DETROIT -- For the Detroit Red Wings, the difference in Friday night's game against the Montreal Canadiens was a cruel one: a would-be shot block from Moritz Seider turned into the game-winning goal for Patrik Laine by virtue of shattered graphite, Seider's stick splintering and the puck deflecting past Cam Talbot to give the Canadiens a 4-3 advantage that would hold for the remaining seven minutes and 58 seconds of the game. Cruel though the deflection was, its significance and its sting came from the opportunities the Red Wings didn't take in the 52 minutes preceding it and the eight that followed.
"It's a bounce, and it went their way. I think leading up to that point we get the lead and then we just get a little casual," said captain Dylan Larkin of Laine's winner, before projecting his focus forward to the second leg of the two sides' home-and-home tomorrow night in Montreal. "It's just a couple plays that didn't go our way and tomorrow night we need to create bounces for ourselves. And that's getting bodies to the net...just simple hockey and creating good bounces for yourself."
Friday's game afforded Detroit the chance to build upon the momentum of three wins in its preceding four games, playing on home ice against the rare Atlantic Division foe it ought to be able to out-match. Instead, puck management and special teams sapped command from the home team all night, and the Red Wings must rebuild their confidence anew tomorrow night on the road.
"We gotta be better with the puck. The margin of error's not there," said coach Derek Lalonde of his team's performance. "We can't have lapses in our game. We've got to be good on special teams. And obviously tonight, we were not."
The Canadiens scored twice in the first period, and each goal emerged directly from a counterattack sparked by a Detroit turnover. As Larkin pointed out, his somber voice expressing a clarity born of the frustration of familiar mishaps, "When you look at the goals they scored, there's some key breakdowns, and a lot of it we talk about -- about breaking the puck out well and coming back to the house and stopping and puck management."
The second of those goals -- scored by Habs forward Jake Evans on a breakaway -- came during a Red Wing power play. A Seider drop pass for Lucas Raymond proved too casual, to borrow Larkin's word, and a heavy touch from Raymond left the puck for Evans to seize and race with toward Talbot, whom he beat with a backhand-forehand move.
While Laine's game-winner came on a Montreal power play, the Red Wing man advantage -- in addition to conceding that short-handed goal to Evans -- finished the night 0 for 4, including a late opportunity off a Kaiden Guhle holding minor with just 3:53 left in the third period. As Lalonde put it, "it was a huge part of the game -- our inability to execute on special teams."
When Lalonde spoke of his team's margin for error, he referred to the sustained focus Detroit must summon to win on any given night, but as the losses continue to mount and the Red Wings fall to 13-15-4, it's hard not to apply the same logic to their already faint postseason aspirations.
Playing to a pace that might push it into serious postseason consideration already felt like a Herculean task for a Detroit team that has struggled all season to build on its own momentum. Given that the Red Wings could not command a game on home ice against one of the two Atlantic teams they lead in the standings, that task begins to feel more like a Sisyphean one.
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