After flying up and down the ice Wednesday night, Dylan Larkin paused at the question. The answer was both clear and complex. On one hand, of course these games are fun. Of course these wins are fuel. On the other, this alone is not what the Red Wings are striving for.
"I think there’s also maybe a shift in mentality with our team," Larkin told reporters in Toronto after lifting the Wings over the Leafs in overtime for their third straight win and seventh out of eight. "Yes, winning is fun, coming to the rink when you’re winning is way better than when you’re losing, but I think our team is pushing for more and maybe not even satisfied with where we’re at."
Larkin credited coach Todd McLellan and assistant Trent Yawney for "coming in (last season) and creating that environment of pushing and pushing, and I think we’ve responded well to it."
"It’s been kind of interesting," Larkin said. "We’re in this position, and it feels like we’re pushing even harder than we have before."
Their position is second in the Atlantic, third in the East and fourth in the NHL, the land of Stanley Cup contenders. The Red Wings have yet to earn that status themselves, stuck as they are in a franchise-worst nine-year playoff drought. But the company they keep at the top of the league -- tied in points with the Lightning and Hurricanes and trailing only the Avalanche -- speaks to the strides they continue to make as a team.
"It’s why I came here," said John Gibson, after another terrific performance in Toronto. "I wanted to help them get in the playoffs, and it’s the spot we're in. I think you ask anybody around, they’d be more than happy to be in this spot, and I am, too. Definitely not going to take it for granted. Still a long way left and hopefully we can just keep grinding it out."
Gibson was Steve Yzerman's big move in an otherwise quiet offseason. The Wings could not -- would not, Yzerman decided -- go another season with mediocre goaltending. They still don't have the top-tier talent to overcome it. But right now they have a goalie to overcome that. They won Wednesday night because Gibson was their best player, as he often has been for the last two months.
For Yzerman, what looked like a whiff is turning into a home run. Gibson had the NHL's fifth worst save percentage (.865) and goals against average (3.59) through the first two months of the season. Since December, he's first in the league in save percentage (.929) and second to Andrei Vasilevskiy in goals against average (2.05). The Red Wings have played more soundly in front of him, to be sure, but Gibson is also playing more steadily behind them.
Gibson stopped 30 of 31 shots in Toronto to push his record to 16-2 over the aforementioned stretch, including a flurry of opportunities during back to back power plays for the Leafs midway through the game to keep it tied at 1.
"A difference-maker," said Larkin.
"More of the same," said McLellan. "We’ve seen it now for two months."
Simon Edvinsson, the 22-year-old defenseman who played nearly 27 minutes Wednesday night, smiled afterward and said, "I don’t want to hype him up too much, but I think he’s a Vezina — like, wow. He’s been unreal."
"Look at the stats. Look at the saves he made today. What a goalie that is," Edvinsson said. "I have all the confidence in him that he’s going to perform when we need him the most, and he’s been doing that. Hopefully he doesn’t read this. I don’t want him to have this against me, but wow, what a goalie."
It's far too early to place Gibson in the Vezina conversation, for the record. Thanks to his poor start, he's still outside the top 20 goalies this season in save percentage and goals against average. But you can forgive Edvinsson for getting carried away. His perspective on a larger matter was apt. In the crowded East and the deep Atlantic, "the playoff race," Edvinsson said, "started after game 30, I feel like."
"Of course, I’d rather be on this side than the bottom. We gotta keep grinding. We know, 10 up-and-down games, we can be in the 10th spot. We know how important every game is," he said, "so it feels really nice to come here and grab two points."
And all eight points on the schedule against the Leafs. It's the Wings' first time sweeping a season series (of at least four games) against their Original Six rivals in 20 years. Their victory last Sunday over the Senators, anther division foe, gave the Red Wings 30 wins through 50 games for the first time since their coach was Babcock, their captain was Lidstrom and their leading goal scorer was The Mule. The NHL's Rookie of the Year that season was ... Gabriel Landeskog. Moritz Seider was 10 years old.
14 years later, Seider is making a case to win the trophy Lidstrom won seven times over his Hall of Fame career. Wednesday was his latest tour de force, a relentless effort against Toronto's top forwards over 27:46 of ice time, capped off by a very Moritzian play in overtime where he hunted down Easton Cowan, stripped him clean at the offensive blue line and set up Larkin for the game-winner. He left two Leafs on the ice in his wake, including defenseman Jake McCabe who ran into Seider and wound up on his pants as Larkin buried his 25th goal of the season.
"He chases us like that in practice all the time," Larkin said, "and I knew when he started chasing Cowan that he was going to get the puck."
If the Norris is given to one of the NHL's top-scoring defensemen, per usual, Seider won't win it. The field is full of game-breakers on the blue line. If it's given to the defenseman "who demonstrates throughout the season the greatest all-around ability in the position," as the award is written, Seider might have as strong a claim as anyone. Given the minutes he logs, the matchups he tends to win and the offense he still produces, he is, at least, as impactful as any defenseman in the league.
"We talked about his engine this morning," said McLellan, "and we saw it again tonight."
"That’s Diesel right there," Larkin said with a grin.
Yzerman's subdued offseason could lead to some midseason noise. The expectation around the league is that the Wings will be buyers ahead of the March 6 trade deadline for the first time in Yzerman's tenure as GM, and that they might even get busy before the Olympic roster freeze that begins Feb. 4. They have the assets, the cap space and the motivation to add, and there are players on the market who could suit their needs for a top-six forward and a top-four, right-shot defenseman. Might they swing big on Canucks center Elias Pettersson?
Those are conversations for the weeks ahead. The Red Wings, as currently constructed, are proving to be one of the top teams in the NHL. They have a top-five goal-scorer in Alex DeBrincat -- an Yzerman acquisition that looks better with each season -- a premier young playmaker in Lucas Raymond, a defensive pairing that looms over the ice, a captain and a goalie at the top of their games, and depth pieces who continue to chip in. And a coach who's been here and done this before.
That alone won't be enough as the games get bigger and the hockey gets harder, which is for Yzerman to solve. The Red Wings, said McLellan, echoing Larkin, "should feel good about ourselves, but satisfied is not a very good word to be throwing around right now."
"We have a lot of work that we need to still put in," he said. "Equate it to a boxing match. If you drop your guard and somebody throws a big punch at you, it will take you a while to get off the mat. And that’s not what we want. We want to build our game day in and day out. I think the resilience in the group, and the belief, is where it needs to be now. With that respect we’ve earned comes responsibility, and that’s a tough thing to hold up to."
The Red Wings continue to answer the bell.