Yahoo Sports McLellan Earns First Win as Red Wings Roll Through Capitals
DETROIT—On Sunday evening, the visiting Washington Capitals tested the Detroit Red Wings only briefly, for 21 seconds to be precise. Some five minutes after Detroit raced out to a 2–0 lead in the game's opening seven minutes, the NHL's most predictable and reliable weapon—Alex Ovechkin from the left circle, good for his 870th NHL goal—threatened to derail the Red Wings' momentum.
Instead, on the ensuing shift, through a combination of braun and precision, Detroit struck back. Andrew Copp turned himself into a battering ram to win the puck below the goal line, Patrick Kane picked it up and neatly shuttled it across the crease, Alex DeBrincat snuck between a pair of defenders to receive Kane's pass and bury it in a single motion. 3—1 Red Wings. Not two minutes later, Lucas Raymond would make it 4—1, and Detroit had all the offense it would need on the way to a 4–2 victory for Todd McLellan's first win as Red Wings head coach.
Tim Fuller, Imagn Images
"I keep using this word 'spirit.'...Energy. Find whatever word you want to use, but we talked about carrying it over, not having the weight on us," McLellan said after the game. For Detroit, the wave of first period goals was nothing short of a spiritual cleansing, briefly threatened but purposeful and resilient enough to thwart that menace and proceed with the scoring.
"I think going into the game...there was a lot of positive vibes, even though we lost the last game 5–2, just energy from that game and not quitting and practice yesterday and what we wanted to accomplish coming into this game," said Kane, who'd picked up his 1,300th career point with the assist after scoring himself to make it 2–0. "[The Capitals] had a tough back to back. They played at seven last night and then five tonight, so obviously we wanted to jump on them early, and we did a good job of that."
As rain fell outside Little Caesars Arena, the goals washed away the recent ugly memories: the losing streak, the coaching change that brought McLellan in, the 5–0 deficit through two periods two nights earlier. Per DeBrincat, McLellan's arrival "just reset everything." "New coach comes in, try to get that energy back in the room," he continued. "Just forget about what's happened in the past, and it was a new start. So good to get that win and hopefully we can get some more here soon."
The flow of first period goals made the past that much easier to forget and afforded the Red Wings the cushion they needed to absorb the lapses that would come later. Washington carried play for much of the second period, then scored halfway through the third to restore some measure of jeopardy to the closing minutes, at which point Detroit re-asserted its authority through a familiar source: Moritz Seider.
In the final two minutes, with the Capital net empty, Seider sprawled to block a pair of Ovechkin shots, and he would've blocked more had his efforts not discouraged the sport's greatest ever goal scorer into passing up subsequent chances to fire. In between, Seider knocked down Tom Wilson in the corner, bleeding away clock as he pinned the game into the corner to the right of goaltender Alex Lyon and breaking his stick in the process.
After the break, Seider continued his shift with a stick Dylan Larkin lent him. That the right-handed Seider had to turn around Larkin's lefty twig hardly mattered; his shin pads were more important than his blade for the time being anyway. McLellan referred to Seider as a "sponge" for his eagerness to soak up new information in the early days of his new coach's tenure, but in those closing moments, he had to be a sponge for the puck too to see out the victory.
"We still have things to work on," noted McLellan. "I thought our gas tank got a little bit empty near the end or halfway through the game, and real good teams have good gas tanks...That can be physical, but I also think it's mental. When you haven't won a lot, you do what you have to do to try to protect everything. Sometimes you can do that by going [forward], not [back]."
For all the cleansing Sunday's victory provided—exorcising the bad feelings and the bad memories—there were some things it couldn't wash clean, most importantly the standings. With the win, the Red Wings pulled back even with the Buffalo Sabres (who'd won earlier in the afternoon) at 32 points, tied for last in the Eastern Conference. Game 36 couldn't wipe away the first 35, and it will take a lot more work, more offense, and more spirit to lend respectability to Detroit's 14–18–4 record.
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