Red Wings’ winning weekend sets up ‘biggest game of the year’: 5 thoughts

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DETROIT — For weeks now, looking ahead to this weekend on the Detroit Red Wings’ schedule was a cautionary exercise.

The Carolina Hurricanes and Florida Panthers — two of the league’s best (and toughest) teams — represented all the reasons the Red Wings couldn’t afford to squander other games. And when Detroit squandered nearly its entire March mired in losing streaks, this weekend set against two powerhouses started to look like a potential nail in their coffin.

Instead? Both teams brought banged-up (and frankly, watered-down) lineups into Detroit, and the Red Wings handled their business. After all the dread, Alex DeBrincat was able to look ahead to Tuesday’s game in Montreal and accurately say: “It’s probably the biggest game of the year.”

Now, just how meaningful it will look in hindsight remains to be seen. Detroit’s win Sunday pulled them back within four points of the Canadiens for the Eastern Conference’s final wild-card spot for about an hour before Montreal’s win in Nashville pushed the mark back to six. That’s still an awfully steep hill to climb, and Detroit’s path to the postseason is still a significant long shot.

But with a game in hand and that head-to-head contest still remaining, the Red Wings can at least keep their dreams alive another day — which is more than looked possible a week ago.

Some thoughts on how they did it, and what it would take to actually pull off this late push.

1. Let’s start with who wasn’t on the ice this weekend, because it’s a pretty relevant detail.

Carolina played the Red Wings without Jordan Staal and Andrei Svechnikov in Detroit’s 5-3 win on Friday. Florida took the ice without any of Aleksander Barkov, Matthew Tkachuk, Sam Bennett, Sam Reinhart or Gustav Forsling — not to mention Aaron Ekblad, who is serving a 20-game suspension for violating the terms of the league’s Performance-Enhancing Substances Program. That’s a whole lot of talent missing, particularly on Sunday.

So it was certainly a different look taking on the defending Stanley Cup champions. And yet the Red Wings aren’t going to question that too much, considering they’re desperate for every single point right now.

To hear it from Todd McLellan, too, that kind of lineup dynamic can work both ways in a game.

“What often happens is the workers get an opportunity,” McLellan said. “They’ve been waiting, and I thought their workers really worked tonight. Made it hard on us to execute plays. There wasn’t a lot of — and if I say this, I mean it respectfully to all the players in the game — there was less skill in the game, so there was more scramble plays, there was more sticks that just touch pucks, there was more scrums and standing over it. Less execution. And sometimes that’s hard to play.”

Along those very lines, this was not the Red Wings’ prettiest game. As McLellan put it, “I think we have better.” And if they’re going to go into Montreal and actually make things interesting Tuesday, they’re going to need better.

But in a game they basically had to win, they’ll take it regardless.

Cam Talbot has had an exceptional past five games for Detroit. (Tim Fuller / Imagn Images)

2. The biggest reason the Red Wings won Sunday was a simple one: Cam Talbot.

Talbot stopped 32 of 33 shots, including a pair of spectacular saves late — first with his paddle on Jesse Puljujärvi, and then stretching across to stop an Anton Lundell one-timer from the right circle.

It looked a lot like the save Talbot had made on Boston’s Casey Mittelstadt late in the final seconds last weekend, and it kept the game from going to overtime.

“It’s just desperation,” Talbot said. “Get as much of body as I can to the other side of the net, make the save. Luckily it fell right underneath me and I was able to cover it up and not give them a second chance.”

Sunday was the fourth consecutive game Talbot has started, and the fifth straight he’s played in after coming on in relief for Alex Lyon against the Ottawa Senators. In those five games, he has an absurd .945 save percentage — a huge step up from where he had been since the 4 Nations break, when he had just an .869 save percentage from Feb. 22 through March 22.

So, what’s McLellan seeing now from his goaltender?

“When Petr (Mrazek) came in, and Alex (Lyon) went in and had a couple starts or couple runs, Talbs had a chance to work on his game and he got rested,” McLellan said. “And now he looks fresh, he looks focused, his game is on. So perhaps that helped him. But whatever it is, we’re going to need him to keep doing it.”

There’s no doubting that. For all the issues the Red Wings have, goaltending is the one thing in hockey that can cover it all up. And while Detroit will have to be careful in how much they try to ride the 37-year-old Talbot down the stretch, he’s yet to give them a reason to look elsewhere in this current run.

3. There have been a few promising stories for the Red Wings this year, from Marco Kasper and Albert Johansson’s emergence as rookies to Lucas Raymond setting a new career high in scoring (75 points and counting), but no player has been as consistently impactful for Detroit as DeBrincat.

DeBrincat scored his 35th goal of the season Sunday, a power-play blast set up by Raymond, right on the heels of an even better look that he missed. His 35 goals are the third-most he’s had in a single season, and while his career high (41, twice) will be hard to reach with only six games to play, threatening 40 is not out of the question for him.

It’s already a nice jump from the 27 goals he scored each of the last two seasons, and while DeBrincat feels he’s gotten “a lot more puck luck” this season, there’s more to it.

“I think just consistency in my play,” he said. “I think I had quite a few dips in my play last year, and you know, this year just trying to do a better job of being consistent, just work hard even when it’s not going in, and find a way to get to the net and put them in. … Sometimes you can play your best game and not score, and sometimes you can play your worst game and have two or three. So, sometimes you need the luck on your side, but I think that work ethic is really what drives everything.”

It shows. DeBrincat has been noticeable nearly every night this season, whether he’s scoring or not. He even fought 6-foot-3 Andrew Peeke recently to stick up for himself after a hit, surely giving some spark to his team.

“Sometimes in some of those scorers, there’s a cheat element and not a total commitment to the return to your own end play,” McLellan said. “I don’t see that with Cat. I think it’s there all the time.”

Trading for DeBrincat two summers ago was the most effective non-draft move Steve Yzerman has made as Red Wings GM, and while it’s not always easy to replicate a hometown RFA coming available, DeBrincat’s success in Detroit should only reinforce the value of such big swings going into this summer.

Even when Alex DeBrincat isn’t scoring, he makes a difference for the Red Wings. (Tim Fuller / Imagn Images)

4. Two goals on Sunday was enough to win, but finding more five-on-five offense continues to be a pain point for these Red Wings. DeBrincat’s goal came on the power play, which has kept Detroit afloat all season, and J.T. Compher’s goal to make it 2-0 came less than 30 seconds after another power play had expired.

It’s beating a dead horse, perhaps, but even in low-scoring playoff-style games, the Red Wings can’t expect to get by that way too often. There are some obvious culprits they’ve needed more from all season — particularly Vladimir Tarasenko and Jonatan Berggren, neither of whom registered a shot on goal Sunday. But even beyond that, Detroit’s top six is going to need to break through more outside the power play too.

Dylan Larkin has now gone eight games without a goal, and only had one shot on goal Sunday. Larkin has seemed to be battling through some kind of injury since the 4 Nations, and McLellan recently said Larkin had been “dinged up” even before that, describing Larkin as “pushing through” now. That certainly helps put Larkin’s quieter offensive stretch in context.

5. This Detroit team has been streaky all year — and going back to previous years, too. They lost 11 of 14 to put themselves into this precarious situation in April, but they’ve also had two seven-game win streaks under McLellan.

With points now in four straight, they seem to have righted the ship from that March collapse. But now the key is to keep it going without getting too intoxicated by a couple of wins against undermanned teams.

“You just have to channel that energy the right way,” Talbot said. “You can’t get too high, you can’t get too low, you have to kind of stay even-keel. But you can also take the momentum from this game and just keep trying to build and build and build. And the confidence that comes with the wins, you just want to continue to play with that confidence.”

If they can do that Tuesday, their playoff dreams will start to look a little more plausible.

(Top photo of Michael Rasmussen and Mackie Samoskevich: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)

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