DETROIT — Patrick Kane has been a Red Wing for only a little over a year, but in just 97 games with Detroit, he’s already made a habit of coming up with a big play when his team needs one. His overtime goal to secure a 5-4 win over the Anaheim Ducks on Sunday was already his 13th game-winning goal since he joined the Red Wings in the middle of last season — and his fifth such goal in overtime.
Whether Sunday’s game should have needed overtime … well, that’s another matter.
For the second straight day at Little Caesars Arena, the Red Wings let a late two-goal lead slip into an overtime contest. And while Kane’s goal made sure the Red Wings at least got 2 points this time, the fact that two-goal lead was in place with under three minutes to play also made the need for an extra frame all the more maddening.
Make no mistake, the Red Wings will take the 2 points Sunday. All told, they earned 3 out of 4 points on the weekend. Most teams will take that no matter what it looks like.
But at the same time, as the NHL’s playoff race starts to heat up in earnest with just 25 games remaining on the Red Wings’ schedule, Detroit knows it has to be better at closing these games out. The Ducks’ two late goals Sunday came with their goaltender pulled, one day after Minnesota equalized late in the same way.
“We’re happy with the win,” coach Todd McLellan said. “We got into a situation similar to (Saturday) night, where the last three or four minutes we had to play six-on-five, and it’s pretty evident we have to do a better job. All six guys — the three forwards, the two defensemen and the goaltender — have to do a better job six-on-five.”
Because six-on-five is typically a small fraction of most games, teams don’t usually spend much practice time on it, instead preferring to work on the nightly musts like forechecks, neutral zone play, defensive zone coverages and special teams. But in acknowledging the weekend theme, McLellan did add, “Maybe we’ll spend a little more time on that.”
But whether it’s the specific six-on-five scenario or just defending late leads more broadly, Detroit’s ability to manage those moments may well determine their playoff fate this season. And those moments aren’t getting any smaller as the race picks up.
“Every game matters,” Moritz Seider said. “But I mean, that was — right from the start of the season I knew. I think everybody knew. We came really close last year, and we know every single point matters in the long term. Obviously now we’ve got 25 games and we’ve got to prepare every single night to be the dominant team out there. Try to create and put our game in their faces and not the other way around, just to give ourselves a chance to stay in that picture and hopefully gain experience the closer we get to make a push for it.”
Moritz Seider knows what the intensifying grind of a playoff push feels like after the Red Wings barely missed out last season. (Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
To that end, the three points on the weekend put the Red Wings two points clear of the division rival Ottawa Senators for the first wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference. They’re also trying to fend off the Boston Bruins, New York Rangers and Columbus Blue Jackets — a team Detroit will see twice this coming week, including Saturday’s Stadium Series contest in Columbus.
A year after the Red Wings came up a tiebreaker short of the postseason, nearly everyone in Detroit’s locker room is quite familiar with the stakes of letting a stray point go.
Of course, the Red Wings closed out last season with three consecutive heart-pumping wins in overtime and the shootout. They were in it right to the very end. But looking back, it was missed chances earlier on the calendar that cost them. A blown four-goal lead to the Sharks in December. A sloppy trip to Buffalo. Two different losses the Coyotes in March.
The good news for this year’s team is that there was another variable in many of those games: the Red Wings were without their captain and heartbeat, Dylan Larkin, for a crucial stretch in March. You plug him into those games and there’s little doubt Detroit emerges with at least one more point.
The bad news? Injuries do happen in this game, and the Red Wings are experiencing that right now, too. First, it was Andrew Copp leaving Saturday’s game with an apparent upper-body injury after a scrum in the corner. He didn’t play Sunday, and McLellan said after the game they’d know more Monday — but that he wouldn’t play Tuesday in Minnesota. That’s not too encouraging.
And then Sunday, the Red Wings lost Michael Rasmussen to a high hit from Trevor Zegras that went uncalled by officials. McLellan said the refs told him they didn’t see the hit and “they just can’t make it up.” It makes some sense that they didn’t see it, considering Rasmussen didn’t have the puck. He didn’t return to the game, and as McLellan said, “When a player gets a blow to the head and doesn’t return, it’s never a good sign.”
We’ll see if Zegras hears from the league’s Department of Player Safety on the hit, but for Detroit’s purposes, that only helps them so much.
The Red Wings are left hoping not to be without Rasmussen for long as these games get even tougher and more consequential. Both he and Copp are important players for the Red Wings — and especially in the exact kind of late-game situations Detroit now finds itself needing to hone in on.
They certainly missed them both on Sunday, even while they ultimately emerged with the victory off of another Kane game-winner.
Particularly encouraging was that the play was really created by rookie Marco Kasper, who won a battle behind his own net and then banked a stretch pass off the boards to spring Kane loose. Kasper finished the game with a goal and an assist, as he continues to emerge as a key player in his own right.
If the Red Wings are without Copp and Rasmussen for any amount of time, players such as Kasper may need to step up and do even more to fill the void. That’s already been the case on Detroit’s blue line, where Jeff Petry’s injury created a hole and rookie Albert Johansson has been a revelation in replacing him.
Kasper and Johansson weren’t part of last year’s playoff chase with most of the rest of this group, which means they haven’t yet built up that kind of late-season experience at this level.
But as the key moments start arriving, each one bigger than the last, they — and the rest of the Red Wings — will have to find a way to keep rising to them.
Nothing will be slowing down from here.
(Top photo of Marco Kasper and Patrick Kane: Brian Bradshaw Sevald / Imagn Images)
