The Red Wings got the kind of goaltending they needed Thursday night. They just didn’t get the result to match it.
Daniil Tarasov turned aside 32 shots and Detroit’s defense held up well for most of the night, but a late breakdown sent the Red Wings to a 2-1 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights. With 1:42 left in regulation, young left wing Trevor Connolly slipped past Michael Rasmussen and buried the winner, turning what had been a tight game into another frustrating finish for Detroit.
Moritz Seider didn’t spend much time talking about the tape afterward. He wanted the focus on something else.
“Very disappointing,” Seider said. “That can’t be the standard of this locker room.
It’s been multiple times that we kind of just gave away the game in the last couple of minutes. That’s not acceptable.”
Detroit has been living with a simple reality this season: the margin for error is tiny. The Red Wings are already dealing with an offense that ranks 26th out of 32 teams, and that challenge has only grown with Dylan Larkin gone.
They’ve scored more than expected early on, but the numbers still tell the story. In seven of their 17 games, they’ve managed two goals or fewer, and they’ve been shut out twice.
That means nights like Thursday are supposed to be enough. Strong goaltending.
Tight structure. No freebies.
For most of the game, that formula was working. Todd McLellan said Detroit did a lot of the right things against a team he called “Stanley Cup caliber,” and the Wings kept Vegas to just one goal until the final minutes.
“As far as this one goes, we played a pretty good game,” McLellan said. “We checked fairly well.
We needed to find one (goal), probably on the power play. But we kept a Stanley Cup caliber team to one.
Made one mistake at the end and it’s in the net.”
That last mistake was the one that mattered. Seider said both Vegas goals came from decisions Detroit should have cleaned up before they ever became dangerous.
“It’s too easy,” Seider said. “They’re just freebies. They really didn’t have to work for those.”
McLellan, though, said the bigger takeaway has to come from inside the room, not from obsessing over the video.
“We have to evaluate ourselves against ourselves a little bit,” McLellan said. “We have to take a look at what we’re doing well. . . what we can fix.
Are we advancing our game? Playing against these high end championship type teams is really good for us right now.
I’m upset we lost the game but I thought we put a lot into that game and we’re going to take some good out of it tomorrow. “
The other issue hanging over Detroit is the same one that’s been there since Larkin went out: where the offense is going to come from. Interim general manager Shawn Horcoff is still looking to trade Larkin for a young scorer who can help in that area, and the Red Wings would love to land a center or someone like Connolly. But Vegas has no interest in moving him.
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