In a big game, some of the Red Wings' best players failed to show up. The result was a 5-2 loss to the Blue Jackets Thursday night ahead of Saturday's rematch at Ohio Stadium.
"We had some guys missing," said head coach Todd McLellan. "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. They'll get a chance at redemption outdoors two nights from now."
One of the clear culprits was Dylan Larkin, who looked nothing like himself. He coughed up pucks and struggled to win them back. He lost battles. He fumbled away a two-on-one in the first period and then fell to the ice, the start of an uncharacteristically poor night for Detroit's captain that ended with a demotion from the first line. He finished with 16:44 of ice time, his lowest under McLellan.
Asked whether Larkin might be experiencing a 4 Nations hangover after playing a big role for Team USA in the tournament that ended last week, McLellan said, "Well, I can't beat around the bush, he was missing. He was one of the players that I'm talking about."
"And he's a big boy, he can handle hearing that. He's going to hear it from me tomorrow. Just a lot of mishandles, unsure plays that he usually makes. I'd like to think that the 4 Nations is so far past us already, we've had enough rest. I'm not using that as an excuse, so I'm not even going to 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," McLellan said.
Larkin's linemates weren't much better. Lucas Raymond also received his fewest minutes (16:04) under McLellan, and Marco Kasper (14:29) got his fewest in more than a month. Larkin, Raymond and Kasper were a combined minus-8, leading McLellan to juggle his lines entering the third.
"The three of them did not have a good night," said McLellan, "so we needed to try something."
It didn't work. Patrick Kane was another guilty veteran. Despite logging more minutes (19:33) than usual under McLellan, Kane made some careless puck plays, and ill-advised passes that almost cost the Wings in their own zone. The score would have been worse if not for Cam Talbot, McLellan said.
Defenseman Moritz Seider said that the Red Wings "just got out-competed today, and obviously that's a hard one to swallow." Doubly so against a team that the Red Wings are battling for a playoff spot.
McLellan called Seider's assessment "fairly accurate," especially the Wings' disinterest in paying the price on defense. The Blue Jackets scored their first four goals, before an empty-netter, on top of Talbot's crease.
"I thought we did a real poor job of doing some of the hard things tonight," said McLellan. "At the blue paint, but also up top, we had opportunities to take a puck to the shin or to the ankles or to the leg, and it seemed to get by us. That's a little disappointing, because you can't go to where this group wants to go to without that being part of it."
Detroit and Columbus are holding down the two wild card spots in the East, with 66 points apiece. One of the Red Wings' only top forwards with whom McLellan was pleased was Alex DeBrincat, who scored a goal in the first and was moving his feet throughout the game.
"If you could take him and rub him against a few of other guys tonight, we'd have a real good chance. You guys watch how competitive he is, on every puck, every situation, there's nothing he backs down from, plays in traffic. He's physical on offense, which means when he's got the puck he's hard to knock off. He goes to dirty areas to score. He's not somebody I'm at all concerned about, and that's a good thing because that's how he plays," McLellan said.