Red Wings Drop Fourth Straight, Fall to Boston 5-1

The Detroit Red Wings looked to snap a three-game losing streak against Boston on the road, but it would be an uphill battle without captain Dylan Larkin. The result was predictable as the Red Wings fell 5-1 to the Boston Bruins in a lopsided affair.

Robby Fabbri had an early chance when the shot he took rang off the post and bounced out to the sideboards. The Red Wings would get another nice chance when Tyler Bertuzzi had a clear shot with time but it was saved by Jeremy Swayman.

There wouldn’t be much else in the way of great chances as the Red Wings chased the remainder of the period while they surrendered the only goal of the period in the first few seconds of Boston’s power play. The Red Wings struggled to generate anything offensively after getting whistled for a second penalty later on, and went into the intermission still trailing by a goal and being mercilessly outshot.

The second period saw Patrice Bergeron notch his second and the goals of the game, and hats raining down on the ice as the Bruins took a 3-0 lead. Honestly, there wasn’t much else to talk about beyond that as Detroit was outshot terribly once again.

In the third, the Red WIngs finally got on the board when Lucas Raymond one timed a pass from Filip Hronek on a 5 on 3 power play. The secondary assist came from–you guessed it–Moritz Seider. But literally 25 seconds later, Mike Reilly scored a short handed goals, deflating any momentum the Red Wings generated and seeing another three goal deficit.

Bergeron added his fourth of the game with 4:08 left in the third, slamming the game shut, and sending Detroit to its fourth straight loss.

It’s evident that the Red Wings are not only missing Larkin, but they’re just not able to keep up with the better teams in the league at this point. And honestly, that’s okay. The energy and fight from the first few games excited us all because it was new, and something we hadn’t seen in a long while. Add to that the presence of Yzerman’s first two big picks in Seider and Raymond and it distracted us from the lackluster memories of the past two seasons. With Larkin missing a couple games, Bertuzzi missing two as well, it messes with the chemistry. Is it an excuse? Nope. Just an explanation for how one moment they’re playing Florida close, and then getting blown out by Boston.

One other note: Michael Rasmussen, who was the first line center during Tuesday’s loss to Montreal, didn’t have nearly as many chances on the third line tonight. Though it’s hardly anything to be overly concerned about, it feels the forward progress Rasmussen was showing has stagnated a bit.

Games like this will happen. The team is getting younger and the skill will increase in the coming years. But it doesn’t make games like these any easier to watch. And the fear again is that it will snowball into one of the miserably long losing streaks that showed up often in 2019-20 and once last season as well.

Onto the next one, where Detroit takes on Buffalo Saturday night just a couple days after their big trade of Jack Eichel.