At least the Dylan Larkin booing stopped. And, believe it or not, the once-familiar encouraging chants returned and replaced recent pleas to "sell the team!"
That might be little consolation for Red Wings fans these days. But these are strange days indeed for Winged Wheel Nation. And maybe it’s time to measure growth with the most incremental of baby steps.
So the Wings did the most Wings thing they could do Tuesday, Oct. 13, against the New Jersey Devils. They recovered from a slow and sluggish start and salvaged a pointin a 5-4 overtime loss at Little Caesars Arena.
“We're a work in progress,” coach Todd McLellan said. “That's what we are, and you know we've had complete games. We've had complete games and lost. We've had partial games and come
close. Tonight was one of them.”
I’m not excusing what the Wings did. In fact, they all need to answer for a missed opportunity. They were coming off two days’ rest and were playing at home against the Devils, a similar bottom-of-the-conference team that played the day before.
That should have been a sizable advantage. But the Wings finished the first period tied at 1 after being badly outshot, 15-3. When Michael Brandsegg-Nygard gave them the lead less than two minutes into the second period, the Wings were still being outshot, 18-4. The Devils outshot them for the game, 37-26.
“We were flat,” McLellan said. “We didn't skate well. We looked very sluggish between the ears reading plays.”
So I asked McLellan if he was responsible for that poor start.
“You know, we skated yesterday. Sometimes the coach can overskate or underskate players the day before a game, and they feel sluggish. Our routine was off a little bit. But if I throw those out, those are just excuses. You know, it's our job to have them ready, and they clearly weren't.”
Not to excuse McLellan or the Wings’ poor start, but I think too much is made of slow starts in sports. The final result, no matter how you get there, is what matters.
In that way, McLellan and the Wings deserve credit for digging themselves out of their hole. And much of the credit goes to goalie John Gibson’s early stellar play, when he stopped numerous shots from close range.
The Wings’ second line of Alex DeBrincat, Emmitt Finnie and Michael Brandsegg-Nygard gets the bulk of the offensive credit by generating three goals, including two from DeBrincat, who also had an assist.
“But it was our job to drag them out of it as much as we could, and we got that done,” McLellan said. “So we're all in this together.
“Like I said the other day when we lost to Seattle, that's a 30-person loss. That's not just the guys wearing the equipment. Sometimes the guys wearing the suits are really involved in it as well.”
By my rough estimation, LCA was about 80% full. Not bad for a 6 p.m. puck drop on a Tuesday. The crowd slowly got into it and started the “Let’s go, Red Wings” chant after Brandsegg-Nygard gave them a 2-1 lead at 1:25 of the second period after great feed from Finnie on a 2-on-1 break.
The game became spirited in the second period, which featured five goals on 26 combined shots. The Wings never led again, but they flashed a kinetic power play at the end of the second period that generated three shots. DeBrincat sent the game to overtime with a one-timer off a feed from Moritz Seider early in the third period.
“Yeah, I mean, I think once we got going a little bit, you know, it livened up a little bit,” DeBrincat said of the crowd. “I mean, they didn't have much to cheer for in the first period, other than the goal.
"You know, like I said, we're sitting back too much, playing in our own zone too much and, you know, there's not much to cheer about there. But once we got going, I felt like it was pretty good and, you know, it's something we can build off of, you know, energy-wise. When they get loud, it's a huge pickup for us.”
And yes, it did get loud. The “Let’s go, Red Wings” chants rose up regularly throughout the game – perhaps taking the place of the booing Larkin had endured earlier this year. He doesn’t look like his old self, and maybe he literally never will after he was stripped of his captain’s “C,” following his trade request.
But the main reason Larkin doesn’t look like himself is because he’s missing his renowned speed. He’s working his way back from an off-ice injury he sustained in September and his biggest weapon isn’t available.
“I think Dylan is skating his way back into, you know, his skin,” McLellan said. “I guess you could say he, with his injury, he didn't skate. He didn't train a lot because he couldn't missed all of camp. So for him to be effective, he needs his legs going at a real good pace.”
Maybe Larkin isn’t the only one who needs to find his legs and skate back into his skin. Maybe it’s more than that. Maybe it’s time Hockeytown finds a way to move on from the summer bummer morass that threatens to scuttle the entire season.
The cheers that replaced the jeers on Tuesday, along with the better finish to an awful start, felt like a small step in the right direction for the Wings. Now they need to start taking more of them.
Contact Carlos Monarrez at cmonarrez@freepress.com and follow him on X @cmonarrez.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: No boos for Dylan Larkin felt like small step for Red Wings in OT loss
