Red Wings Smothered 2–1 by Carolina, Failing Test and Dropping Third Straight in Regulation

DETROIT — After the morning's skate, Red Wings coach Todd McLellan said that Tuesday evening's game would be a test.  "We're gonna get in the classroom and sit down at the desk and take the test and see what the grade is," he said.  "I'd like to think we can pass."

When the final bell sounded to close the evening's testing window, the scoreboard showed McLellan's team had fallen just short of the passing line—Carolina 2, Detroit 1—but 60 minutes of hockey culminating in a third straight defeat suggested a more extreme margin than just the one shot.

This particular test was one of pedigree but also style.  Hardened by recent playoff experience, the Hurricanes are a bona fide Stanley Cup contender, one that needn't check the standings each night for assurances of its playoff berth and one that made its trade deadline splash early by bringing in Mikko Rantanen in late January.  They are also the most distinctive team in the league by style of play, thanks to an aggressive simplicity: pressure all over the ice, all the time; shot, retrieval, shot, retrieval when they make it to the offensive zone.

Detroit's task was to acquit itself as a peer to Carolina and to show equanimity in the face of the Hurricanes' effort to sow chaos.  On both fronts, the Red Wings fell short.

By the end of the night, Detroit didn't lag horribly far behind in shots (30-25, Carolina), but in territorial play, the visitors had a commanding edge.  Throughout the second and third periods, the Canes seemed to camp out deep in the Red Wings zone, thriving below the goal line to extend possession and keep the puck a safe 200 feet from goaltender Frederik Andersen's net.

As defenseman Moritz Seider framed it, "We just spent a little bit too much energy, obviously, defending, and once we had the puck, we had to get off the ice and change."

After taking a 2-0 lead 89 seconds into the second period when Jordan Staal took advantage of an Alex Lyon mishandle behind the net for an easy wraparound goal, it didn't matter whether those extended possessions created quality offense; the Hurricanes already had what they needed.

The apotheosis of this dynamic came late in the second period, when Carolina camped out in the Detroit third of the rink for over three minutes, stranding Red Wings defensemen Simon Edvinsson and Albert Johansson for shifts of 4:24 and 4:28 respectively.  Edvinsson and Johansson managed to withstand that onslaught, for which they earned plaudits from McLellan.

"A very unfortunate set of circumstances for those two young kids, but they handled it well," the coach said.  "They went to the middle of the rink and stayed there. That's on the goaltender to get a whistle when it comes, and, two, the forwards to manage it a lot better. We got two changes in with forward lines, which means there were fresh forwards on the ice and we did have the puck. There are times when you have to execute just to manage two or three players that can't breathe, and we didn't do that."

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Beyond that sequence, the chance to breathe was hard to come by for the Red Wings as a collective Tuesday night.  Like Seider, McLellan felt Detroit had to expend too much energy in its own end to be in a position to win.

"I thought we had a tough time skating tonight, so it was really hard for us to make plays," McLellan said.  "It looked like we were in mud. We couldn't separate well, and then we got hemmed in our zone, and a lot of our time and our energy was spent defending. When we finally got the puck, we had no energy to go the other way. And there's a few reasons for that. One: Legs and energy, I don't know why we didn't have it. Two: we didn't win a lot of faceoffs in our zone, so we started there, and they're a volume shooting team, so they're firing it around, and we got hemmed in a few times. And then three: I thought they were just flat out quicker to pucks in our zone."

Despite Carolina's utter command of the run of play, the Red Wings had a chance to steal the game late.  Elmer Soderblom—promoted to the top line in the third as McLellan sought to spark his forward corps—scored a pretty rush goal to cut the lead to 2–1 with just under 10 minutes to play.

Not even 30 seconds later, Detroit went to the power play with a chance to tie the game when Andrei Svechnikov was whistled for hooking.  The Little Caesars Arena crowd, which had booed its displeasure at the end of the second, sensed an opportunity and re-discovered its enthusiasm.  Then, the Red Wings failed to muster any serious threat on the ensuing power play, hardly able to get set up in the offensive zone thanks to the Hurricanes' pressure, let alone create some danger.

McLellan pulled Lyon for an extra attacker with just under 2:30 to play, but the story was the same as the futile power play eight minutes earlier.  Detroit could hardly gain the offensive zone during what should have been its six-on-five surge, and the final horn sounded before the Red Wings could ask a serious question of Andersen.

In the end, Detroit failed the evening's test; there could be no argument to the contrary.  Over the course of three straight regulation losses, the Red Wings fell from the Eastern Conference's first wild card position to the same excruciating spot they ended last season, the first team out by virtue of a tiebreaker.  The sky isn't falling because of three games, not yet anyway, but suddenly the stakes for Thursday night's game against Utah at LCA are a lot more drastic.

And, of course, the trade deadline lurks the day after the Red Wings take on the Hockey Club, meaning general manager Steve Yzerman will be forced to offer an honest appraisal of the team he's built: How much of the future is worth selling off for this postseason push?

In his post-game remarks, McLellan insisted that each team deserves the chance to write its own story, unburdened by the baggage of the preceding years.  It was a March swoon that undid the '23-24 Red Wings, and if the '24-25 squad is to prove McLellan's theory right, it will have to break out of its present form in a hurry.  Perhaps there will be deadline reinforcements to help that cause, but even if they do arrive, they are likely to fit as supporting actors rather than leading men.

So, before the mood dampens any further, Detroit's present test is to pull out of the present tailspin before its effects become irreversible.  In Seider's words, "We believe in ourselves...and now it's up to us to kind of send the message that we're the right team."

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