It wasn’t pretty, but after a tense, grinding 1-0 win over the New York Islanders on Tuesday night, the Red Wings are back to .500.
After a choppy start to the season that included a thumping home loss to the New York Rangers last week, Detroit has responded with two straight road wins over the Islanders and Nashville Predators to get back to 3-3.
Just as they did in beating the Predators over the weekend, Detroit’s Tuesday victory required them to overcome a lopsided shot counter. But you can bet the Red Wings will take it, no matter how it looked. Here are three takeaways from the Red Wings’ win.
Offense starts quiet
It was another quiet night for the Red Wings offensively. Detroit scored on its first shot of the game, a nice slot shot from Patrick Kane, and it was all it needed. The Red Wings finished with only the one goal and just 11 shots on goal for the night.
Tarasenko to Kane. 🤌 pic.twitter.com/82jkqdVrtN
— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) October 23, 2024
The shot total hadn’t been that low for the Red Wings all season. But aside from a five-goal game over the weekend in Nashville — of which two of the five were empty-netters — a lack of offense has been a theme of the young season for Detroit, not scoring more than three in any other game. That runs counter to the early league-wide trends, with scoring typically up at the beginning of the season.
The Red Wings, though, just haven’t looked consistently in sync in the offensive zone. They’ve tried all kinds of different line combinations to find a spark and likely will continue to do so.
The good news for Detroit, though, is it’s still 3-3 despite that. It hasn’t fallen too far behind the pack. And considering the quality of some of the early opponents, it’ll probably take that. Two games against the reigning Presidents’ Trophy-winning Rangers were particularly challenging, but the trip to Long Island put Detroit up against a notoriously tough-to-play-against defensive outfit.
“They play inside out, they play defensive hockey, and right now we’re not holding onto the puck,” Red Wings forward J.T. Compher told the FanDuel Sports Network broadcast at intermission. “We’re trying to make plays through their sticks, through the middle of the ice where they’re clogged up, and if we keep doing that it’s going to hurt us. We need to hold onto pucks, cycle, keep it down low in the offensive zone or else we’re going to feed their transition like we’ve been doing.”
Detroit’s offensive challenges to start the year have varied based on the period, let alone the game, but it’s fair to say more sustained offensive pressure would go a long way. Still, winning possession often starts in the D-zone — whether it’s killing plays to win the puck back or starting cleaner breakouts after doing so.
There’s lots of time to clean those things up, of course. And the fact Detroit has been able to survive the quiet offensive start and still sit .500 is encouraging.
But in the meantime, the low goal (and shot) totals are asking a lot of the Red Wings’ goaltenders.
Alex Lyon great again
Speaking of the challenges Detroit’s goalies have faced early on, Lyon has risen to the occasion in a big way in Detroit’s last two games. His 29-save shutout over the Islanders was the exclamation point.
“He was everything for us,” captain Dylan Larkin told the broadcast after the game.
His biggest highlight-reel save Tuesday came on a post-to-post robbery of Mathew Barzal with the glove early in the second period — and that came a game after he made a brilliant stick save against Steven Stamkos in Nashville. In all, Lyon stopped 66 of the 68 shots he faced in his last two starts. His save percentage is a dazzling .955 this season.
This isn’t new from Lyon, who was outstanding for the Red Wings for long stretches of last season. Through his first 20 games for Detroit in 2023-24, his save percentage was at .920.
The question, simply, has been how much of a workload he can take while sustaining that level. And that popped up down the stretch last year: In Lyon’s final 24 starts, his save percentage was .887.
As independent analyst Prashanth Iyer recently pointed out to me, though, Lyon’s workload last season wasn’t as simple as just playing 44 games. It was playing 44 games despite not getting his first appearance until Nov. 17 — Detroit’s 17th game of the season. And compressing those 44 appearances into 66 games is, obviously, a different proposition than a similar workload over 82. It’s akin to making 54 or 55 starts in an 82-game season.
Perhaps that’s enough reason to be optimistic that Lyon might be able to better sustain his impressive play over a 40-game workload this season — so long as Detroit can avoid those taxing stretches where the workload gets too condensed. With plenty of goaltenders in the system, among Lyon, Cam Talbot and Ville Husso (currently in Grand Rapids), that feels possible.
Even then, though, asking Lyon to be this good isn’t reasonable for long stretches. He’s been excellent, but the Red Wings will have to make sure they’re giving their goaltender more support — whether it’s Lyon, Talbot or Husso.
Simon Edvinsson’s role keeps growing
One of the big stories of this road trip has been the arrival of 2022 first-round pick Marco Kasper into the lineup. And Kasper’s been good: He had an assist in Nashville and plays the kind of hard, responsible, up-tempo game this Red Wings team needs from him.
But quietly, Detroit’s 2021 first-round pick, Simon Edvinsson, has been taking on an even bigger role. Edvinsson logged a whopping 24:34 against the Islanders, which led the team and was a career high by more than two minutes.
He’s playing on Detroit’s top defense pair next to Moritz Seider, and he’s doing more than just logging those minutes. On Tuesday, his 58.67 percent expected goals share at five-on-five led the Red Wings, according to Natural Stat Trick, and that’s while taking on a heavy dose of the Islanders’ top players. His most frequent opponents Tuesday were Barzal and Bo Horvat, both of whom Edvinsson played at least 13 minutes against at five-on-five.
Edvinsson is still young, and defensemen typically need time to be fully comfortable in the NHL. There are ups and downs. But Edvinsson has been impressive so far and especially so on this road trip.
(Photo: Brad Penner / Imagn Images)
