Wings' comfort zone in standings evaporating after another loss
That lovely cushion the Red Wings built for themselves in the first three-quarters of the season is starting to look awfully good -- because their lead in the race for the playoffs is melting faster than the snow these days.
They frittered away another chance to pad that lead Thursday night, losing an imminently winnable game against the wounded Columbus Blue Jackets, 3-1. It was their third loss in four games. Now instead of looking up in the standings, where they had a chance to catch the conference leaders a few weeks ago, they're looking nervously in the rear-view mirror because Boston is coming hard.
The Bruins beat visiting Tampa Bay, 3-2, in a shootout to pull within five points of the third-place Wings in the Atlantic Division.
Time for a sense of urgency to kick in?
"I think so," captain Henrik Zetterberg said bluntly.
Wings coach Mike Babcock mentioned earlier that he preps his team before every game by making the opponent sound "like the '68 Montreal Canadiens." He might be advised to try a new tact, since his team is making a lot of mediocre opponents look like those great Montreal teams. Detroit, meantime, lately has played too often like the '68 Oakland Seals, by far the worst team in the NHL that year.
Then again, Babcock deserves full marks for consistently saying his team can take nothing for granted. "First, we have to get in the playoffs," he has said repeatedly. Perhaps his team will take note as it embarks on another difficult four-game road trip, starting Saturday at Philadelphia and continuing Sunday at Pittsburgh, concluding another tiring segment of three games in four days.
All of which makes the two points the Wings whizzed away Thursday so much more important. And frustrating. Not only can they not seem to beat division leaders Montreal and Tampa Bay, they can't handle Columbus, either. The Blue Jackets aren't last in the Eastern Conference, but they can see bottom from where they sat coming into the game -- tied for 13th with lowly Toronto.
The Blue Jackets were missing six regulars to injury, yet still managed to extend their mastery over Detroit to 9-2-1 in the last 12 meetings with the Wings -- including 4-1 in their last five games at The Joe. Columbus has lost 433 man-games to injury or illness -- with 15 games still to play. For comparison's sake, Detroit set a franchise record with 418 man-games lost last season.
All that said, this is no time to panic. Quite the opposite, Wings goalie Jimmy Howard warned.
"We just want everyone to relax a little bit, settle down and let this thing run its course," Howard said of the slump. "Every team goes through something like this at some point of the season. You've just got to find a way to fight your way through it. That's what it's come down to for us right now."
Defenseman Niklas Kronwall agreed. "We just need to settle down. We all know what we're capable of," he said. "We've played some good hockey over the course of the year. We just have to get back on track."
The Wings started well, getting a power play goal from Justin Abdelkader, his 18th, at 7:49 of the first period. And while his teammates stayed busy peppering Columbus goalie Sergei Bobrovsky with 42 shots, they also were guilty of some uncharacteristic defensive lapses in their own zone -- a bit of a concern in this recent slump -- that led to three straight Columbus goals.
"Defensively, we made some mistakes, turned the puck over on our own blue line, poor defensive-zone coverage," Babcock said. "We didn't help our goalie enough...and in the end we weren't able to score enough goals.
"Obviously, we're not finding a way to win enough games right now. We don't look in sync, or fluid, if that makes any sense to you. And any time that's the case it means you're not executing as a group, and when we don't execute as a group, we don't look fast."
A couple of weeks ago, the Wings were riding a high after returning from a brutal Western road trip with a 4-1-1 record. Since then, they're 2-3 -- and by their own admission they were fortunate to win one of those in overtime against the New York Rangers.
But don't bother suggesting that fatigue might be an issue.
"That's an excuse," Howard said. "We're a young enough team now where we should find ways to skate."
And they did throughout this game, he added.
"I thought tonight's effort was one of the best ones we've had lately -- since that West Coast trip," Howard said. "It's definitely something to build off of."
