DETROIT — The Detroit Red Wings missed an opportunity Sunday night.
There’s no real way around that, after holding a 2-1 lead over the Edmonton Oilers past the midway point of the third period. Factor in that the Red Wings were playing at home, and that’s a game you should probably win — even against one of the NHL’s true elite teams. Detroit didn’t spend a single second of play trailing. But they still went home with just a point, after Leon Draisaitl’s overtime game winner sent the Oilers to a 3-2 victory.
Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde chose to see it a bit differently. This was the second game of a back-to-back (and last in of a stretch of three games in four nights) for the Red Wings, with travel in the middle. It came against two of the league’s very best players, Draisaitl and Connor McDavid. Indeed, that all makes for a tough matchup.
“That’s a pretty darn good point considering the circumstances,” Lalonde said. “It’s a pretty good week.”
And if you consider the week in total, which saw the Red Wings pick up 5 points in four games, there could be something to that.
But sometimes the macro view can be misleading in its own way. And on a night when Detroit dictated play for the first 20 minutes, then managed to hold that lead through the next 30 minutes, an overtime loss was nonetheless an unsatisfying result.
“We were too busy defending, I think,” Andrew Copp said. “I think we weren’t thinking about getting that next goal. I think we were really just trying to hold off, and hold off. Against a team like that, you keep giving them O-zone possessions, they’re going to break through at some point. So, obviously we want to be defensively responsible, but we’ve got to continue to attack a little bit more and try and get some O-zone time. And the best way to defend is by playing in the offensive zone.”
Copp, for his part, was in on both Red Wings goals — scoring by tipping in a Jeff Petry point shot in the second period just 42 seconds after the Oilers had tied the score at 1-1 and assisting on J.T. Compher’s opening goal by winning a board battle down low.
And while the overtime point will give the Red Wings a sort of consolation in the standings, that performance by Copp and Compher’s line, alongside Patrick Kane, looked like the more interesting silver lining from Sunday night: a forward lineup with some potential staying power.
All season long, the Red Wings have aggressively mixed their lines, looking for something that works. They ran largely the same combinations through the preseason, but since the season began, they have yet to really settle on a group of lines that seems like it could (or should) stick.
Injuries and illness are a part of that, as the Red Wings have dealt with both already in this young season, but the results have paid the price: Detroit has been outshot in all but one game this season, and in five of their nine games, by a margin of at least 14.
Of course, some line-blending is inevitable in the NHL — teams and players go through ebbs and flows, injuries are near-constant, and as a result, there are very few lines that truly last over long periods of time. The Red Wings are no exception.
But the degree of line-mixing Detroit has tried early in the season has been noticeable. The question coaches face, basically, boils down to whether to let a line stick together to try and build chemistry, or shake up something that hasn’t worked in favor of something that could. When the flow of play is this lopsided, it becomes a real dilemma.
And while the Red Wings surely would have wanted more than 1 point from their two-game weekend (they lost 5-3 to the Sabres in Buffalo on Saturday), the lines they used in Sunday’s overtime loss to the Oilers added up to perhaps the most complete Detroit has looked this season.
The first line was nothing new: a trio of Alex DeBrincat, Dylan Larkin and Lucas Raymond that puts Detroit’s top three forwards together and typically accounts for most of their offensive threat. The line didn’t score Sunday, but it certainly wasn’t without chances — DeBrincat hit one post, Raymond found him all alone at the back door on another chance and Larkin tied for the team lead with four shots on goal.
The second line was the biggest experiment, moving Copp up into the top six and onto the wing — away from the bottom-six checking center job he’s spent most of his time in Detroit doing — next to Compher and Kane. In addition to some added defensive responsibility up top, on a line that got a heavy dose of Draisaitl, Copp’s size and smarts play well opposite Kane, who’s more of a perimeter playmaker at this stage of his career.
That more offensive role on the wing is something Copp played earlier in his career, but he hasn’t gotten to do it much in two-plus seasons in Detroit.
“I want to contribute offensively, I think that’s a big part of my game,” Copp said Sunday. “I think going to wing today is a big part of who I am: Being able to play up and down the lineup, being able to play center, both wings, both special teams, it’s kind of who I’ve been.”
And by putting him there, it also allowed Detroit to put veteran scorer Vladimir Tarasenko next to youngsters Marco Kasper and Jonatan Berggren on line 3. Tarasenko began the year with Compher and Kane, but early on that line had some struggles defensively and wasn’t making up for it offensively. By putting Tarasenko with Kasper and Berggren, it gives those two young players a strong veteran to play with and eased some of the competition Tarasenko was up against while keeping him with skilled players.
That trio didn’t hit the scoresheet Sunday, but they had an expected goals share of above 60 percent, according to Evolving Hockey, indicating they got the better end of the scoring chances when they were on the ice. In fact, with this configuration, every single Detroit forward finished the game with an expected goals share above 50 percent. It’s a small sample, and it’ll ring a bit hollow in the loss, but it shouldn’t be brushed aside for a group that has looked questionable even in some of its wins so far this year.
And while Copp’s move left a vacancy on the team’s more classical matchup line with Michael Rasmussen and Christian Fischer, Joe Veleno stepped into that spot and showed well, using his size and physicality and adding some extra speed.
Now the question is: Will it stick? Detroit has had Tyler Motte sidelined by an upper-body injury for over a week now, but he’ll be back before too long, at which point Detroit will have a decision to make with Kasper, who began the year in AHL Grand Rapids. There are sure to be other injuries at some point, too, and wins and losses can often dictate coaches’ patience with a particular set of combinations. The Red Wings next play the unbeaten Winnipeg Jets on Wednesday.
But even coming off a loss — and a disappointing one, at that — the way this particular lineup worked against a loaded Oilers team looked like the true silver lining of the losing weekend.
Detroit’s no longer in a position to be counting moral victories while trying to snap an eight-year playoff drought. The Red Wings are a team in need of answers, and of something that can allow them to build an early-season rhythm.
And Sunday, it looked like they might have found that — if they’re willing to stick with it.
(Top photo of Andrew Copp: Brian Bradshaw Sevald / Imagn Images)
