Familiar Finish as Red Wings Fail Again

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Rick Osentoski-Imagn ImagesRick Osentoski-Imagn Images

This has become all too familiar territory for the Detroit Red Wings.

The blank looks. The empty expressions. Saying the right things, but not doing them.

Missing the NHL playoffs. Again.

That’s 10 years in a row without playoff hockey in Hockeytown, not that you needed anyone to remind you of that.

“We had a clear goal coming into this year, and we didn’t do it,” Red Wings forward Lucas Raymond said. “And we haven’t had plenty of opportunities throughout this season and especially down the stretch here too, you know, seize different moments.”

One of those occasions – and granted, it was a last-gasp attempt – was Saturday’s home game against the equally dismal New Jersey Devils. The Red Wings led 3-2 midway through the third period.

Detroit gave up three unanswered goals to lose 5-3. Coupled with Ottawa’s win earlier in the day over the New York Islanders, the loss sealed the Red Wings’ fate. Another spring in which other teams go to the postseason, while they go home and wonder why it all went wrong.

Red Wings Failed To Check Off Key Boxes

Detroit coach Todd McLellan didn’t need to do any ciphering to assess the areas where the shortfalls came about.

“When we went to training camp, we had three goals in mind,” McLellan explained, laying out the key points in his preseason blueprint. “One was to get physically harder to play against. The second was to build up the resilience and the mental toughness. And the third one was game management.

“I thought we were making gains in those areas. But since the Olympic break, we didn’t have much of that, and it ended up costing us.”

The math is easy to calculate. On Jan. 24, Detroit sat 32-16-5, atop the Atlantic Division. Since then, the Red Wings are 9-14-4.

From March 1 onward, they went 7-10-3. The Wings are 6-10-2 since the March 6 NHL trade deadline.

They went 1-5-1 in their past seven home games. Following a 2-1 win at Ottawa on Feb. 26, the Red Wings went 0-6-1 in one-goal games.

Did The Pressure Get To Them?

In Saturday’s loss, McLellan cited two New Jersey goals that both came from odd-man rush situations in transition off of pinches by Detroit defensemen. He noted how that exact scenario was emphasized in the pre-scout for the game. Yet the message wasn’t adhered to.

“Teams are going to make mistakes,,” McLellan said. “They’re going to give one of those up, but not two. Especially not with four minutes left in a game where we need the points.

“So is that mental, between the years? I’m sure some of it is. The other part is game management, just figuring out how to win.

“We still have a long, long way to go there. A long way to go.”

McLellan had to admit that he saw the pressure get to his team late last season. But he hadn’t felt that was an issue this season, not until it came down to crunch time again.

“You can accept the pressure as a challenge, or you can succumb to it,” McLellan said. “And we seem to choose the second one.”

As much as it obviously hurt him to admit it, Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin could only assess the facts and agree with his coach.

“When it gets tight, we come up short,” Larkin said. “We talked about it, we tried different things.

“And it happened again this year.”

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