McLellan Calls Out His Captain Larkin After Loss to Columbus

DETROIT — The Dylan Larkin importance to the Detroit team is such that when he’s not on top of his game the Red Wings are not on top of theirs.

“I can’t beat around the bush — he was missing,” Detroit coach Todd McLellan said after the Columbus Blue Jackets downed Detroit 5-2 in the first game of their ultra-important home-and-home series. They play again Saturday in an outdoor game at Ohio Stadium.

What the Red Wings have learned about McLellan is he tells players directly when he believes they need to be better.  No one gets a pass for sub-par play.

On a night when the Blue Jackets’ top players were all over the score sheet, Detroit’s top line of Larkin, Lucas Raymond and Marco Kasper didn’t produce in the first game of what is being called Detroit’s most important series of the season. The two points Columbus earned moved it into a tie with Detroit  for the top wildcard spot in the Eastern Conference. Detroit has the tie-breaker.

Larkin and Raymond were both minus-three in the game, and Larkin only generated one shot on goal. He was 4-9 in the face-off circle.

“He was one of the players that I’m talking about (being missing) and he’s a big boy. He can handle hearing that,”  McLellan said. “He’s going to hear it from me tomorrow. ”

Too Many Mistakes

McLellan said Larkin had “just a lot of mishandles, unsure plays that he usually makes. ”

Two games ago, McLellan said he thought 4 Nation’s participation had left Larkin a bit tired.

“I’d like to think that the 4 Nations is so far past us already,” McLellan said. “We’ve had enough rest. I’m not using it as an excuse, so I’m not even gonna go there. We’re playing big games. We need our big players to play big games. And
we’ll need more from not only him, but from some others.”

While Detroit’s top line was blanked, Kirill Marchenko scored his 24th goal for Columbus and former University of Michigan player Kent Johnson netted his 20th. Boone Jenner put up three assists.

Detroit’s Alex DeBrincat scored his 27th goal of the season.

“You know, if you could rub, take him and rub him against a few of our
other guys tonight, we’d have a real good chance,” McLellan said. ” You guys watch how competitive he is on every puck in every situation. ”

McLellan was not placing all of the blame on his captain. Not even close.

“Our net play basically on all four and our ability to commit, answering it
over again wasn’t where it needed to be,” McLellan said. “And I’ll add to that. We had some guys missing. We had some key people that play . . . we’re not
talking about eight minute players, we’re talking about 21, 22 minute
players that were missing for whatever reason. Sometimes that happens,
you know, they’ll get a chance at redemption outdoors two nights from
now.”