Head coach Todd McLellan and the Detroit Red Wings suffered another brutal defeat on Thursday night. They faced their Atlantic Division rival Ottawa Senators at the Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, Michigan. Unfortunately, it was the visiting Senators who felt right at home for most of the contest. Ottawa got off to a 3-0 lead before fending off a late Detroit push to claim a 4-3 victory on Thursday.
McLellan spoke with the media following the contest. He mentioned how part of the game were “deflating” for his squad. But he also took aim at an area he has criticized in the past: their defensive effort.
“We have to get better defensively, we have to get better in the faceoff circle, we have to have better coverages,” McLellan said, via Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press. “I look at the game tonight, 4-3, wow, you almost came back, you made it close. But that might be the most outnumbered rush situations I’ve seen this year from our team.
“The first goal was four-on-two. There were multiple two-on-ones. There were short breakaways, where the D was just getting walked from the tops of the circles in. Until we learn to take that crap out of our game, we’re going to need six a night, and that can’t happen. So that’s not good enough. When you use those words, sometimes people think effort or whatever — no. It’s systematic. It’s the mind. It’s understanding the game. That’s not good enough,” McLellan continued.
Red Wings’ Todd McLellan discusses mental aspect of recent slump
Talk to any Red Wings player and they will tell you the same thing. There is an intentional effort within the locker room to maintain belief in their squad. The Red Wings are still in the Wild Card race, only three points back of the Montreal Canadiens for the East’s final Wild Card spot. However, Detroit has lost 11 of their last 14 games in regulation. As a result, this belief in themselves is clashing with an increasingly harsh reality.
“I go back to when we arrived, we talked about building up a belief system,” McLellan said, via St. James. “It’s getting tested, and it has been getting tested this whole month. It’s not just the wins and losses in your record, it’s about what happens in a game. And we’ve seen that multiple times where it doesn’t go our way and it drops off for five minutes. And then we get it back. We can’t sag. It’s as much mental as it is physical and structural.”
The Red Wings have missed the playoffs for eight straight seasons. This is the longest postseason drought in franchise history. And it’s the second-longest active postseason drought in the NHL. Time is running out for this team to avoid missing the Stanley Cup Playoffs for a ninth straight year.
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