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Strangers in the red light district |
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As they ready to face the New York Islanders in a must-win (aren’t they all this point?) game, the Detroit Red Wings need to send out a search party in order to find a forward capable of scoring with any consistency.
Who’s the hottest scorer of late for the Wings? Why, that would be defenseman Danny DeKeyser with three goals in the past three games. Next in line is defenseman Trevor Daley, with two goals in four games. Left-winger Justin Abdelkader, with two goals in his last six games, is the only Detroit forward with more than one goal in the team’s last 10 games.
“We’ve talked certainly the last little bit about the importance of our D getting more offense and we’ve got that, but you can’t have the D get offense and the forwards go dry,” Detroit coach Jeff Blashill told Mlive.com. “We need as much offense as we can get without giving up anymore defensively. We’ve just gotta keep going and hope as many guys get hot as possible.”
Yeah, good luck with that. Roll through the list of Detroit’s 12 regular forwards and it’s a list of a dozen guys who’d be completely lost in a red-light district. When Frans Nielsen scored in Tuesday’s 3-2 loss to the Boston Bruins, it was his second goal in 14 games, which makes him the guy with the hot hand. Martin Frk also scored in that game, ending a 17-game goalless drought.
“I was kind of hoping I’d score soon,” Frk said. “It feels good for me but we didn’t get the two points.”
Is it any wonder, considering this list of shooters who’d struggle to fire a puck into the ocean? Captain Henrik Zetterberg hasn’t scored in 15 games. Andreas Athanasiou is eight games without a goal, and Tomas Tatar and Luke Glendening are goalless in seven. Tyler Bertuzzi hasn’t tallied in six games.
The one-goal wonders include Darren Helm (1-in-18 games), Gustav Nyquist (1-in-11) and Dylan Larkin and Anthony Mantha (each 1-in-9).
“We’ve got to score more goals,” Blashill said. “And that’s easy to say and we’ve had chances, so you’ve got to bear down on your chances. We’ve had some great, great chances.”
In 29 of 52 games, the Wings have scored two or fewer goals, claiming just 14 of a possible 58 points from those games.
The breakdown by goals scored:
0 goals (0-1-0)
1 goal (1-11-2) *win via shootout
2 goals (4-8-2) **two wins via shootout
“We’ve got to score more greasy goals,” Blashill said. “I think if we scored a few more goals, it makes it easier on you. We can’t give up easy goals. We can’t shoot ourselves in the foot. You can’t have a turnover on a line change and have them come in and score. You can’t.
“We haven’t solved that yet, but if we do, it makes it way easier on yourself. You can’t make it harder on yourself than it already is. It’s a hard, hard league. We’ve got to make it as easy as possible and we gotta find a way to score more goals.”
Skating such a fine line, the Wings play with fire every night, and far too often, they get burned.
“I’ve been at some consistent teams that won consistently and the nights when we didn’t play good, we still won,” Blashill said. “We don’t have that luxury here. Those were teams that just had way more talent than our opponent in general, so we could not play great and win.
“Ten years ago, there were lots of nights here when that happened. That’s not happening now. It doesn’t mean every night we go in we have an absolute, but if we play our best hockey, I’ll take our chances all day long. I’ve got great belief, but we’ve got to play that close to the vest hockey every night.
“Most teams don’t do that. We’ve got to be different than most teams. We’ve got to be on that edge every night of playing our very best hockey. It’s a hard thing. I can go through the league and tell you Tampa has scored easy this year. There’s been lots of nights I’ve talked to their coach (Jon Cooper) where they didn’t play good and won. That’s not happening for is, so we’ve got to make sure we play as close to optimal every single night the rest of the way.”
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