DETROIT — For the first 23 minutes Saturday night, Little Caesars Arena was in misery.

With the Detroit Red Wings coming off a woeful 7-2 loss to the New York Islanders two days prior, Detroit once again dug an early hole — letting the St. Louis Blues jump out to a 2-0 lead in the first period, and getting booed off the ice at the first buzzer. Then, the Red Wings dug that hole even deeper, taking a penalty to begin the second, and giving up two more goals in the first 3:12. It was the sixth consecutive period in which the Red Wings had allowed two or more goals, and down 4-0, it looked like destined to keep spiraling.

“We had absolutely nothing going on,” Red Wings head coach Todd McLellan said. “It looked like we were discombobulated all over the rink. Anything we did — we were in the wrong spot, we checked poorly, we didn’t pick up the right people. It was borderline disaster.”

How then did the Red Wings skate off their home ice Saturday night with a 6-4 win?

It all started at a timeout McLellan took right after the Blues’ fourth goal — delivering a message no one was inclined to reveal.

“That’s probably a message we’ll keep between us,” the head coach said.

“Just challenged us,” forward J.T. Compher said. “Kind of leave it at that.”

“Couple tough words,” winger Jonatan Berggren added.

The particulars notwithstanding, though, it’s not too hard to guess the meeting’s thrust. The Red Wings looked awful. Again. And something had to change.

And then, a funny thing happened: It did.

Some 4 1/2 minutes later, Berggren got Detroit on the board with a power-play tally. Then, Emmitt Finnie buried one at the net in the final two minutes. Compher deflected in a Travis Hamonic point shot 27 seconds after that. Suddenly, the Red Wings were back in it.

“We talked in the locker room going into the third that we had to keep the foot down, and everyone responded,” Compher said. “Every guy on the bench was up and lively, and believed we were going to get it done.”

Belief, it turns out, can be a powerful thing.

No Red Wings player had been more snakebitten through the first eight games and two periods than Alex DeBrincat. The team’s leading scorer last season, with 39 goals, DeBrincat entered Saturday’s game with zero on 28 shots. He hit two crossbars in Saturday’s first period alone. He could have been forgiven for getting a bit discouraged.

Instead, midway through the third period, he took a puck at Detroit’s blue line and skated it himself through the neutral zone. He looked off a potential drop pass and held onto it while cutting back to the slot. And then he ripped one past Jordan Binnington to end his drought and tie the game.

“He’s a scorer,” McLellan said. “And scorers shoot the puck. He’s not going to defer and dish it off. He’s scored many goals like that already, cutting across and shooting against the grain. He knew what he was doing as soon as he began to cut. And good for him, he got rewarded.”

The breakthroughs didn’t stop there. Thursday on Long Island, McLellan held defenseman Simon Edvinsson out for the game’s final 12 minutes. And Saturday morning, Edvinsson didn’t run from that one bit.

“The last two games, I’ve probably played my worst hockey that I’ve (played) in four years, or that I can remember, at least,” Edvinsson said. “So, that’s all I’ve got to say because I can’t speak of the team’s performance. I was probably one of the worst players on the ice in both of those games.”

Edvinsson missed the early portion of camp due to injury and hasn’t fully looked himself yet this season. Those two road trip outings were the nadir of that.

And yet, there he was in the third period Saturday, scoring the winning goal on a shot sifted through from the point, and then adding the final dagger from 200 feet away into an empty net.

“Simon responded with a real good game,” McLellan said after — and the Red Wings needed it.

EDVINSSON PUTS THE WINGS AHEAD 5-4 😱

They were down 4-0! pic.twitter.com/oVLyqP6fGz

— NHL (@NHL) October 26, 2025

When you win, all of those things get their due. And after coming back from four goals down, Edvinsson and the Red Wings certainly deserve their credit.

But it’s also impossible to forget what the first 23 minutes of that game looked like. And the 60 on Long Island before that. And most of the game in Buffalo, too.

In just nine games, this Red Wings team has already shown it’s capable of some wild swings — and Saturday’s game showed the full range of them.

“We have to figure this thing out,” McLellan said. “We can’t be a yo-yo like that. I believe we’re closer to the second-half (of the game) team than we are to the first half. But the proof is in the pudding. It has to show up over and over and over again. We can’t pick and choose fractions of the game or segments of games where we want to play to our identity, and then it just disappears.”

That’s why it’s hard to know what to make of these Red Wings nine games in. They’re now sitting at 6-3, and once again riding a high, but have shown plenty of reasons for concern, too. And there are a few key trends factoring into that.

Response to challenges

Say what you will about this group, you can’t really knock the way they have responded to challenges from their coach.

McLellan called them out after opening night. They responded with a five-game win streak. He clearly lit into them Saturday. They came back from four goals down to win.

“Sometimes those things need to be done, and need to be said,” McLellan said. “The night on a whole, you couldn’t be more disappointed early, and more full of joy at the end. It’s amazing how that game went, and how it felt, pre-timeout (and) post-timeout.”

So, yes, they’re certainly showing something there.

But isn’t it also a bit concerning that we have this much data on them responding to challenges from their coach, before the calendar even hits November?

It’s an important trait to be able to respond to that kind of messaging, but it’s also important not to let it get to points that call for moments like Saturday’s timeout. The Red Wings realistically should have had all the fire they could have needed after giving up seven goals Thursday and losing back-to-back games.

So while you’d certainly rather have a resilient team than the alternative, the Red Wings can’t really afford to be needing this level of resilience as often as they already have.

Youthful energy … and mistakes

So many of the early-season narratives have revolved around the young players who made the team out of camp.

Finnie has been one of the best stories in hockey as a seventh-round rookie playing on the first line. His goal on Saturday gave him eight points in nine games, second among all NHL rookies so far. He forechecks. He blocks shots. He kills penalties. He’s brought a spark. And that energy is bolstered by fellow 20-year-old rookies Axel Sandin-Pellikka and Michael Brandsegg-Nygård playing as well.

But let’s face it, the Red Wings have looked a bit inexperienced at times so far, too. Sandin-Pellikka got beaten by Buffalo’s Tyson Kozak on a goal earlier in the week. Brandsegg-Nygård has brought physicality, but his pace hasn’t always looked up to the charge — he finished with less than seven minutes Saturday.

And it’s not just the true rookies, either — with Edvinsson’s rocky week coinciding with sophomore Marco Kasper similarly looking uncharacteristic and getting a bit of a wake-up call from McLellan. Elmer Söderblom was a scratch Saturday and hasn’t done enough to avoid such a fate.

This isn’t to absolve Detroit’s veterans from the mistakes here, because they’ve been plenty culpable themselves. But for a team whose excitement has come in part from getting younger, they’ve played like it in the pejorative way at times, too.

Special teams reversal of fortunes

Detroit did give up two power-play goals Saturday, so their early-season success rate on the penalty kill took a bit of a hit. But still, after having one of the worst PKs in league history last season, the Red Wings’ 84 percent rate on the kill this season ranked 11th in the league as of late Saturday night. That’s been a marked improvement. It also included a huge one late in the game Saturday.

But they’ve needed it to be, because with Patrick Kane injured, their power play has been a shell of the force it was last season, when it finished top-five in the NHL. So far this year, it’s 17th — not terrible, but not the elite unit it had been for them.

The top unit looked better Saturday, and Berggren’s goal came with the second-unit man advantage, which will help the bottom line. And in fairness, any power play would struggle when losing a piece like Kane, who is one of the league’s best playmakers. But for a team that has had such drastic swings in five-on-five efficacy, Detroit is going to need to rely on consistent contributions from the power play. And that still looks like a work in progress.

Struggles on the road

To this point, the Red Wings have played just three road games. So maybe it’s too early to call this a trend.

But nine games in, they’ve yet to play a good game on the road. They have won one — on the back of a 38-save gem by Cam Talbot in Toronto — but their outings in Buffalo and on Long Island were ugly.

“I think this team still has to figure out its identity on the road, and how they’re going to approach games,” McLellan said.

He also noted that the three rookies are the team’s only players who haven’t experienced “road life” before.

It’s a complicated one because of the sample size, and the first 23 minutes Saturday at home were every bit as bad as anything they’ve shown on the road this season. So was much of the home opener against Montreal, when they lost 5-1. Certainly, their game management as a whole is the bigger question for this team than the building they’re playing in.

But I do think the road is more challenging for a group this susceptible to swings because it’s tougher to get things back on track. The road team doesn’t get to pick the matchups. The road crowd won’t will a team to retake the momentum as Little Caesars Arena did Saturday.

And yet, more than half of Detroit’s remaining schedule is on the road — including a five-game road trip up next.

Can the Red Wings build on Saturday’s comeback and learn from their mistakes this week? We’re about to find out.