Red Wings McLellan: Players Needed To Give More

The Detroit Red Wings are teetering on the brink of official elimination from the Stanley Cup playoffs for the ninth successive season. Regardless, coach Todd McLellan and his staff are continuing their evaluation of the team.

Lately, they aren’t enamored with how the equation is adding up for certain players.

“We need more from individual players in certain situations,” McLellan said on the team’s website. “Throughout the whole time that we’ve been here, we’ve been sitting back and evaluating.”

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One of the qualities that is admirable in the way McLellan operates is his unwielding honesty. Sometimes, that honesty can be brutal. During the season, he has called out both captain Dylan Larkin and defenseman Justin Holl for underwhelming performances.

This time, he’s opting to keep his evaluations behind closed doors.

“We’ve talked about some of them with you, and we talk about others away from you, but it’s just, you just need more,” McLellan explained.

Evaluation Continues For Red Wings

A loss of one more point by Detroit, or the gain of one point by the Montreal Canadiens will bring about the official end of playoff hopes for the Red Wings. Both teams play Friday. Detroit is in Tampa Bay and Montreal is in Ottawa.

McLellan isn’t selling any Pollyanna outcomes to the masses. He’s very much grounded in reality when it comes to the club’s immediate future.

“Well, the story for the playoffs is certainly written,” he said. And there won’t be a happy ending in site.

That might be all she wrote for a portion of the fanbase, but the season continues for the team through game No. 82.

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“The season’s not done and the evaluation goes on,” McLellan said. “That’s kind of what we’re writing now.”

So what’s the next step in that evaluation? It’s really about the bottom line. Which players are worth keeping, and which ones the team will be seeking to jettison.

“If they’re capable of giving (more), then we got to draw it out of them,” McLellan said. “If they’re not capable of giving it, we got to look at what we can do there.”

An NHL coach told me the best time to evaluate a team was during times of crisis, when things aren’t going their way. That’s when true character is revealed.

“Now individual reputations are on the line, in my opinion,” McLellan said. “Coaches, players, we all talk about playing for the crest on the front, but our actions or inactions now are directly reflective of individuals.

“So if you want to get in the play, and you want to play after a game, and you want to play a certain type of game that’s reflective of your individual character, then that’s great, because you got family, you got fans, you got teammates watching you.

“When you’re out, you have a tendency to say, ‘OK, we’re done,’ and you mail it in. That’s not acceptable, in my opinion. And you put your own personal name on the line now for the next four games along those lines.”