In a playoff-style game Tuesday night against the top team in the NHL, the Red Wings were up to the challenge of checking, of defending, of managing the puck and winning face-offs "for 45 minutes," said Dylan Larkin. Naturally, they lost 4-1.
Petr Mrazek allowed a soft goal to break a 1-1 tie eight minutes into the third against the Capitals and the Red Wings spiraled the rest of the way. In Larkin's words, "we kind of just self-implode." It's hard to fathom for a group of players fighting for their lives in the playoff race and trying to avoid the same fate for the third painful year in a row. Where is their spine?
"We have to find a way to get points in a tight game like that," Larkin said. "That's a good team. They play fast, they play north, we countered it all night and then we just stopped doing it in the third."
The third goal was the back-breaker. It started with a turnover by the Wings in the offensive zone and ended with a breakdown in front of their own net, when Tom Wilson was basically unchecked by Larkin and Simon Edvinsson and tapped home his 30th of the season with less than six minutes to play. A little more than a minute after that, the Wings lost another battle at the top of their own crease -- the 6'6 Edvinsson outmuscled by 6'0 Connor McMichael -- and that was that.
"When it’s 2-1, we have to get on the attack and try to generate offense, and you don’t do that by cheating," said Larkin. "You do that by playing the game the right way and we didn’t do that tonight."
They did do it for most of the night, in the view of Todd McLellan. But again, most of 60 minutes is rarely enough, especially at this juncture of the season, as the Wings should well know. McLellan was miffed by their response to Washington's second goal, with plenty of time remaining. Instead of digging in and trying to push the game to overtime, "we look up with three minutes left and it’s 4-1," he said.
"That can’t happen. You still have to check for chances. You can’t open it up, you can’t pout and get lazy, and perhaps we did that," McLellan said. "Maybe that’s the lesson we’re learning."
The Wings might have young players in key roles, but they aren't exactly a young team. More than half of their top-10 skaters in ice time are in at least year eight of their respective careers. And Moritz Seider and Lucas Raymond, both in year four, are no longer green. Edvinsson, Albert Johansson and Marco Kasper -- and more recently Elmer Söderblom -- are the only truly inexperienced players for Detroit logging important minutes.
And as McLellan said after the Red Wings' eighth loss in the last 10 games dropped them three points -- and four spots -- out of the second wild card in the East, "I’m not going to use age as an excuse."
"If you’re in the NHL right now and you’re in a playoff race, tough luck. I don’t care how old you are. And that goes with the older players, too. I don’t think age is a big thing," he said. "Sometimes experience is a little bit, leaning to deal with the tension that’s around the club, but from my understanding this team’s been through it before. So, what lessons did they learn last year and what are they carrying through? We’re trying to figure that out."
Two players who weren't here last year continue to hamstring the Red Wings, and only Steve Yzerman is to blame. Vladimir Tarasenko and Erik Gustafsson -- signed last summer as pseudo replacements for David Perron and Shayne Gostisbehere, respectively -- are shells of their former selves. And both are under contract through next season, Tarasenko at a $4.75 million cap cost, Gustafsson at $2 million.
The analytics might be forgiving to Gustafsson, but the eyes see a pair of flimsy veterans. They are often more culpable without the puck than with it, and -- if you want to get into some metrics -- Gustafsson leads the team in giveaways per 60 minutes. Neither can be trusted, yet both have to be played. Purging part of the roster this summer is as pressing for Yzerman as polishing it, which is rather daunting at this point of the rebuild. And this is to say nothing of Justin Holl, or the need for an honest conversation about Patrick Kane. But we digress.
"I still think we’re looking for players some nights, and even teams that are at 100 points are trying to find players," said McLellan. "Not everybody’s perfect. But we need more from some individuals, be it inexperienced ones or really experienced ones, especially down the stretch."
Up and down the roster, the Red Wings lack push-back. This is not a new problem, but it's an especially vexing one. Asked after another quiet trade deadline about needing to mold a more imposing team, Yzerman admitted that "if you're suggesting our team isn't hard enough to play against, I'm not going to disagree with you. Part of it is getting bigger bodies, but it's also getting more competitive, more determined players." He went on to highlight AHL-er Dominik Shine as a "good example" of the tenacity the Red Wings are looking for in the NHL, and therein lies maybe their most systemic issue.
Even Larkin looks tired, and perhaps he's playing hurt. He logged just 16:45 of ice time Tuesday night, well below his season average, and couldn't seem to reach the extra gear that he and his team needed in the third. It just wasn't there. Larkin sighed and shook his head when he spoke with reporters in the locker room, searching for new answers to the same questions. He said this year's team is different than last year's and that everyone's getting "a good taste" of high-stakes hockey and that it's "on the older guys to lead the way."
"But we want more," he said.
There isn't much left. Larkin pledged optimism like he was trying to talk himself into it -- "there's still time" -- and what other choice does a captain have? It doesn't get any easier for the Red Wings from here. They have 14 games to go, just five of them at home, the next three on the road against Colorado, Vegas and Utah. Their odds of making the playoffs, for the first time in nine years, are down to about seven percent.
"It hasn’t gone our way, but we’ve responded," Larkin said. "And we’ve talked about that before. I wish we would have capitalized tonight. It felt like we were right there to get points, again. It’s hard, to be honest, coming back up here and saying it every night, but we just did it to ourselves, again."
The frustration in his voice was evident. The exasperation in the fan base is real. The Wings ripped off seven straight wins twice in their first 20 games under McLellan. They have four wins in 14 games since. They are living off the fumes of January, as another winter melts into the spring. With time running out, "we have to find a way to start winning hockey games," said Larkin, the very weary 28-year-old. At the very least, the Red Wings have to stop finding ways to lose them.