Red Wings’ early effort ‘unacceptable’ in 4-1 loss to Coyotes

 

By @StefanKubus  –

DETROIT – They looked sharp this morning, and they looked ready to go before the game.

But for reasons unbeknownst to Jeff Blashill and the Detroit Red Wings, they were anything but in the first half of Tuesday night’s 4-1 loss  to the league-worst Arizona Coyotes.

One night after they were thumped by the Pittsburgh Penguins, 7-0, the Coyotes came out and took two points away from Joe Louis Arena Tuesday night. Jamie McGinn led the way with a pair of goals, and goaltender Mike Smith stopped 37 shots. Andreas Athanasiou potted Detroit’s only goal, while Jimmy Howard allowed four goals on 19 shots.

“It’s unacceptable really, to come out with that effort,” Red Wings defenseman Niklas Kronwall said. “Once we get playing, I think we all feel in here that when we play we’re a pretty good team. But when we’re not playing, it’s too loose and we’re giving them way too many opportunities. It’s not good enough.”

Red Wings head coach Jeff Blashill agreed that the start was abysmal, but said his team actually played well the rest of the way out – especially in the third period where the Wings outshot the Yotes, 18-4 – but that everything they tried just didn’t work in their favor.

“We had chances in the second, we had chances in the third,” Blashill said. “That’s what we’re gonna see on tape, that’s an absolute fact. We’ve gotta find ways to score, we’re gonna continue to work on those ways to score, and we’ve gotta find a way to get a victory on Thursday.

“Let’s learn from this game, let’s get better tomorrow and let’s go win a hockey game on Thursday. That’s what you have to continue to do. You have to continue to get better, you have to continue to improve as a team and you have to continue to go out there and do everything you can to get a result and then start again.”

Anthony DeAngelo opened the scoring for Arizona just 2:01 into the contest, a low wrister on the power play.

“You certainly don’t want to give up one early to a team that’s coming off a trip like that, and for whatever reason, we had a hard time executing,” Blashill said.

With 3:48 left in the opening frame, Athanasiou tied things up at one with his fifth of the season. At the end of a trying defensive shift for Gustav Nyquist, he then came down the ice on a 2-on-1 with Athanasiou, shot the puck on net for a rebound and the puck bounced off Athanasiou’s skate and in. Though briefly reviewed for a kicking motion, it was determined to be a good goal.

“Those are the goals that we’ve been talking about, throwing the puck to the net,” Kronwall said. “Sure it was a 2-on-1, but we get a dirty one, and we’ve gotta get more of those.”

But with just 16 seconds left in the opening period, Lawson Crouse gave the Coyotes a one-goal lead to eventually start the second period with.

It was more of the same to start the middle frame, as Arizona struck just 2:39 in on a McGinn rebound goal to make it a 3-1 game. Arizona virtually had a 2-on-0 in tight after Detroit turned the puck over in front of Howard.

With 11:34 left in the period, Anthony Mantha dropped the gloves with Arizona defenseman Luke Schenn in the Coyotes’ corner, landing several good punches in his first official NHL scrap – Mantha had fought in the preseason and has a handful of AHL fights.

In the third period, the Red Wings lost defenseman Alexey Marchenko to an upper-body injury. He did not return. Blashill said after the game he was day-to-day and that he re-aggravated the same injury he recently suffered.

With 8:33 to play, the Yotes extended their lead to 4-1 on McGinn’s second of the game. From behind the net, Anthony Duclair cleanly connected with an unchecked McGinn right in front for a tap-in goal that capped off the scoring.

Blashill said he felt his team was trying to do the right things, but that nothing ultimately worked.

“This was the fifth game in a segment for us; if we won it, we’re a playoff team this segment,” Blashill said. “If we didn’t, we weren’t. To me, it looked like a team that was  a little bit tight to be honest with you. I’ve had moments of this team where maybe you didn’t show up and I had to come in here and really give it to them. I didn’t give it to them at all. For whatever reason, everything we did seemed to not work and we had to continue to work ourselves out of it.”

Notes: With their final trip to Joe Louis Arena in the books, the Coyotes finish with an all-time record of 25-34-8-3 at the Wings’ hallowed barn.