The post Are Red Wings up to The Playoff Challenge? appeared first on Detroit Hockey Now.
Todd McLellan
Detroit Red Wings coach Todd McLellan answered the question quickly, as if he knew it was going to be posed at some point.
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Why do the Red Wings struggle so much to measure up as the NHL schedule grows tougher?
“If I, or we, or the organization had the answers, we’d be putting our fingers on them,” McLellan said.
Factoring in Saturday’s 5-3 home-ice loss to the Philadelphia Flyers, Detroit is now 7-10-3 since Jan. 24. On that date, the club stood first in the Atlantic Division and tied for first overall in the Eastern Conference.
Today, the Red Wings are 10th in the East, facing an uphill battle to make it to the NHL postseason.
“We are up and down,” McLellan said. “Is it the stress of the year? I don’t know.”
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Do the Red Wings have the right stuff to make the Stanley Cup playoffs? That we also don’t know.
Recent history, along with this season’s results to date, suggests that they do not.
Red Wings Struggle To Live With Prosperity
Fresh off an impressive 5-2 road win on Friday over the Buffalo Sabres, the current Atlantic Division leaders, the Red Wings returned home to take a massive pratfall against the Flyers.
Philly raced out to a 4-0 lead before the Red Wings decided to show up for the game.
“Unacceptable by us to play like that for the first couple of periods,” Detroit forward Alex DeBrincat said. “We gotta be way better.”
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Can they play better? Yes. Can they do it with regularity? Who knows?
And it’s that latter answer which is most frightening. That we don’t know speaks volumes about the intestinal fortitude – or lack thereof – of this team.
Detroit Showed Little Energy
Some will use the excuse that the Red Wings were playing the second game of back-to-backs on Saturday, but McLellan isn’t buying that theory.
“Well, we’ve played against teams back to back, and they seem to have energy,” McLellan said. “We were in our own beds last night at a good hour. We brought guys down in the morning and didn’t pre-game skate.
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“We didn’t waste any energy there.”
They didn’t waste a whole lot of energy on the ice over the first 54 minutes of Saturday’s game, either.
“I think some guys came to compete, but not think at all,” McLellan said. “Working hard and working smart have to go together. If you’re not doing at least one of the two, you’re in trouble.
“And we had some guys that were doing neither.”
Teams also talk about how much tougher the games get in February, March, and April.
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“At this time of the year, you should be elevating the level of play,” McLellan said.
Instead of stepping up, all too often the Red Wings are stepping aside, allowing other teams to pass them by.
The post Are Red Wings up to The Playoff Challenge? appeared first on Detroit Hockey Now.