Todd McLellan says blown lead vs Blues might be good for Red Wings
A great teaching moment was a damning indictment on the Detroit Red Wings.
A great teaching moment was a damning indictment on the Detroit Red Wings.
They head off to their next game, against the Florida Panthers, with a sour taste in their mouth after the 5-4 loss to the St. Louis Blues. The Wings looked in control with a two-goal lead early in the third period, but they let the Blues have their way and ended up booed off the ice at Little Caesars Arena on Saturday, Oct. 31.
"Maybe this is good for us," McLellan said. "We started to feel comfortable. We still know what we need to do. We have to do it, it doesn't just magically show up and poof, you got it. Quite frankly I thought in the first period, period and a half, we were doing it, and doing it well. Maybe we got a little comfortable or lackadaisical, and it comes back to bite you, so a real valuable lesson for our team, super valuable."
But not as valuable as two points in the standings would have been. The Wings (6-5-3) had won two straight games and had points in eight of their previous nine games, but they quit playing after a good first half against the Blues.
"That was far from our standard, the way we want to play, what we worked to get to as a team, as well," forward Lucas Raymond said. "I don't necessarily think it's a lesson like, we have a two-goal lead in the third period at home. We should be able to close that game out without swaying from our game, which we did. A lot of fixable stuff as well. We for sure right now have to learn from it and move on."
The Wings move on to play the Panthers on Monday and Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday. Both are Atlantic Division rivals ahead of the Wings in the NHL standings.
STILL STINGS: Red Wings on Dylan Larkin: 'That ... is a strong statement'
What stung all the more Saturday was that the Wings didn't allow the Blues a shot on goal for around 26 minutes, from a goal early in the first period to around midway through the second period.
"I look at it like what we do works when we have the details in it and we showed it for the first half of the game," McLellan said. "It didn't look the same in the second half – yeah they make a few adjustments but we were lazy, we were a little bit sloppy and we didn't do what we needed to do and it came back to bite us. So as upset as I am of losing that game, and it'll sting for a while, I'm really happy with the front half and not so happy with the back half. Now we got great teaching moments, really good moments that we can try and get better as a team."
The Wings had the edge in shots (28-15) and special teams (1-for-2 on power plays, 3-for-3 on penalty kills) and had contributions from every line: J.T. Compher and Keegan Kolesar turned a 1-0 deficit into a 2-1 lead by contributing their first goals of the season, and Raymond and Finnie built on that.
"We should," Kolesar said, "have came out with the win. Now we have to sit with this the rest of the day and sit with it until the next game. Not a good feeling."
Contact Helene St. James at Hstjames@freepress.com. Read more on the Detroit Red Wings and sign up for our Red Wings newsletter.
