The Red Wings are 0-2, and that’s the kind of start that drags a fan base right back into familiar frustration. Sunday’s 3-2 loss to the Winnipeg Jets marked Detroit’s first 0-2 opening in a decade, and both defeats came on home ice against teams that also were not in last spring’s Stanley Cup tournament.
For a team already searching for traction through the offseason and preseason, the margin for optimism is razor-thin. Detroit isn’t getting blown off the ice, but it is still leaving points behind, and that’s the part that stings.
Special teams were a major reason Sunday slipped away. The Red Wings went 1-for-4 on the penalty kill, and coach Todd McLellan didn’t dance around it.
“The penalty kill failed us,” Red Wings coach Todd McLellan said.
Two of the penalties that led to Winnipeg power-play goals were unsportsmanlike conduct calls against veteran forward Keegan Kolesar and JT Compher, a detail McLellan was quick to hammer home.
“We can’t have that,” McLellan said.
Detroit didn’t get on the board until the end of its fifth period of play, after falling behind 3-0. That deficit put the Wings in the kind of game they have to avoid.
This roster is built on tight margins, not nightly shootouts. If this team is going to win consistently, it has to live in games that finish 2-1 or 3-2.
That reality showed up in the way the forwards were shuffled. McLellan didn’t like what he saw from the first line of Andrew Copp between Alex DeBrincat and Lucas Raymond, and he made the change after giving that group plenty of runway.
“I didn’t think that Copp, Raymond, and DeBrincat had a lot going, and that was through five periods because we gave them that long,” McLellan said. “So we put some different lines together. Try anything to spark some things.
“And as a result, I thought Razor played better with the other group with Arvy. And I thought Finn’s speed was something that Cat and his linemates could use.
It worked. So we’ll probably look at keeping something like that.”
That adjustment paid off in spots. Emmitt Finnie said Detroit was sharper when it had the puck in the offensive zone at five-on-five.
“I thought this game we were better in our five-on-five O-zone plays,” Detroit center Emmitt Finnie said.
Finnie and Michael Brandsegg-Nygard were at the center of Detroit’s second goal, and the two looked like the club’s most effective forward pairing in the game. They started out with Viktor Arvidsson, who scored the Red Wings’ first goal, and later skated with DeBrincat.
Brandsegg-Nygard, meanwhile, keeps giving Detroit the kind of energy and shot volume it wants, even if the puck hasn’t gone in yet. Through two games, he has nine shots on goal, and McLellan was clearly encouraged by what he saw.
“I thought this was his best game as a Red Wing,” McLellan said. “He’s a bully, which is great. He isn’t afraid to shoot it.
“He sticks his nose in, really looks like he’s enjoying playing the game. Fantastic.”
Brandsegg-Nygard sounded every bit like a player trying to pull something constructive from a rough start.
“Honestly, I think we played pretty well overall,” Brandsegg-Nygard said. “Obviously the first 10 minutes was a little rough, but after that we found our legs, we got back in it, created some stuff and didn’t give up much.
“They scored on the power play. We didn’t. I think that’s the difference in the game.”
He’s right about that much. Detroit has stayed close enough to make the losses feel fixable, but close only goes so far when the results keep coming up short.
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