Derek Lalonde is big on buy-in. He saw the importance of it in Tampa Bay. In Detroit, he knows the Red Wings are going nowhere without it. A unified team is usually a hard one to beat.
"Hopefully the guys are going to accept the message of what we’re trying to do," Lalonde said Tuesday on the "Stoney & Jansen Show. "But until it comes from the (locker) room, it will never happen. When that will be, hopefully sooner than later."
To kickstart this process, the Red Wings new head coach spent the holiday weekend reaching out to his new players. He wanted to get to know them, for one. He also wanted to plant the seeds of his message for the team moving forward.
"There were hints of, ‘This is how we want to be, this is how we’re going to be.’ Obviously a huge point of emphasis during my whole interview process is improving on some of these defensive numbers, and I hinted toward that with everyone," said Lalonde. "That will be the first thing we tackle."
Detroit's defensive numbers last season were ugly. They shut the door on Jeff Blashill and ultimately opened it for Lalonde. He won't fix them in one phone call, one summer or even one season. But he will drill down on team defense until it's drilled into the minds of his players like Jon Cooper and the rest of the Lightning coaching staff did with a juggernaut team in Tampa.
"The first thing we’re going to ask of the guys from day one is to keep the puck out of our net much better than they did at the end of last year," said Lalonde. "That is not going to be overnight. That is not going to be easy. Defending is hard and you have to be willing. We went through it even in Tampa when we were loaded and we still didn’t want to defend. We did not work hard enough to defend the right way to be successful.
"So (we're going to) keep things simple, and the simplest thing we’re going to work on from day one is some better team defense."
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The Red Wings handed out goals like free candy last season. They gave up at least seven 10 times, at least six 15 times and at least five more than 30 times. No, defending isn't easy, but it should be easier than that. At its very core, it requires one thing from every player: buy-in.
Take a player, for example, like defenseman Filip Hronek. He was fifth on the team in points last year, but third to last in plus-minus. The risks he took (and mistakes he made) defensively far outweighed the offense that sometimes came with them. The growth in his game seems to have stalled. Asked about getting Hronek back on track as he enters his fifth NHL season, Lalonde said, "It's going to be a challenge."
"Even within my interview process we were talking personnel quite a bit and Hronek always came on two ends of it," he said. "There’s some excitement on his upside and there’s also some frustration on some of the things he was doing that probably hurt him. I think he’s no different than the rest of our team: there’s times his play is at a high end and that gets everyone excited and there’s times he does things that hurt us and (the puck) ends up in the back of our net, whether it’s turnovers, a missed defensive assignment.
"Again, it’s hard for me not knowing the individual, not seeing him on a daily basis, but he’ll be asked just like the team, 'Let’s keep things simple and let’s work on our defensive game.' It’s just amazing when you take care of that end of the ice how it translates everywhere else. So it’ll be a simple ask: let’s improve defensively."
If enough players heed that message next season, Lalonde and the Red Wings will be on their way.
"That will be our challenge. It will be there from day one. Sometimes that message will come with a pat on the back, sometimes that message might come with a whack upside the head," said Lalonde. "It’s just the reality of keeping things fresh."
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