A pair of struggling Eastern Conference teams in desperate need of a win will square off in Detroit on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
The Columbus Blue Jackets have lost six straight games while the Detroit Red Wings have dropped six of their last eight. Both clubs are trying to revive their fading playoff hopes.<\/p>\n
Columbus (38-27-12, 88 points) lost at home to the Winnipeg Jets 2-1 on Saturday. The frustrated Blue Jackets held a team meeting following the defeat.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll just keep our conversation in here because we\u2019re a better team than what we\u2019ve shown and just talked about it,\u201d Blue Jackets defenseman Zach Werenski said. \u201cWe\u2019re not eliminated. We\u2019re still in it and I believe in this group. I believe we can get it done and it\u2019s just doing it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, we did it for two months. The last two weeks obviously haven\u2019t gone our way, but it\u2019s in the room and it\u2019s on us to just pull it out and get it done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Columbus\u2019 offense has stalled during the slide, scoring a total of 10 goals.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe create the second most chances on the forecheck in the entire league,\u201d Blue Jackets coach Rick Bowness said. \u201cYet we want to get inside the blue line and make cute little plays against good teams that aren\u2019t working. And they\u2019re not working. So, I have to get after them. They\u2019ve got to change their mindset.\u201d<\/p>\n
Werenski believes the team needs a singular mindset on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t worry about what other teams do or whoever we have after Detroit,\u201d he said. \u201cOur focus just has to be on Detroit, and after that we\u2019ll figure it out.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Red Wings (40-29-8, 88 points) rallied from a 4-1 third-period deficit to tie Minnesota on Sunday. But Patrick Kane, who scored the tying goal, took a damaging tripping penalty which led to Kirill Kaprisov\u2019s game-winner for the Wild with 1:51 remaining.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe get the comeback and take a penalty 150 feet from our net not even in the play. It hurts,\u201d Red Wings coach Todd McLellan said.<\/p>\n
Minnesota built its lead by scoring four goals in the second period with the first one coming 18 seconds after the opening faceoff.<\/p>\n
\u201cFifteen seconds in we win a draw and we\u2019re getting scored on because we\u2019re lollygagging around and don\u2019t advance the puck,\u201d McLellan said. \u201cNow it\u2019s in our net. Our team right now, as soon as it doesn\u2019t go our way, we crumble for a while, then we pick ourselves up from the mat but it\u2019s too late. We did it again (Sunday). A pattern.\u201d<\/p>\n
Detroit has five games remaining and might need to win them all to end a nine-year playoff drought.<\/p>\n
\u201c(We need to) play like we did in the third period more of the game,\u201d Red Wings center J.T. Compher said. \u201cWe gave ourselves a chance. If we start better, it makes a little easier on us. The way we played in the third, we have to play for the rest of the games remaining.\u201d<\/p>\n
Detroit won its first meeting with Columbus this season on Alex DeBrincat\u2019s overtime goal on Nov. 22. The Blue Jackets pulled out a 6-5 shootout victory in the second matchup on Dec. 4.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A pair of struggling Eastern Conference teams in desperate need of a win will square off in Detroit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5108],"tags":[3644,5180,897,230,5179,5,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-544493","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-columbus-blue-jackets","8":"tag-blue-jackets","9":"tag-bluejackets","10":"tag-columbus","11":"tag-columbus-blue-jackets","12":"tag-columbusbluejackets","13":"tag-hockey","14":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116360231347620670","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}