Red Wings Play Lockdown Defense to Take Down Bruins

DETROIT — Because the Red Wings always seemed to be trailing this month, losing 11 of their last 14 games, it was hard to remember that the team has done quality work holding a lead when they took one into the third period.

Before this game, they were 15-0-2 at home when they had a lead in the final 20 minutes of regulation.

That was important Saturday as they held a 2-1 lead for almost 40 minutes to beat the Boston Bruins in a game that the Red Wings absolutely had to win.  The Bruins, who dumped top players at the NHL trade deadline to move into a rebuilding mode, have lost eight in a row. Had the Red Wings lost this game it may have signalled the end of their playoff hopes.

“The games are just getting tighter and tighter towards the end of the year,”  Detroit forward Lucas Raymond said. “Gotta be able to lock games down and, you know, not just rely on offense. And I think today is a good example of that. It’s a big win in a lot of different areas and something to build off of coming into the next game.”

The game is a blueprint for how the Red Wings need to play over their last nine games to have any chance of earning the final Eastern Conference wildcard spot. Depending upon the outcome of the New York Rangers-San Jose Sharks game, Detroit will be either one point or three points out of a wildcard place.

In addition to tighter defense, the blueprint included leak-proof goaltending by Cam Talbot who had to come up with a key save against Casey Mittlestadt in the closing seconds to preserve the win.

Game-Saving Stop

The replays showed Talbot looking around traffic in front to get in position to glove Mittlestadt’s shot from a few feet away.

“I knew that he was there,” Talbot said. “I knew when I took my awareness that there’s a guy off to the back door and I saw the scramble in front and I knew that he hadn’t really moved. So when the puck squirted that way, I knew that it was going to be a bang bang play…Just kind of tried to throw everything I could to that side of the net and got my sight line at the last second. Sometimes you got to get lucky.”

Slaying the Demons

Of course, the Red Wings played stingy defense against a struggling team Saturday, and their next game Tuesday will be on the road against a St. Louis Blues team that has won nine in a row.

When you change coaches mid-season, as the Red Wings did, part of the new coach’s job is building up the team’s confidence. Games like this one help.

“We tried to build it back up,” McLellan said. “And I think we did a good job of that. Now you get deeper into your season, you’re pressing for playoffs, and you’re not winning as much. There’s always a seed of doubt that goes into your mind, players, staff, whoever it is. But those are the demons we have to fight off a little bit. And there’s times we have trouble doing that. There’s other times we can push our way through.”