The Detroit Red Wings seem to be learning how to persevere.
They head into a weekend series against the Ottawa Senators having responded to a disaster with a measure of redemption. As they round into the last month of the season, at least they’re signaling they’re ready to keep competing, as demonstrated with Wednesday’s 5-4 overtime loss to the New York Rangers and Saturday’s 2-1 overtime loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning.
“It’s a matter of us, sometimes when you get knocked down, you don’t do a good enough job of getting back up,” coach Jeff Blashill said. “At some point you look at yourself and say, I have to find a way to grind, to get up. Perseverance is a huge piece of having any kind of success. We did a much better job of that.”
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Unlike Sunday’s 11-2 loss at Pittsburgh, the Wings never lost their composure against the Rangers.
“It doesn’t feel good to come up short again, but there’s positives to take out of this,” Dylan Larkin said. “Our work ethic, our compete — the things we’ve talked about all year, Blash talks about a lot. We had those.
“Last game was not even close to it. And there was a lot of discussion in our locker room, a lot of guys thinking a lot about that last game, and we came out and played hard and had a good response. We had a lot of positives.”
The Wings (26-32-9) are close to being eliminated from playoff contention for a sixth straight spring, but how they perform over the final 15 games still matters. It matters to the people who pay to see them — Wednesday’s announced attendance was 16,375 —and it matters to their boss, general manager Steve Yzerman. From the stands or the manager’s suite, the view largely was good. The Wings converted on power plays (Jakub Vrana, Tyler Bertuzzi), got secondary scoring (Michael Rasmussen, Adam Erne), got good goaltending (29 saves from Alex Nedeljkovic) and benefitted from having veterans back in the lineup (Marc Staal, Danny DeKeyser).
“One of the things we talked about was being mentally tough, and right away, early in the game, we (make a) mistake and they score a goal,” Blashill said. “I thought we stayed with it. That’s an important piece. Wins and losses matter, but we want to play the right hockey, and I thought we were closer to playing the type of hockey you have to play to be successful short-term and long-term. There were good moments where we did it the right way.”
The not-so-good included performances from Filip Hronek, who was minus-3, and Gustav Lindstrom, whose second trip to the penalty box led to the Rangers tying the game with 3:38 to play in regulation. Against the Bolts, Filip Zadina was in the box on the tying goal and Bertuzzi on the winning goal.
“At the end of the day, we have the lead late, we have to find a way to kill that penalty,” Blashill said. “It was the exact same thing against Tampa. We have to find a way to kill that penalty. It’s hard to not take any penalties. We took two. So we just have to find a way.
“We gave up four in regulation, so that’s not perfect, but I thought we were better in a lot of ways defensively. Sunday was Sunday, that was no good. But we were better in a lot of ways and in the third period, Ned was great. With clear eyes, we played closer to the type of hockey we have to play to be successful.”
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.