DETROIT — The Detroit Red Wings are 25 games into their season now, and their issues are pretty clear.

For a second straight game Friday, Detroit dropped a 6-3 game (this time to the Tampa Bay Lightning) that was entirely avoidable. And it featured many of the same issues that have plagued the Red Wings this season: opponents cashing in at the net front, costly turnovers, offensive chances left unfinished and goaltending that left something to be desired.

And for as promising as this group started the season, winning five out of six against playoff teams from last season, they’ve given a whole lot back since. Detroit is 8-10-1 since that hot start, and has now lost four of its last five.

“First of all, you’ve got to look and say, ‘OK, are we good enough? Do we have enough talent?’ Yeah, we do,” Red Wings head coach Todd McLellan said. “We don’t get 13 wins in 25 games without having a team that can play well enough. So are we playing well enough? No, we’re not.”

Much of McLellan’s answer as to why came down to individual mistakes, and it’s easy enough to see why. The Red Wings have, on numerous occasions lately, been burned by glaring giveaways and botched execution on faceoffs and around the net. There were more examples of that on Friday, the most glaring being the second goal they allowed, when Albert Johansson had his stick lifted by the Lightning’s Gage Goncalves while going back for the puck, giving Goncalves a premium look at John Gibson that he had no trouble burying.

GIMME THAT 💪

Gage Goncalves with the steal and the goal! pic.twitter.com/7inz2kf1S9

— NHL (@NHL) November 28, 2025

After emphasizing the net front in practice, the Red Wings gave up more goals there, too — whether it was with a screen that helped create the Lightning’s first goal, or the three whacks Yanni Gourde got on rebounds at the goal mouth to score their third.

Their fourth goal, also by Gourde, falls into both columns, as a Ben Chiarot clearing attempt went right to Gourde for a point blast while Nate Danielson toppled a Lightning player into Gibson. And the fifth goal, a re-direct by Jake Guentzel at the goal mouth, came after what McLellan described as “a pair of ‘D’ (Moritz Seider and Simon Edvinsson) that are just fumbling around in their end.”

These kinds of mistakes do happen in hockey games, of course. There would seldom be any offense if they didn’t. But they’re happening an awful lot for the Red Wings, and when that happens, there’s clearly an issue.

“You focus so hard (on) not turning the puck over: don’t turn it over, don’t turn it over, guess what happens? You’re gonna turn the puck over,” Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin said. “Right now we’re just so — we want it so bad. And I can tell you that. We’re listening to what we’re being told to do and we’re trying to do it, and we’re trying to do it, and it’s just, we’re almost trying too hard. We’re not playing the game. When things aren’t going well, we just kind of sag, and it seems like the things that we talk about just keep happening. I don’t have a reason, but I know we’re trying to clean up those mistakes.”

McLellan, who has at times hammered his group for these repeated mistakes, had similar sentiments.

“They care, OK?” McLellan said. “Let me make that real clear. They care. And practice yesterday, we had a really good practice. They do care. But that only gets you so far.”

And that, really, is the crux of where the Red Wings stand approaching the second third of the season.

McLellan isn’t wrong to point to Detroit’s wins for evidence that they have more in them than they’re showing right now. They do. They have key players with way more to give, and time may very well correct that. I don’t think Marco Kasper is going to finish the year with just 10 points; his current pace, and Patrick Kane shouldn’t be as snake-bitten as he’s been of late, either. They’re not the only ones you can say that about.

Detroit also has shown an ability to check a whole lot better than it is right now, as the Wings proved in shutting down Connor McDavid, beating the Lightning 2-1 the first time they played them, pulling out a 2-1 win over the Rangers in New York, and holding Vegas to just one goal as well.

But those data points won’t mean as much the further they are in the rearview mirror.

Right now, it’s the problems that are much more prominent in that picture.

It’s hard to separate the Red Wings’ goaltending from their team defense, but Gibson’s .865 save percentage so far is the fifth-worst among goalies who have played in at least five games, and he entered Friday worth negative-3.78 goals saved above expected, according to Evolving Hockey. Cam Talbot ranks better in both categories (.887 save percentage, 2.33 goals saved above expected), but he’s 38 years old and can only reasonably play so much this season. Detroit needs more from Gibson; there’s no way around it.

A fair share of that certainly falls to the players in front of him, too, and the repeated turnovers are impossible to ignore. So, increasingly, are the issues at the defensive net, where too many pucks are getting tipped and rebounds left uncleared.

“We’re in position sometimes and we don’t move people or we don’t control sticks,” McLellan said, “and then when we’re out of position, we’re not having a lot of success sweeping the crease — anything that’s laying around in there. … If you don’t sweep creases, you don’t get good body positions, you don’t control sticks, it makes it hard on our goaltenders.”

And while the top of Detroit’s blue line is far from blameless, the group has been particularly hamstrung by its third pairing.

According to independent analyst Prashanth Iyer, Detroit was giving up 3.83 five-on-five goals per 60 minutes with anyone outside of their top four (Seider, Edvinsson, Chiarot and Axel Sandin-Pellikka) on the ice entering Friday. Even Johansson, who was such a positive story in the second half of last season, hasn’t looked the same, and neither Jacob Bernard-Docker nor Travis Hamonic has looked consistently effective either.

The Red Wings have been outscored 23-11 with Johansson on the ice at five-on-five this season. With Hamonic, it’s 14-3. Interestingly, they’ve outscored their opponents 8-7 at five-on-five with Bernard-Docker on the ice, though it’s worth noting that has also come in the most sheltered minutes of the group.

Is that an area the Red Wings can upgrade via trade this season? Or do they think they can get more out of what is becoming a glaring issue? That’s a question Steve Yzerman has to be considering at this point, with the season now old enough for such stats to have real meaning.

At the other end of the ice, the Red Wings are scoring on just 7.2 percent of their shots, third-fewest in the league entering the Friday night slate. They’ve missed some production from key spots in the lineup, and maybe that shooting percentage provides some hope for positive regression in the finishing department. Maybe.

But if they can’t solve their issues defending and stopping the puck first, any questions about offense will remain a secondary concern.

“We’re not good enough to be giving stuff away for free,” McLellan said. “But I know you’ve all heard that story before. So until we fix it and take care of it, we’ll keep having these issues.”