By the Detroit Red Wings woke up in Salt Lake City Monday morning, their playoff chances had dwindled to 4.6% according to MoneyPuck.com. Detroit sits five points to the wrong side of the playoff cutline, with three teams between it and the Montreal Canadiens (present holders of the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference). According to coach Todd McLellan, the Red Wings’ time for talking about the playoffs
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Speaking to reporters after Sunday’s practice at the Olympic Oval in Salt Lake, McLellan proclaimed, “We can talk about [making the playoffs] all we want, and it’s great, and we care, and everybody wants to be there. And there’s 32 teams that talk about it, and only 16 teams make it. And those 16 teams find ways to win games. We haven’t been doing that lately, so enough talking about it: Let’s do it.”
As the Red Wings risk crumbling into another late season swoon, McLellan offered a rudimentary path out of the present rut (two wins from their last 10 games): “It’s not the fancy stuff. It’s not always the power play. It’s some of the grunt stuff that it’s hard to calculate its impact on the game until you start doing it over and over and over again. We talked about shot blocking and net play and board work and shift length. When you pull up the NHL website or even analytics, there’s not a lot of scores or grades for that stuff, but it all leads to wins and losses. And enough talking about it, let’s do it.”
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McLellan suggested that his teams underlying numbers are actually better than they were during some of the season’s heights in January and February, but a lack of finishing and defensive intensity has proved costly.
“When we analytically look at it, which can be dangerous, we have been actually creating a bit more chances right now and not finishing as much and not giving up as many but getting scored on more…The non-scoring and the poor defense, it’s too big right now to win games, especially with a high quality opponent.”
