
But the difference between education and punishment is the absorption of those intended lessons, the ability to apply experiences and improve from them. So what did the Red Wings learn?
Here are four things the Red Wings’ playoff race taught them.
I. Consistency Matters
If Detroit’s season was anything, it was unpredictable. The Red Wings were a surging wagon at some points and a listless husk at others. They went on three separate losing streaks of four games or more — including a behemoth seven-gamer right in the start of the playoff crunch. But, they also played some of the most successful hockey in the league at times, with a 16-4-2 record in January and most of February right before that big slump. Even the end of the season ended on a high, as the Red Wings won three straight games and took points in six of their last eight games.
What Detroit lacked in consistency, it made up for in getting clutch results. In the future, though, banking points with more regularity can prevent the heartbreak of missing the playoffs by a measly point.
At a macroscopic level, consistency is desperately needed for teams who make the playoffs. If the Red Wings had broken those losing streaks, maybe pulling a win or two to break them, they’d be learning lessons in the first round right now instead of retooling for the offseason.
“(It’s) really hard to look at that right now, and there’s three other teams in the same spot that are saying the same thing,” Dylan Larkin said Tuesday about the need to earn wins earlier in the season. “It is a learning lesson, but I’m proud of this group and everything that we’ve accomplished. Every time we had adversity, we came back from it. Every time people counted us out, we came back and we did it together. You saw young players taking a step in leadership. It’s heading in the right direction, and I’m proud to be a part of this group.”
Hindsight is 20/20, and it’s not like Detroit didn’t try to win games earlier in the season. The fact of the matter is that every game matters, though, and every point is crucial. If the Red Wings are going to make the playoffs, they can’t afford the kind of inconsistent highs and lows they rode throughout the season.
II. Playoff Teams Can’t Quit
The Red Wings more than learned that playoff teams can never throw in the towel — they lived this lesson to the bitter end. They found rallies and comebacks in 14 wins earned out of third period deficits. They fought for their season to the final seconds when David Perron scored his heroic game-tying goal. They didn’t fold when they knew they had missed the playoffs either, as a Patrick Kane shootout goal earned them one final win for pride.
If Detroit wants to be a playoff team in the future, this compete level has to become standard. Playoff chances aren’t just going to find the Red Wings, as this last two week stretch showed. Instead, they have to earn them, even out of unkind circumstances.
“You can regret a lot of different things right now when you’re not in it,” Kane said Tuesday. “But I think the growth came from the way we played the last couple of weeks and just some of these guys stepping off and playing their hearts out and stepping up at big moments, big times and coming through for the team, which was fun to watch and fun to be part of.”
Goaltender James Reimer echoed a similar sentiment.
“I think sometimes (growth) comes down to asking yourself the question ‘What are we capable of?,’ ” Reimer said Tuesday. “And I think we answered that in an extremely positive way this year and we took a step forward. I think fans in this city, guys on the team, organization — everyone should be really excited because we took a big step today. We showed that growth, we showed what we’re capable of doing and it’s one of those things now where you keep building off that.”
The Red Wings were capable of cardiac comebacks that put them in the fight until the last possible moment. They were far more capable than even the most generous projections expected of them to start the season. Detroit had every right to roll over at varying points this season and yet it kept going back to battle. Carrying that lack of quit forward would be a major lesson for this group going forward.
III. This is What Playoff Hockey Feels Like
For what felt like the better part of a month, the Red Wings kept one-upping themselves with the most important games of their recent history. The phrases “must-win” and “can’t-lose” became all but numb to the ear from overuse, even if they were never inaccurate. The pressure of the playoff race had its own aura.
For a team with young contributors who had never been in such a playoff race — and even vets like Larkin and Alex DeBrincat who haven’t been to the postseason since their early days — such a test run of playoff intensity is invaluable. Because of this playoff race, the likes of defenseman Moritz Seider and forward Lucas Raymond know exactly what it will take to make the playoffs because of how close they came, and they also learned how to rise in big moments. It was Raymond, after all, who put this team on his back to end the season. It was Seider who shouldered an oversized defensive burden to help his team win.
“It’s massive to have a little nervousness before a game, making little mistakes that maybe end up in our net, sometimes that don’t end up, big mistakes — whatever,” Perron said. “Everything hurts so much. It just gets magnified and I think I’m proud of all the guys, I think it’s gonna be a big step forward when we look back at it in a couple of weeks. I know how hard it is right now to look at that. but I’m so proud of our guys, the young guys especially, how many steps forward they’ve taken this year.”
The Red Wings got to experience what was essentially a series of Game 7’s to end the season, and the knowledge gained from this is invaluable to their efforts to win later on. Again, nothing simulates these do-or-die stakes. It’s something Lalonde has preached for a while, even as recently as Monday, when he praised Raymond’s ability to rise in these key games.
“That’s why we need to get in these moments,” Lalonde said. “There’s huge growth in it. And it’s just he’s been impressive to watch. In my two years, he’s been here and he’s starting to shine in these really critical moments. So obviously a really good sign for him but a good sign for us.”
It's also a good sign that the Red Wings all got a taste of this playoff atmosphere, which can help them from here on out.
IV. Outscoring Defensive Issues is not Sustainable
A win is a win is a win, to riff off Gertrude Stein. But not all wins are so enthusing. There were a lot of wins this season that the Red Wings’ offense made up for some defensive woes, which finally caught up with Detroit in the last quarter of the season.
The Red Wings let in the ninth most goals against in the league this season at 3.33 per game. The only playoff team near them was Tampa Bay at 3.25 goals against per game, but they had the fifth-best offense paced by elite stars Nikita Kucherov, Steven Stamkos, Brayden Point and Victor Hedman. The Red Wings don't have that developed talent just yet. They can't afford to be so loose defensively.
Take it from Perron and Kane, who combine for 247 playoff games in their career.
“We might not have to have our A-plus game in October or November these games — all that stuff,” Perron said. “But maybe you’ve got to find a way to have a game where it’s a team aspect. it’s more similar to what we’ve been playing recently and not just kind of hope to outscore our mistakes.”
Added Kane, “When I first came, it seemed like we were more of like a run-and-gun team. And then as time went on (during) the season, I think we really started playing more of a playoff game and found ways to get wins from that.”
Scoring a lot of goals prevents a team from losing, but good defense causes a team to win. Preventing grade-A chances and blocking a lot of shots helps with defensive play, two aspects that picked up as the season progressed. Ultimately, it will take more to emulate the kind of defensive play needed to beat opponents with consistency.
Scoring is fickle and fleeting, dependent on capitalizing off opponents’ mistakes. Without good enough defensive play, teams can lose a lot of games when they don’t get the sort of scoring they’re used to. In the seven-game losing streak and a lot of games when Larkin was injured, it was those defensive struggles that stood out the most. The Red Wings have to take this season as an example of why their team defense needs to step up in the offseason.
There are more lessons for Detroit to learn than just these four, but the abundance of knowledge it gained is exactly why such a playoff race was important in its own right. Now, the task becomes applying these lessons for the future so that the Red Wings win the next race they find themselves in.
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