Marc Staal shook his head, his hat pulled low over his brow, and called it "embarrassing." For the first two periods Saturday night against the Maple Leafs, the Red Wings were whipped up and down their own ice. The result was a 7-2 deficit entering the third, and a 10-7 loss after a surge that came too late.
"We just didn't deserve to be in that game," said Staal.
They weren't, and then they were -- for a few minutes, anyway -- and then they weren't again, a five-goal third period undone by a couple crucial mistakes that were reflective of Detroit's night: "Sloppy," said Staal.
Jeff Blashill would agree.
"All I’m thinking about is the fact that it’s not good enough," he said. "It’s great that we were able to finally start shooting the puck and that pucks went in there late, but at the end of the day, it’s fool’s gold. That’s not good enough, and I think our guys know that -- cripes, I hope our guys know that. What happened out there tonight wasn’t good enough, period."
And what was it that happened out there in the first two periods?
"We lost every puck race, every puck battle, every competition battle. We lost every single one of them," Blashill said. "And when you lose those types of battles, I don’t care what happens, you’re going to get scored on."
Alex Nedeljkovic got scored on three times in the first. Thomas Greiss got scored on four times in the second. Back in the net, Nedeljkovic got scored on three more times in the third. (Jack Campbell and Petr Mrazek weren't much better for Toronto.) It was a brutal start for the Red Wings, an inexplicable start at home against an Original Six rival, headliners of Hockey Night in Canada. Staal said the Wings "had no pulse." Turns out, they didn't have much of a pulse in practice Friday either.
"I didn’t love our vibe in practice, to be honest with you," Blashill said. "I told the guys, I warned them, 'You can’t (just) turn the switch on.' I just didn’t love our vibe in practice, and I don’t know why, but it manifested itself here tonight. I was hoping I was wrong, but I was right. What you do every day is what you are. You don’t turn switches on and off. We better come and embrace practice more if we expect to win games."
The Wings are in the middle of a grueling stretch of games against seven of the best teams in the NHL. It began last Monday with a loss to the Wild. It concludes next week with the Hurricanes, Lightning and Panthers. So far, they're 1-3. They'll be 1-6 with more efforts like their last one.
"These games are all a litmus test for us and we better understand how much more we gotta compete and work and sacrifice," Blashill said. "I thought in the third we competed, we worked and we sacrificed, we blocked shots. And in the first two, we didn’t compete, we didn’t work, we didn’t sacrifice. The only chance for our team to be a team that can do anything special is to be extraordinary in our compete, our work and our sacrifice."
Twice in the third period Saturday, the Wings cut the deficit to one. The backbreaker was a shorthanded goal by Toronto's Ondrej Kase that widened the gap to 9-7, just when it felt like Detroit might tie it. It was a thrilling 20 minutes that brought LCA to full throat, but it wasn't enough to erase the 40 minutes prior, the 40 minutes that Blashill brought home with him after the game.
"I don’t have mixed emotions," he said. "I will tell you again, I can look at it through clear eyes. It would’ve been great to come back and win, it would’ve been exciting, there’s no doubt about that. But I also know, even if we did win, that that’s not good enough. So I’m worried about making sure that it’s better than that."