DETROIT — After a week of tension and frustration following a 0-2-1 swing through California, the Detroit Red Wings could have easily folded Thursday night.
They had largely played the New York Islanders even — perhaps even outplayed them — through 55 minutes of hockey, but found themselves trailing 1-0 with five minutes to play. With how things had been going for them, in the game and through the early part of the season, it would not have been a shock to see the game end that way.
Instead, they found a jolt. A fortuitous broken stick on an Alexander Romanov point shot led Vladimir Tarasenko to spring Jonatan Berggren on the rush, walking in and beating Ilya Sorokin to tie the game. Then, with less than a minute left, it was a Dylan Larkin second effort in the corner to set up Lucas Raymond for the game winner.
It was just one win, a 2-1 victory over another team trying to figure out its place in the Eastern Conference hierarchy — but after the events of the last week, it was also a little more important than that.
“I think it’s more so the way we won,” Raymond said. “Just our entire game, I felt like. Obviously they’re a really tough team to play against … they don’t let up a lot. So just the way we executed the entire game, I think that’s a blueprint to work forward with.”
LUCAS RAYMOND 😱
He scores with under a minute left to give the @DetroitRedWings the lead late! pic.twitter.com/4J1d7kr9iw
— NHL (@NHL) November 22, 2024
It was another low-scoring affair — fitting for two teams that ended the night in the NHL’s bottom-seven for goals per game — but unlike in the Red Wings’ 1-0 win on Long Island earlier this season, Detroit wasn’t just surviving in this one. Thursday, it matched its meek 11-shot total from that game in October by the end of the first period. By the end of the night, they had 31. The Red Wings played with pace and got their chances — or at least, enough chances against a stingy Islanders team that makes a living by preventing offense from opponents.
So the natural question now is: can it stick? Some thoughts:
1. Obviously, it’s hard to overstate the importance of the Red Wings next week and a half.
Saturday, they’ll host the Bruins, who got a 1-0 win of their own Thursday in their first game since firing head coach Jim Montgomery. It’s too early to be watching the standings particularly closely, but as it stands, Boston is in the Eastern Conference’s final wild-card spot. That’s a spot that looks like it could easily be up for grabs all season.
Then, the Red Wings will see the Islanders again back on Long Island on Monday, followed by three straight home games against Calgary, New Jersey and Vancouver. There are no easy wins on that slate, but getting this stretch with five of six games at home is a crucial one given where the Red Wings sit right now. They’ve been a .500 points percentage team at home so far this year at 4-4-1, which isn’t going to cut it if they have designs on staying in any kind of race.
If the push at the end to rally and flip a loss to a win says anything, though, it’s that this group hasn’t given up on itself.
“Huge mental fortitude night,” Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde said. “I liked the push in the second (too). There’s no doubt there could be, obviously, a reality of feeling sorry for yourselves, especially the type of goal they scored: turnover, on their stick, missed box-out, point shot, deflection, in. Nothing pretty. The goal we were trying to get a look for. But I thought our guys just hung in there.”
2. Detroit’s two goal scorers Thursday were players the team needs to keep finding the back of the net. Berggren looked completely snakebit before scoring his first goal of the season last week in Pittsburgh. “It kind of felt like a curse there, sometimes,” he had said. But now he has goals in three of his last five.
He was supposed to be part of the way the Red Wings were going to replace all their lost offense entering the season, so getting him going is big. And his play has warranted it: he’s still shooting under nine percent this season, and is due for some breaks. Playing on a line with Tarasenko also gives him a good complementary scorer to play off of, too.
Meanwhile, Lucas Raymond is leading the Red Wings in points, but the goals were still eluding him for much of the season, with just two in his first 18 games — quite the shock for a player who topped 30 last season.
Getting his third in such a big moment, then, surely has to come with some relief, too.
“It’s different, for a goal scorer when it hits the back of the net, and that was a big-time shot,” Lalonde said. “I give both those goals, those finishes, a lot of credit, because Sorokin looked like the top goalie in the league. He just had that look to him. I thought it would take an ugly one or a good bounce. But it didn’t: we had two good finishes.”
3. There was a lot of intrigue going into the game around the line of Alex DeBrincat, Patrick Kane and Marco Kasper — putting Kasper, Detroit’s youngest player and 2022 first-round pick, on a line with two of its most creative offensive players.
That trio didn’t score, but it did deliver, finishing the game with Detroit’s best expected goals share (north of 65 percent, according to Evolving Hockey) to back up the eye test that they were largely dictating play. DeBrincat could have easily had a pair of goals, Kasper’s speed and tenacity helped win pucks for the line, and Kane set both of his linemates up for excellent scoring chances.
It was the first look at Kasper with linemates of that offensive prowess, and it was an encouraging one.
“Marco’s been great,” Raymond said. “I think we saw it just from the start of training camp into preseason. The way he’s been playing, I think it helps our team a lot. … He’s just driving the play and a really smart hockey player. It’s really fun to see.”
4. Based on how the three played together Thursday, it feels like a safe bet that we’ll see the three together again, which is probably an ideal circumstance for nurturing Kasper’s offense.
The flip side is he’ll need to manage to not slip into getting too cute playing with Kane and DeBrincat, which is a bit of a risk. It’s only natural playing next to such dynamic players to look for highlight-reel plays, and Kasper does have the skill to try that. But arguably his best traits are his motor and fearlessness, and he’ll need to continue leaning on those to maximize the fit with Kane and DeBrincat.
And to their credit, the veteran scorers also did their part to keep the line balanced Thursday — as those underlying numbers attest.
“(Kasper’s) got pop, but I liked Kane and DeBrincat’s game,” Lalonde said. “When they’re moving their feet, when they’re helping us transition 200 feet — that means them doing things out of our zone — they’re going to do things. I thought they were good and that line was good.”
5. Certainly, Thursday’s win was a big one for the Red Wings in terms of stopping the spiral.
But the reality of their season is that getting hot probably isn’t going to be as easy as it was for them last year, when they had a little more scoring up and down the lineup. That team was flawed in its own ways, which is why it still missed the playoffs, but when it got going, one win always felt like it could turn into three or four.
But besides a power play that can really get going, this team is different. It’s going to take considerable diligence to a not-very-sexy brand of hockey to win most nights. There will be some nights where the power play carries the Red Wings, but getting fast and loose isn’t really an option for this group, as seen by 6-4 and 5-4 losses to Anaheim and San Jose last week.
In that sense, maybe games against teams like the Islanders and Boston are coming at the right time, sort of forcing the Red Wings into a structured, disciplined style.
These Red Wings have a long way to go still. Even after this win, they’re still going uphill right now.
But they took the first step on Thursday. Now we’ll see if they can take the next one.
(Photo: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
