Red Wings being held 'accountable' by McLellan, respond with 5 straight wins

DETROIT -- Todd McLellan had seen enough already.

This was supposed to be a big night. The Detroit Red Wings were celebrating their Centennial and hoping to get off to a good start in their effort to end a nine-season Stanley Cup Playoff drought, the longest in their storied history.

Wearing throwback uniforms, debuting a revamped lineup, they opened the season with a sloppy 5-1 loss to the Montreal Canadiens at Little Caesars Arena on Oct. 9.

“The players will say, they probably have already said to you that, ‘You know what? We can fix this. We can …’” the coach told reporters afterward, his voice trailing off for a split second. “When? It’s time. Some of them have been doing it for years. It’s time.”

The Red Wings have responded with a five-game winning streak, defeating difficult opponents: the Toronto Maple Leafs (twice), Tampa Bay Lightning, Florida Panthers and Edmonton Oilers.

Toronto won the Atlantic Division last season. Tampa Bay finished second. Florida defeated Edmonton in the Stanley Cup Final for the second straight time.

The Red Wings are tied with the Canadiens atop the Atlantic entering their game against the Buffalo Sabres at KeyBank Center in Buffalo on Wednesday (7:30 p.m. ET; HBO MAX, FDSNDETX, TNT).

“Maybe the two-by-four across the forehead against Montreal was exactly what we needed, now in retrospect,” McLellan said. “We didn’t want it at that time. None of us were happy. But maybe it just put us back to where we needed to be, and hockey became real.”

The season began with a sense of urgency and an excitement that some of the seeds planted under general manager Steve Yzerman finally might be starting to sprout.

Of the 23 players on the roster opening night, nine were selected in the NHL Draft since Yzerman’s hiring April 19, 2019, including three rookies: defenseman Axel Sandin-Pellikka and forwards Emmitt Finnie and Michael Brandsegg-Nygard. Each of the nine players was 24 or younger.

The Red Wings also had improved their goaltending by acquiring John Gibson and their depth at forward by signing Mason Appleton and James van Riemsdyk as free agents in the offseason.

After all the talk in training camp and the preseason, the performance in the opener was disappointing.

“It’s like a teacher in a classroom,” McLellan said. “You worked for three months on a lesson, and now they took the test and just bombed it. … Well, we got a retest, and we got to study a little harder and held them accountable.”

McLellan said he asked three or four players, “Are we tired of this yet?”

“They were longtime Red Wings,” he said. “They didn’t come from other organizations. Just, ‘When is enough enough to play sloppy like that?’ And I wasn’t blaming those players. I wasn’t saying, ‘Hey, it’s your fault.’ But it has to have an impact on those guys. They’ve got to be sitting in there going, ‘OK, enough already.’ But if those four start, or five start, and make a difference, then the rest will follow.”

No current player has been with the Red Wings longer than Dylan Larkin, the captain and No. 1 center who got a taste of the playoffs as a rookie in 2015-16 but hasn’t been back since. Larkin leads Detroit with 11 points (five goals, six assists) in six games.

The rest have followed.

The Red Wings have found different ways to win, playing two games without forward Lucas Raymond and another without forward Patrick Kane due to upper-body injuries. Gibson and goalie Cam Talbot have been strong. Appleton and van Riemsdyk have chipped in offensively. The penalty kill, last in the NHL last season at 70.1 percent, has gone 10-for-10 during the winning streak, and Detroit has allowed six goals over its past four games.

The rookies have made an impact, particularly Finnie, a seventh-round pick (No. 201) in the 2023 NHL Draft who made the team at age 20. He has played left wing on the first line with Larkin and has five points (two goals, three assists) in seven games.

“He’s gotten stronger, and so have all the young guys,” Larkin said. “They seem to be fearless, and that’s something I look at. Why can’t I be fearless too, you know? They’ve brought a great energy to our locker room.”

The Red Wings are developing an identity as a fast, aggressive group that’s hard to play against, and they’re gaining confidence.

After a 4-1 win against the Panthers on Oct. 15, Larkin looked back on opening night.

“It was a head-scratcher, and I don’t want to dwell on the past, but the response we’ve had, it says a lot,” Larkin said. “And we got challenged right away from Day 1 about being resilient, mentally tough. I think we’ve all showed it, and we’ve showed that we’re capable of it.”

The caveats:

The Red Wings hired McLellan on Dec. 26 and lost to the Maple Leafs 5-2 on Dec. 27. At practice Dec. 28, he barked, “Play [bleeping] hockey! You’ve done it your whole lives!” They responded with a seven-game winning streak.

They went 17-4-2 from Dec. 29-Feb. 25, the best record in the NHL over that stretch, and climbed into a playoff spot. But they went 9-13-2 afterward and finished sixth in the Atlantic and five points behind Montreal for the second wild card in the Eastern Conference.

Although their opponents have been difficult to open this season, their schedule has been favorable in other respects. They have had one road game, a short trip to Toronto. They have had no back-to-backs.

They will visit the Sabres on Wednesday and the New York Islanders on Thursday. After hosting the St. Louis Blues on Saturday, they will visit the Blues on Tuesday, the Los Angeles Kings on Oct. 30, the Anaheim Ducks on Oct. 31, the San Jose Sharks on Nov. 2 and the Vegas Golden Knights on Nov. 4.

“It’s just a good start,” Larkin said. “I’ve said that before, so we need to keep going.”