DETROIT — After an opening five games that had his team in the national eye for all the right reasons, Derek Lalonde spent Tuesday morning trying to pump the brakes.
Surely, he was as happy as anyone that the Red Wings were the league’s last team without a regulation loss and that their penalty kill had yet to allow a goal. But he also brought words of warning ahead of a game against the Devils.
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“We’re still a long ways to go to be a top team,” he said. “Or even be in (the) conversation of being a middle-of-the-pack team in this league.”
It didn’t take long for that to be prophetic.
The Red Wings got out to a fine start Tuesday night, with Dominik Kubalik and Dylan Larkin — two of their best offensive players so far this season — connecting for a goal less than three minutes in. But against a New Jersey team rated as one of the league’s most analytically impressive so far this season, it turned quickly.
“We just got away from our game,” Lalonde said. “Turnover. Turnover. Slow. And then we fueled them. The turnovers, what they are, now they’re getting transition (looks), now they’re on the puck, now they’re beating us to races.”
The Devils hemmed in the Red Wings for much of the rest of the first period, outshooting them 15-5, and leading 2-1 by the end of the frame. New Jersey extended that lead to 4-1 in the first five minutes of the second.
The Red Wings did get a late push, with Kubalik scoring in the third to provide a glimmer of hope for a comeback. But after the Devils weathered that threat, they slammed the door by potting two more goals, handing Detroit a 6-2 loss and a reality check.
“We are what we are,” Lalonde said. “And if we play the right way, we can be successful. But we’re just not talented enough to lull our way through games and expect to get outcomes.”
There are any number of culprits in a loss this lopsided. Detroit’s special teams came back to earth, giving up their first power-play goal of the year and a short-handed goal in a five-minute span.
But the biggest source of pain was Detroit’s inability to manage the puck — while carrying it, passing it or anything else.
“We kind of let the game turn into a turnover fest,” Larkin said. “That’s the way they want to play. They’re good off the transition. They turn over pucks too, but they made us pay on our turnovers. We were just sloppy with the puck all night.”
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Lalonde attributed those turnovers to “some complacency. Even a little confidence in the wrong way.” With that, he pointed back to that hot start and the bubbling optimism that accompanied it.
“We’re off this 3-0-2 start,” he said, “they’re listening to (the media) tell us how good we are in the articles.”
Certainly, Lalonde knew coming in that the Red Wings weren’t without flaws. As I wrote after Sunday’s win, even without a regulation loss and plenty of positive storylines, their shot volume and quality numbers were closer to the bottom of the league than the top. The schedule had been favorable, too.
It’s why Lalonde was so eager to pump the brakes publicly on all the good vibes to begin his tenure.
But even then, he acknowledged his team was playing well and had “gotten what they’ve deserved,” with all the necessary caveats. He also pointed out one useful element of the strong start: “Sometimes it’s just easier to teach off winning,” he said — meaning it’s good for players to be rewarded with wins when their process is good.
When they regroup Wednesday, though, they’ll have to teach off process gone wrong.
Beyond the obvious turnovers, Lalonde saw a lack of urgency with the puck play. Lost battles along the wall added up to pucks in the net. Forward Andrew Copp said he felt as though the team was slow through the neutral zone with the puck, leading to dump-ins that the Devils were on first — and brought back the other way just as quickly.
“If you’re a half step behind to start, you’re going to end up two steps behind once they get the three-on-two rush going the other way,” Copp said. “I felt like there was a lot of that tonight.”
And where they had managed to survive mistakes — or at least steal an overtime point in spite of them in previous outings — Tuesday brought no such mercy.
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None of this, of course, is a disaster. The fact the Red Wings were the NHL’s last team to lose in regulation tells you how short-lived that ride was destined to be. It’s a hard league.
But however good the Red Wings hope to be, they aren’t there today. And realistically, they weren’t there yet the last two weeks, either.
If that wasn’t obvious coming into Tuesday, it was laid plain coming out of it.
“We’re not the 1980 Russian Team right now,” Copp said. “We’re in the process of becoming a team that wins a lot of games, but there’s a lot of lessons to be learned through that process. So tonight was definitely a lesson that we’re going to have to build from and understand there’s a certain type of game … when we don’t have our A-plus game, we’ve gotta have a pretty good B-plus game, and be responsible and manage the game away from the puck and skate.
“And we just didn’t really do any of those things tonight.”
(Top photo of the Devils’ Dawson Mercer pursued by Filip Hronek of the Red Wings: Brian Sevald / USA Today)
