DETROIT (AP) — The Detroit Red Wings sat on the bench, stewing in stunned silence, after their latest loss sealed their fate as a franchise relegated to watching the NHL playoffs on TV.
Again.
Detroit lost three leads in its last home game, falling 5-3 to the out-of-contention New Jersey Devils on Saturday, in what coach Todd McLellan called a microcosm of a disappointing season that extended the NHL's longest postseason drought that has dragged on for a decade.
Red Wings fans, the relative few who stayed in their seats until the bitter end, let their voices be heard with a chorus of boos.
“To hear that is very difficult,” captain Dylan Larkin said. “We're down. I'm as down as I could be right now.”
McLellan said the team deserved it.
“That's what we earned,” he said.
Detroit was expected to compete for a spot in the playoffs this season and it did, holding a playoff position for nearly 80% of the season. The Red Wings became the second team in NHL history to have at least 69 points in the first 53 games and miss the playoffs. The Canadiens, who also had 69 points, did it in 1969-70.
The Red Wings were in a playoff position for 148 days of the season, according to Sportradar, to raise expectations higher than they’ve been since the hockey-crazed state experienced a 25th consecutive postseason in 2016.
In late January, the Red Wings led the Atlantic Division and were one of the top teams in the Eastern Conference. Even though Detroit slipped in the standings, it was still clinging to a wild card as late as March 21.
“We put ourselves in a really good position coming out of the Olympic break, and we let it slip away from us,” winger Lucas Raymond said. “You look back in a lot of games where you lost late leads or came up flat, and you just can’t afford that at this time of the year.”
In the loss that allowed the Red Wings to make tee times for next weekend, they went ahead against New Jersey in the first, second and third periods — and lost every lead.
On an odd-man rush, New Jersey's Jesper Bratt scored the go-ahead goal for his second score of the game from the left circle off a perfect pass from Jack Hughes as John Gibson flailed around in an attempt to stop the puck.
“The fourth (goal) is on me,” Larkin said softly in the team's dressing room, which is adorned with photos of the team's all-time greats above each locker stall. “It's my responsibility to stay back and cover for the D.”
McLellan entered his first full season on the bench this year, trying to get the team to be physically harder to play against, mentally resilient and to manage games better.
“I thought we were making gains in those areas, but since the Olympic break, we didn't have much of that and that cost us,” he said. “That starts with me.”
Detroit dashed hopes with a late-season slide, raising more questions about general manager Steve Yzerman’s plan to turn around the team he led as a Stanley Cup-winning captain. The franchise brought Yzerman back seven years ago to turn things around and it simply has not happened.
“It's been too many years in a row, we've been right there just haven’t been able to get it done,” Raymond said. “We got to figure it out and we got to figure it out fast, and take the next step.
"We got to look ourselves in the mirror, everyone here in this building, and we got to be better than this.”
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