Game Notes: Red Wings Stay Hot with 6–2 Win Over Seattle

DETROIT—On Sunday afternoon at Little Caesars Arena, the Detroit Red Wings wasted no time keeping their good feelings going.  Before the game was eight minutes old, the Red Wings led 4–0 en route to a 6–2 rout over the visiting Seattle Kraken.  Detroit's scorching power play added three more goals to its tally, 11 different Red Wings recorded a point, and Cam Talbot played his best game since Todd McLellan's arrival (31 saves on 33 shots) to see Detroit to its seventh successive victory.

The Game in One Quote

On the one hand, this assessment from Larkin on the state of his team is fairly predictable.  Belief that the collective of which you are part can be successful would seem a prerequisite for competition, much less leadership.  And yet Larkin also alludes to something profound about McLellan's impact.  The new coach has done more than just improve his team's confidence on an individual, case by case basis.  He's revived the idea of the team that Detroit itself carried into the season, reaffirmed that this Red Wings team could contend for a playoff position.

Detroit's play leading into the change behind the bench—languishing at or near the Eastern Conference's basement—tested that vision.  The Red Wings were vulnerable.  They were slow to generate momentum for themselves and quick to squander it.  Of course that team didn't view itself as a playoff contender.  Why would it?

McLellan's tenure still exists on the scale of weeks, not even months, but already he has restored the sense that all of this—these individual players and the performances they stitch together as a collective—could amount to something by season's end.

With the win over the Kraken, the Red Wings improved to 20–18–4, positioning themselves as the first team on the outside looking in with respect to the Wild Card chase having played fewer games than either team occupying those slots.  That's hardly cause to hang a banner, but it's built a sense not just of confidence but hope and aspiration in this Detroit team.

Numbers to Know: 4 & 6

That's four goals on six shots over the opening 7:53 of action Sunday afternoon to put the game out of reach when it had hardly begun.

Marco Kasper, who opened the scoring and began the onslaught with assists from his new line mates Dylan Larkin and Lucas Raymond, quipped, "Dylan, and Ray also, yesterday in practice, told me to go to the net and good things are gonna happen, and it worked out just fine."  Kasper, his feet just beyond the top of the blue paint, scored by getting his stick to a Dylan Larkin shot and re-directing it past Philipp Grubauer.

J.T. Compher followed that script, making straight to the net off a won face-off for his own re-direct, of a puck Vladimir Tarasenko threw to the net, making it 2–0 Detroit just 11 seconds later.  By the eight minute mark, Alex DeBrincat had added a power play goal and Patrick Kane scored at even strength to make it four (with each of those two goals extending its scorer's point streak to seven games).

As Dylan Larkin put it, "We got pucks to the net and they went in early, and after we got one and two, we kept the foot on the gas."  Not unlike the victory over the Washington Capitals that began this streak, Detroit faced an opponent on short rest—dealing with a back-to-back and travel—and took full advantage in a hurry.  That won't fall into place every night, but it's an awfully effective formula for a stress free evening.

Observations

Depth, Balance Fueling Detroit's Winning Streak

On the way to Sunday's victory, 11 different Red Wings recorded a point, while only two (Moritz Seider and Simon Edvinsson) played north of 20 minutes.  A non-competitive score for 50+ minutes made it easier for McLellan and staff to lighten their stars' workloads, but even before the rout fully began, building that early 4–0 lead took depth, with three different lines plus the power play chipping in goals to establish Detroit's advantage.

Asked about that depth after the game, McLellan said, "It's huge. You don't have to chance matches. We don't have to overplay players. Mo's hit 25 or 26 minutes a couple times, but when the third pair's playing as well as they are, it's nice to have balance. Larkin and Razor and those guys, they don't have to be at 22 minutes a night when everybody's playing well. We can balance it all out, and everybody feels important, and that's a good sign for a team."

That idea of not having to overplay top players is clearest on the defense corps.  It was well documented that under Derek Lalonde, Seider and Edvinsson (then paired together) played the most difficult minutes in the National Hockey League.  While those two remained the Red Wings' leaders in ice time Sunday, it's impossible to ignore that Detroit's retooled coaching staff has found a way to get more effective minutes from the team's bottom four defensemen.

Erik Gustafsson, who scored and added an assist Sunday, looks almost an entirely different player to the one who struggled mightily in all three zones through the holiday break and coaching change.  As McLellan said of Gustafsson Sunday, "We were just talking about him in the coaches room.  He's been outstanding, really. The knock on him will always be can he defend.  He's doing an outstanding job of that.  He's bought into taking care of that first, and when you do that, it kind of opens up the other end as well: Vision, running a power play, offensive confidence, all those things are coming out now."

During the winning streak, the Red Wings have gotten excellent form from stars like Kane and DeBrincat, but Sunday also showed they don't always need to count on those familiar names to provide production.  That is a positive omen for the sustainability of the present run.

McLellan Wants More, even after Rout

For most of his post-game presser Sunday, McLellan was in no mood for a victory lap despite the overwhelming result.  Instead, he emphasized the path forward, saying, "you win seven games in a row, and you're feeling pretty good. And the spirit's really good right now. It's high. We're in a good spot, but all we did was crawl back into it. Now we've got a lot of work in front of us."

As for that afternoon's game specifically, McLellan said, "It wasn't our best game of the streak by any means, in my opinion.  We gave up too much.  We were too loose."  That sounds a bit like coach speak, but it's not unfounded in that Detroit played phenomenal hockey for about 10 minutes to open the play, then had the luxury of cruising for the remaining 50 with the sizzling power play supplying added run support in the second period.

McLellan felt that his team's intensity (understandably) wavered because of how strong the start was.  In fact, the coach went as far as to express concern over not practicing Monday, because the Collective Bargaining Agreement demands an off day once every seven days.

"Tomorrow's an off day, a mandatory off day, so we're not gonna get that practice time, and actually that concerns me a little bit because of the way this game played out," McLellan said.  "You have a four or five–nothing lead really quick, and then it gets loose.  Some things aren't really important, and you have a tendency maybe to give something back."

Just a few moments earlier, Larkin had spoken about his belief that Detroit's turnaround began on the practice rink—where the intensity of McLellan's leadership and teaching style helped establish the road map out of the team's first half malaise.  While the Red Wings won't spend any time on the practice rink Monday, they'll look to rekindle that intensity Tuesday night, when the San Jose Sharks pay a visit to Little Caesars Arena.

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