Red Wings’ Fifth Loss in a Row Follows Familiar Storyline

DETROIT — Coach Derek Lalonde’s suggestion for the media covering Saturday night’s Detroit Red Wings’ loss was to use the same story they wrote for the team’s previous four consecutive losses.

“You can just all save yourself some time and just copy and paste the same write-up you’ve had the last five games,” Lalonde said.

The Red Wings’ 2-1 Saturday home loss to the Colorado Avalanche certainly offered similarities to the other four losses in this five-game losing streak. All five losses were one-goal losses, and the Red Wings scored two or fewer goals in the last three setbacks.

You can feel the frustration coming from Lalonde and the players as they struggle to figure out how to find a better path toward playoff contention.

Frustration Mounting

“Just gotta do more to find a way to flip some of these games,” Lalonde said. “So that’s a frustrating one. We gotta stay at it. You go through these stretches and they look a lot different. This has been a unique one. We had that stretch last year and we were bad. We earned that losing streak. This is just feels a little different, but bottom line is we gotta do more to flip these games.”

The Red Wings have had a chance to win every one of these games, but keep failing to find a way to seize the opportunity for a victory. In the loss to Colorado, they had momentum going into the third because of a late second-period goal by Lucas Raymond.

But they couldn’t move the puck out of their zone early in the third period. The Red Wings were able to create pressure with a pulled goalie late in the period, but couldn’t finish. Goalie Ville Husso (23 saves) had given them a shot to win.

Poor Third Period Hurt Red Wings

Avalanche pressure caused the early third period problem.

“I would say they just won some shifts and they just, they got some zone time,” Lalonde said. “Like we had some wall turnovers, we had some breakouts. We couldn’t get our game going. Now we had some moments of it, but it’s just again, that’s the point of where if we kind of could have rolled our second into our third, I think we find that goal. But we had some wall battles lost. They’re heavy on some sticks. We had some turnovers and it didn’t hurt us, but it hurt us in zone time and getting a push. Our margin of error is extremely thin right now. We can’t lose moments.”

Detroit defenseman Moritz Seider said the Red Wings made too many mental mistakes on breakouts early in the third, and that’s enough to cost a team severely in today’s NHL.

“I think no one is happy in the locker room. Why should we?,” Seider said. “We’re losing games that are winnable, and we just can’t find ways to get it done. Obviously, that’s really frustrating, and we shouldn’t be lying to ourselves. We need to be better, and that shouldn’t drag us down, though. We come to the rink with a big smile tomorrow, get ready to work, play two opponents that are really close, and hopefully, yeah, get four points and get back with a little bit of swagger.”