Detroit — The Red Wings will head into a lengthy break in the schedule in a sour mood.

They’ll have plenty of time, two weeks to be exact with the 4-Nations Face-off Tournament, to mull Saturday’s 6-3 loss to Tampa.

Tampa’s Dylan Duke, playing his first NHL game, scored his first goal at 4:10 of the third period, giving Tampa 5-3 lead, and Brandon Hagel added an empty-net goal at 17:57, Hagel’s 26th goal and second Saturday, to clinch the outcome.

The loss ended a seven-game Wings winning streak, while Tampa (30-20-4) moved three points ahead of the Wings in the standings.

“Not very good,” said defenseman Ben Chiarot said of the Wings’ start. “You can’t start like that, that slow, against a good team and dig too big of a hole.”

Tampa scored two goals in the first 2:56, the third shot and second goal by Erik Cernak, that led coach Todd McLellan to replace Lyon with Cam Talbot.

The goaltenders didn’t make some early stops, but they didn’t get much help from the carelessness of teammates in front of them.

“Two of the first three (shots) went in and we’re two minutes into the game,” Red Wings coach Todd McLellan said. “The thing about pulling a goaltender, when you pull a goaltender, he leaves the game and he’s not heard from again and everybody asks questions after. When the coach has a (crappy) night, he doesn’t get pulled, he stays in the game and stands there. A player has a (crappy) night, and they continue, so it’s magnified for the goaltenders.

“It’s a tough position to play but we gave up four goals on our first six shots. By no means is it on the two guys that wore the pads, because as I alluded to earlier, we were so careless. Maybe if they got us one save out of the four (goals) but it’s a team loss, not just on the targets.”

McLellan spoke the day before about the danger of playing the day before a long break. Families are packed and ready to escape the cold weather, minds might not be focused, and bodies could be a half-step slow.

BOX SCORE: Lightning 6, Red Wings 3

But the Wings were playing hard and were in the game mentally.

“I’ll tell you the same thing I told them between the first and second periods,” McLellan said. “Usually, the coach comes in and is losing his marbles because of lack of effort and no energy and bad body language and all those types of things.

“We had all of that. But we didn’t have any game management skill. The number of turnovers, the gifts we gave them, I didn’t see that part coming.”

The Wings (28-22-5) trailed 4-2 after one period, then sliced Tampa’s lead to 4-3 when Alex DeBrincat stripped the puck along the boards from Tampa defenseman Darren Raddysh, went in alone, and beat goaltender Alexei Vasilevskiy at 14:29.

But the Wings weren’t able to pull even, and when Duke scored early in the third period, that made life more difficult for the Wings.

“We’ve worked hard to develop a way we need to play, and it didn’t exist in the first period,” McLellan said. “It was there in the second, you could feel and see the difference (the Wings outshot Tampa 19-5 in the middle period). In the third we got back a little bit to what we were in the first (period), so we’re still trying to find our game.

“That team (Tampa) is poised enough, and they’ve won enough, they sit in the weeds long enough and take advantage of carelessness. We offered a plate full of it in the first period.”

Vladimir Tarasenko and Patrick Kane (power play) scored first-period Wings goals. Tarasenko’s goal, a deflection of Moritz Seider’s shot from the point, was the 300th of Tarasenko’s career.

Hagel, Cernak, Brayden Point and Nick Paul had first-period Tampa goals.

The Wings outshot the Lightning 37-18.

The Wings are off until Feb. 22 when they host Minnesota, returning from the 4-Nations Face-Off tournament. Having gone 15-5-1 since McLellan was hired on Dec. 26, and charging into the playoff picture, though Saturday’s loss stung, the Wings go into this break in a different state of mind than the Christmas break.

“Our game is in a pretty good spot,” DeBrincat said. “Not as good tonight, but overall, we’re doing good things and winning games, and the feeling is confident in the room. The break will be nice to get rested and come back at full strength.”

tkulfan@detroitnews.com

@tkulfan

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