Sunday marked one month since Todd McLellan was named head coach of the Detroit Red Wings,a change that has resuscitated the Wings’ hopes of competing for a playoff spot.
The Wings (23-21-5) next play Monday, when they take on the Los Angeles Kings, the team that last February sent McLellan packing, even as he was signed through the end of this season. That decision ultimately benefited the Wings, as McLellan has had a transformative impact.
In the stretch since he arrived, they’ve gone 10-4-1, and rank in the top six in the NHL in goals scored per game (3.33), goals-against average (2.87) and power play success (38%, ranking first).
“For me the biggest thing is, they have a sense of belief,” McLellan said after Saturday’s 2-0 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning. “How we got to believing where you can play with anybody, I’m not sure. We just started chipping away at different things and working at it.”
His reign began ignominiously with a 5-2 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs, after he had implored the Wings to “play harder, faster, smarter,” the morning of Dec. 27, which was his first day with the team. (Dec. 26 was the last day of the Christmas break.) But in hindsight, giving up five straight goals to a good team turned out to be the perfect building block.
Maybe the best thing that happened is we got spanked against Toronto,” McLellan said, “because the next day, it was, OK, let’s go, what do you have for us? And from that day on, they’ve been a pretty good group of players.
“We haven’t changed everything. Just the little things we’ve tweaked, guys have bought into it, so I tip my hat to them.”
The penalty kill still has a ways to go — it’s at 71% since Dec. 26, in the bottom third of the league — but it was at 68.8% going into Christmas, second from the bottom. Likewise, it shut down the Lightning twice Saturday, and it shut down the Blue Jackets on Jan. 2 in Columbus, Ohio, after a lost challenge with minutes to go in a tie game.
