3 areas the Red Wings need to improve if they hope to save their season

The Detroit Red Wings will play five of their next six games at home following a dreadful West Coast road trip. They lost to the Los Angeles Kings, Anaheim Ducks, and San Jose Sharks. The only acceptable loss there is in L.A. The road trip began somewhat promising, with a 3-2 overtime victory in Pittsburgh before the wheels completely fell off.

Now, the 7-9-2 Red Wings currently sit second last with 16 points in the Atlantic Division with a game in hand on the Montreal Canadiens. That said, they're only three points out of the final wild-card spot with two games in hand on the Bruins, who currently control the position. Oh, and those same Bruins recently fired their head coach, Jim Montgomery, who is just two years removed from winning the Jack Adams Award (NHL head coach of the year). For what it's worth, the last Red Wing to win the award was Scotty Bowman back in 1996.

To say the Red Wings need to turn things around is an understatement, but if head coach Derek Lalonde hopes to save his job for the remainder of the season and beyond, here are three things that need to be immediately improved.

The Red Wings penalty kill has been atrocious

This doesn't come as much of a surprise considering what the Red Wings have at their expense to deploy on the backend. The Red Wings currently rank last in the league, with a penalty kill rate of 66.7%.

Detroit's top penalty-killing defenders are the same as their top even-strength pair of Moritz Seider and Simon Edvinsson; it is not a bad option. The second unit used is Ben Chiarot and Jeff Petry, or not good. We've talked endlessly about these two players over the past couple of years, and in short, they're just not good enough to be a second pairing in 2024-25.

Chiarot has suddenly reverted to the player he was during his first season with the Detroit Red Wings, and Petry makes far too many errors for a player with nearly 1,000 games played. During even-strength play, this should be Detroit's third pairing, which would also allow them to be fresher when tackling penalty-killing assignments. Maybe trading Olli Maatta wasn't the best decision? The idea was to clear the way for rookie Albert Johansson, yet he's still a rotational piece despite how poorly Detroit's backend has performed as a whole. Also, the addition of Erik Gustafsson over the likes of Jake Walman or Shayne Gostisbehere has proven to be a big mistake in the early going of the season.

The good news is that Petry is a pending free agent, and either Chiarot or Justin Holl, who is in and out of the lineup, will become a buyout candidate next summer.

Up front, Detroit uses a variety of forwards on the penalty kill, including Dylan Larkin, Lucas Raymond, Andrew Copp, J.T. Compher, Marco Kasper, Tyler Motte, Christian Fischer, and Michael Rasmussen. The Red Wings have far too many 'depth' players who fail to generate enough offense. If Detroit plans to keep a checking line of Rasmussen, Copp, and Fischer during even-strength play, is there really a reason to have players like Joe Veleno and Motte taking up roster spots?

The Red Wings need to be far better in even strength situations

With all of the firepower the Detroit Red Wings have in their top-six, their horrible play at even strength comes as a surprise.

Anyone who follows hockey understands that gaining Alex DeBrincat and Patrick Kane wouldn't come without giving up something on the defensive side. It's one of those give-and-take situations where you hope the good or great outweighs the bad. DeBrincat and Kane both have defensive deficiencies but are so gifted offensively that you do your best to put them with players who can maybe erase some of those negative plays. Although DeBrincat is nearing a point-per-game pace this season, he's proven to be a really streaky scorer during his time in Detroit. He's notched two goals over his past six games and eight goals and 17 points through 18 games this season but is a minus-10. Kane, 36, is off to a slow start to his standards, recording just three goals and ten points over the same span, and is a minus-6. In fairness, plus/minus doesn't hold much clout anymore, but I'd prefer to see a player with a plus rating.

Detroit needs to find more goal-scoring, and it needs to come from their group of top-nine players (obviously). The Red Wings currently rank 26th with 2.56 goals per game and 25th in the league with an even-strength goal differential of minus-14.

The Red Wings' goal scoring is led by Larkin with 11 goals, followed by DeBrincat's eight, and then Andrew Copp with five, which includes two empty-netters. After that, it's Kane, Compher, and Rasmussen with three each. If the Red Wings have any hope of ending this tailspin they are in, a few of these scorers need to start finding twine.

Lucas Raymond is a fabulous player, and it's hard to criticize the team's shared point leader (17), but 15 of them are helpers. Raymond needs to continue being a facilitator but also find his scoring touch. Last season, he owned a shooting percentage of 19% en route to a 31-goal season. Perhaps that was always going to be difficult to maintain, but that number has drastically decreased to 6.3%. The positive here is that the number is so low, and Raymond is far too good of a scorer for that number not to drastically increase. The same goes for Kane. The wild card players here are Vladimir Tarasenko, Marco Kasper, and Jonatan Berggren; each currently sits with two goals apiece. Can this trio each be near 20-goal scorers? That group has replaced David Perron (17), Robby Fabbri (18), and Daniel Sprong (18) from a year ago.

The Detroit Red Wings need their home-ice to be an advantage again

I believe the Detroit Red Wings have the best fans in the NHL, and their home ice, which used to create such a mismatch, hasn't this season.

At home this season, the Red Wings are 3-4-1. They have scored just 19 goals over eight games, which equals 2.375 goals per game. Yet they've allowed 28. Their shooting percentage at home is a mere 9.0% collectively, and their penalty kill has operated at just 59.1%. Woof.

In comparison, on the road, the Red Wings are 4-5-1 and have averaged 3.00 goals per game, having scored 27 goals in nine games, but have yielded 32. Their penalty kill has maintained a 72.4% and their team shooting percentage is 11.6% away from LCA.

The one positive to mention is that their power play is phenomenal both at home and on the road. It's like having a great rushing attack in the NFL; it travels. Overall, the Red Wings have the third-best power play in the league, converting at a 32% clip. They're 30.8% at home and a stellar 33.3% on the road.