from Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press,

Taking strides offensively won’t give the Detroit Red Wings the results they want unless their defense follows the pace.

It is a humbled Wings team that heads into weekend games at the Pittsburgh Penguins on Friday and at home against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday after giving up a season-high eight goals. The Wings scored five goals, including three from their nascent second line, but the end result from the Wings’ latest outing came up negative.

“We made terrible decisions with the puck, and you’re not winning that way,” coach Jeff Blashill said. “We’ve talked lots about it, I think we’ve made some strides, but we went backwards. We forced plays we didn’t need to force, we didn’t execute with the puck, and ultimately we gave them a whole bunch of chances.

“You can’t force things. You have to take what’s given. You can make plays when you have an opportunity to make a play, and you live another day when you don’t. It doesn’t matter if you’re down 7-1 or if you’re up 7-1. It’s the same thing. You have to play the right kind of hockey. If we want to take steps as we go through the second half of the season, we have to manage it way better than that.”

continued

Posted by Paul from Motown Area on 01/27/22 at 07:11 AM ET

from Ansar Khan of Mlive,

“You can’t trade offense for offense against,” Detroit’s Danny DeKeyser said. “It’s hard to win 6-5, 7-6 in this league. You got to be good in the D-zone and on the penalty kill and take care of your own zone first, because there’s just too many good players that’ll light you up in this league if not.”

Even average players and below average teams can do damage. Dylan Strome tallied his first career hat trick on this night, nearly doubling his season goal total coming into the game (four) and added an assist. Alex DeBrincat, one of the game’s better offensive players, scored a pair of goals and assisted on another.

“We made terrible decisions with the puck. You’re not winning that way,” Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill said. “We’ve talked lots about it, we made some strides in it. Tonight, we went backwards for sure that way.

“We forced plays we didn’t need to force. We didn’t execute with the puck. Ultimately, we gave them a whole bunch of chances. … If we want to win, we have to change the way we play that way.”

read on

Posted by Paul from Motown Area on 01/27/22 at 07:13 AM ET

It was a weird, weird game.  Ned looked shaky from the start and that kind of set the tone for the game - it was going to be loosey goosy.

For a minute at the end I thought they had a real shot but a bad giveaway and it was over. 

I hate watching Debrincat because I wish he was on our team, especially as a hometown kid.  The Hawks got lucky picking him when they did, that was a great pick in the second round.  I guess the same is true for Bert and us but you’d love to have them all.

Posted by TreKronor on 01/27/22 at 10:44 AM ET

Detroit assigns Pickard to the taxi squad which means Greiss is out of Covid protocol.

Posted by Paul from Motown Area on 01/27/22 at 12:46 PM ET