Detroit, MI—Yesterday, on the eve of his team’s season opener, Detroit Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde described the mood in the Red Wing dressing room as “anxious in a good way” to get started. On Thursday night against the Penguins, Detroit played with a purpose reflecting that anxiety from puck drop, but by night’s end, that nervous intensity gave way to a lack of answers, as Pittsburgh skated off with a 6-3 victory to a chorus of boos from what remained of an energetic Little Caesars Arena crowd. After the defeat, the anxiety for the season’s second chance to make an impression on Saturday night won’t feel so good.
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The Red Wings got the precise start they craved: earning a territorial advantage on the forecheck, peppering the Penguin net with shots, and finding an early goal to ignite the crowd after Alex DeBrincat capped off a beautifully worked line rush from Detroit’s top trio just three minutes and 46 seconds into the game.
The Red Wings built a 13-7 edge in shots over the opening 20 minutes, but doubt crept into Detroit’s game after about 12 minutes of action along with the recurrence of warts all too familiar from last season’s rough patches, most acutely a tendency toward defensive lapses on a galactic scale. One such lapse ended in Anthony Beauvillier equalizer with 4:58 left in the first on a shot banked off goaltender Ville Husso from below the goal line.
“Really good start actually,” assessed Lalonde after the game. “Probably a little unfortunate to come out of that period tied, and then just we couldn’t get momentum going. Unfortunately, we gave ’em some easy offense either through coverage or the puck was on our stick. Just one of those nights where we just could not sustain any momentum.”
The start was good, and the Red Wings very well could have score more than just the one in the first period, not least because of two power plays that did not convert but did create quality looks and help build early momentum. However, Detroit wasn’t able to turn its strong start into so much as a one-goal first intermission lead, and the night would only slip further from its grasp from there.
“We got away from that, that first period game we had,” said captain Dylan Larkin from the post-game podium. “Pucks were just going in, and every time we went out there, it felt like we were doing the right things, but then we would just have big time breakdowns…A lot of sloppy breakouts, sloppy coming back to our zone and finding coverage.”
In the span of two minutes and 33 seconds early in the second, the Red Wings conceded three times. The simple fact is that none were goals Husso will enjoy watching back. Husso looked uncomfortable tracking the puck and uncertain of his own location relative to his net. After Marcus Pettersson made it 4-1 with a fluttering point shot 5:28 into the second, Lalonde opted to lift Husso (who had conceded four times on 14 shots) for Cam Talbot.
Over the course of an 82-game season, Detroit is bound to wind up with a few nights of sub-standard goaltending, and Thursday was certainly one of those. What felt more concerning by night’s end, however, was an utter lack of ideas at five-on-five. The Red Wings did not stray from the forward lines with which they began the night. Per Natural Stat Trick, at five-on-five, Pittsburgh out-chanced the Red Wings 2.36-1.33 by expected goals and 11-3 in high danger chances.
Vladimir Tarasenko scored just after the expiration of a Cody Glass minor at the 12:32 mark of the second to bring some measure of competitiveness into the third period at 4-2, and DeBrincat added a second, at five-on-three in the third period, which brought the score to 5-3, but in both cases, it was Pittsburgh who responded with more urgency to the tightened game state and ultimately struck next.
In the end, it was DeBrincat who best encapsulated the night, saying “I think there’s plenty to clean up: some good, but a lot of bad, and we gotta be more ready for Saturday.” It’s not as though everything went wrong for the Red Wings, but the things that did were too glaring to take much comfort in the bright spots.
A strong individual start for DeBrincat is a good omen, the power play created danger, and the opening minutes provided a template for what Detroit’s game might look like at its best. However, poor goaltending, inconsistent defending, and an inability to create and sustain chances at five-on-five made for an opening night to forget. Now, the Red Wings will have no choice but sit in a different sort of anxiety than the sort that led into tonight’s action until Saturday evening against Nashville.
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