from Bob Duff of Detroit Hockey Now,

“We are not the 1980 Russian Team right now,” Detroit center Andrew Copp said. “We are in the process of becoming the team that wins a lot of games, but there a lot of lessons there to be learned in that process. Tonight is a lesson that we will have to build from and understand. There is a certain type of game when we don’t have our A+ game we have to have a pretty good B+ game and we didn’t have that tonight.”

Lalonde said Sunday he was pleased with his team’s will and their work ethic, but thought there was some underlying issues that needed to be addressed. That included 5-on-5 play. Detroit gave up four even-strength goals to New Jersey. Of New Jersey’s six goals, goalie Andrew Nedeljkovic probably would only like to have only one back.

“We’ve had a good start, but we are not good enough to have lapses in our game, to get away from what makes us successful,” Lalonde said. “You saw that in most of the first and most of the second. Appreciated the effort in the third. We gave ourselves a legit chance. We went to 4-2 and had some Grade A (scoring chances).”

The timing of this poor performance isn’t good because the Red Wings will play Atlantic Division rival Boston Bruins on the road Thursday.

“That’s a huge game for us,” Larkin said. “…we need much more than we had tonight.”

This was Lalonde’s take: “Huge lesson learned in that we are what we are, and if we play the right way we can be successful but we’re just not talented enough to lull our way through games and expect to get outcomes. That was certainly the case tonight.”

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