SEATTLE − The message hit home, and it put the Detroit Red Wings in a better position on the road.
The Wings take a five-game point streak into their second stop on this trip thanks to a spirited third period in which they rallied from a three-goal deficit
against the Seattle Kraken. The Wings came up short in the shootout, but considering how dead in the water they looked through 40 minutes on Tuesday, Oct. 20, to get a point is not nothing."I think it took us a little too long. We were getting frustrated," forward Alex DeBrincat said. "The message going into the third period was put the frustration aside and just keep going."
It was DeBrincat who scored with 16.9 seconds on the clock, his 300th career goal.
"It's cool, it's for sure cool," DeBrincat
said. "That just shows we're going to play till the last minute and the last second and keep going no matter what's going on in the game."
What was going earlier was not much, with four shots in the second period and relying on Daniil Tarasov to make saves to cover up for a sloppy effort from the skaters.
"I thought we put ourselves in a situation where we got frustrated and that was taking a lot of energy out of our game," coach Todd McLellan said. "We weren't connected and we were upset, for lack of a better term, with our play. We talked about it between the second and third and got a goal, and that broke the ice for us. So then we started coming back in, and we have been a pretty resilient group. But we fall short, probably, because of our start.
"We weren't scoring. We were getting scored on. We didn't have many chances. It's typical when you're on the bench and that happens. We take a too many men on the ice penalty and we shoot it over the glass. It basically should be through the kill and all of a sudden it's in our net. So that adds to the frustration, and you can feel it. They're human beings. That's what happens. We needed a break to regroup and found a way to dig ourselves out of it."
Two points would be better, of course, but for a team embroiled in turmoil − Dylan Larkin's trade request, Simon Edvinsson's contract stalemate − banking points in five straight games is valuable.
"A point's always a point," Lucas Raymond said. "Good to get one at the start of a long road trip and get ready for the next game."
That comes Thursday at the Vancouver Canucks. The Seattle performance was all the more gratifying because Raymond scored for the first time this season. Viktor Arvidsson scored for the fourth time, his first at even strength. Dylan Larkin had two assists. That's what the Wings need from their top players.
"That's part of the whole narrative of it wasn't happening for us earlier and it changed in the third," McLellan said. "Let's face it, your go-to guys have to be go-to guys to have success in this league, and they elevated.
"We know who we are and we're going to have to scrap. I used that word the other day. We have to scrap for whatever points we can get. At the end of the year, sometimes one point makes a huge difference. Maybe tonight was a night that could be a difference-maker."
Contact Helene St. James at Hstjames@freepress.com. Read more on the Detroit Red Wings and sign up for our Red Wings newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Red Wings looked sleepy in Seattle, and a message from their coach flipped a switch
