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Detroit Red Wings

Mechanical Red Wings in Need of Realignment

Detroit 0-4 in last four games

Published

3 weeks ago

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Todd McLellan, Red Wings
New coach Todd McLellan wasn't going to fix all that ails the Red Wings in one night.

The good ship Red Wings features a hull pock marked with leaks. The engine is smoking and sputtering.

A fresh coat of paint wasn’t going to fix all that ails this team. And as much as the arrival of new coach Todd McLellan is generating excitement and dare we say it . . . hope . . . the fact of the matter is there’s still plenty of work ahead before this reno is close to nearing completion.

Just ask the new skipper.

“It’s evident,” McLellan said of the team’s myriad problems following Friday’s 5-2 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs. “You don’t have to be a hockey expert to see that.

“Some of our entry coverage, some of the D zone parts of the play have to get fixed. I think penalty kill has been obvious for a little while. But that’s what happens when the team’s not playing real well.”

McLellan was as much going to school as he was coaching a game during his first day behind the Detroit bench. Not even 24 hours into his new role, he was enduring his own on-the-job training session.

And much like the team he’s coaching, he got schooled.

“I see us being tentative,” McLellan said. “I see us leaving our feet a lot.

“So we have work to do. We have a roadmap now. Nobody’s happy about losing, but we’ll get after it in practice.”

Mechanical Red Wings Out Of Order

It was one comment by McLellan that truly hit the nail on the head when it came to describing how the Red Wings were looking under the tutelage of his predecessor Derek Lalonde.

“I think right now I would call the group kind of mechanical, and you can’t play that way,” McLellan said.

Most nights under Lalonde’s direction – especially this season – that’s exactly how the Wings were playing. Simple. Straightforward. Like paint by numbers, or connect the dots.

That works, but only to a point. Hockey isn’t a station to station game like baseball. It’s abstract. There must be allowances for creativity, for imagination. Players need the freedom to read and react to situations.

“Your systems and your structure allow you to get to places, but then you have to play hockey,” McLellan explained. “You have to rely on instincts.”

McLellan Willing To Shake Things Up

One game in, based solely upon his willingness to experiment with different line combinations and to shuffle his defensive pairings, McLellan was making it abundantly clear that he’s not going to stand for a team at a standstill. He’s willing to shake things up and shake them up if necessary.

“If it’s not working, you’ve got to do something,” the new coach said.

There was more activity on the bench, more obvious evidence of give and take between players and the coaching staff.

“I want them to understand who I am and that’s why I’m here,” McLellan said. “I’m supposed to be trying to help them.

“Sometimes I had to bark. Sometimes they needed a pat in the back. And sometimes I had to explain what my language was.”

It was certainly different than the more measured approach evident with Lalonde. Different can be good.

Will it be good? It’s too early to tell. What we do know for sure is that the old, mechanical method simply wasn’t effective.

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