The Detroit Red Wings need a boost — and they should get one this week.
It has been a tough stretch, as their six-point deficit on a wild-card spot has become a double-digit chasm, but the Wings have progressed too much this season to let that slide precipitate a collapse over their final 26 games.
“We can’t be deflated or frustrated or anything,” forward Sam Gagner said after Saturday’s 6-2 loss against the Panthers. “You have to find ways to improve. We’re trying to build here, and we’ve had stretches where we’ve done really well, and we have to find that consistency. You take lessons from games like this, and you try and build and hopefully be better the next game.”
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After seven straight games against teams fighting for playoff positioning, the last-place Arizona Coyotes are next on the slate, Tuesday at Little Caesars Arena. The Wings were off Sunday, giving them a chance to refresh after enduring back-to-back losses in Florida.
The Wings could get some reinforcement from Jakub Vrana as soon as Tuesday. The forward hasn’t played all season after undergoing shoulder surgery in October. (Anthony Mantha, who went to the Capitals in the trade, underwent shoulder surgery in November and returned to action March 3). Vrana provided an immediate boost last season, scoring in his debut and producing at a point-per-game clip in 11 appearances.
The Wings need to improve defensively, but they’d take pressure off themselves if they could score a little more.
“That’s the balance,” coach Jeff Blashill said. “ You have to be able to be good offensively while you’re good defensively.”
Blashill tweaked the lines Saturday, moving Joe Veleno up to play with Tyler Bertuzzi and Robby Fabbri (both of whom scored; it was Bertuzzi’s first goal in seven games) on the second line. Pius Suter, without a point in seven games, was dropped to the third line. When Vrana returns, the natural fit would be with Dylan Larkin and Lucas Raymond, though Blashill could move Bertuzzi back to that spot and put Vrana with Fabbri and Suter.
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The Wings entered the season counting on Vrana as a significant part of their offense, but he left the ice 10 minutes into his first appearance at training camp. There’s little point in pondering whether they’d be closer to a playoff spot with a full season from him, but it matters how his return impacts the team down the stretch. General manager Steve Yzerman is trying to forge a more competitive team, and the Wings certainly have taken strides in his third year. That has a great deal to do with rookies Moritz Seider and Raymond, who have infused the lineup with skill and smarts. But as the past seven-game stretch showed, the Wings don’t measure up to the elite in the league.
“We obviously have work to do to be amongst those types of teams,” Blashill said. “We go in spurts. We have to work extraordinarily hard, we have to compete extraordinarily hard to have success against those types of teams. There have been moments over the last seven games we’ve done that, and moments we haven’t. We have to find a way to be super-special at that.”
Contact Helene St. James at hstjames@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @helenestjames. Read more on the Detroit Red Wings and sign up for our Red Wings newsletter. Her book, The Big 50: The Detroit Red Wings is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Triumph Books. Personalized copies available via her e-mail.