The Red Wings\u2019 6-3 loss to Nashville at Little Caesars Arena <\/a>further exposed their defensive deficiencies. The Predators scored five goals, including an empty-netter, in the third period to erase a 2-1 deficit.<\/p>\n\u201cI thought we were quite casual early in the game,\u201d McLellan said. \u201cOur passing was horrendous. There was nothing crisp about our game and somehow our power play kept us even.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then when the third period starts, we gave up four in every different fashion you could think of — four-on-four, faceoff coverage, off a rush and off a D-zone breakout. There\u2019s really no other element to the game where you can get beat.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was particularly concerning to see Nashville score twice in rapid-fire fashion on two occasions in the third. First, Nick Blankenburg and Roman Josi scored 15 seconds apart less than 2\u00bd minutes into the period. Then, with the game tied 3-3, Ryan O\u2019Reilly and Erik Haula scored 28 seconds apart with a little more than five minutes remaining.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid we let our guard down? Yeah, we probably did,\u201d McLellan said. \u201cWe made mistakes. They ended up in our net. And when I say that it sounds like I\u2019m blaming the goalie (Cam Talbot), but I\u2019m not. You bury yourself. You just keep putting sand on your head. And when you can\u2019t breathe, now you want to dig your way out. It doesn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond said their team didn\u2019t show enough intensity in the third period.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time there was a crucial battle, we kind of lost it,\u201d Seider said. \u201cWe have to be way harder to defend. Play with a little bit more swagger and then just really up our intensity.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got to make more plays with authority. We can\u2019t be afraid to step up or make a play in our own zone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Said Raymond: \u201cWe got to have a better sense of urgency. We wanted to come out and play a hard, tough game and make it hard on them. When a team is struggling a little bit, you want to kill that momentum. And even with that, I think we still come into the third period in a great spot to win a hockey game at home, and we just got to get it done.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Red Wings (13-10-1) led the Atlantic Division a week ago. Now they\u2019re out of a playoff position.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time we get something and we grab onto it, we give something else back,\u201d McLellan said. \u201cIt\u2019s not a sign of a good team. Good teams hold their lessons and they build off of them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DETROIT \u2013 The Detroit Red Wings are justifiably concerned about their lack of secondary scoring and reliance on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-316935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}