It’s now been a year since the Detroit Red Wings parted ways with Derek Lalonde. Off the heels of a 4-0 loss to the St. Louis Blues where they were booed off home ice, the Red Wings did something they hadn’t done in over a quarter century: fire a coach mid-season.
In his place, Todd McLellan was brought in over the NHL’s Christmas break. McLellan took over a team that, in his own words, "playing mechanical hockey," and that required a return to the fundamental aspects of the game. It started with a moment that has now become infamous in Detroit: “Play [bleeping] hockey! You've done it your whole lives!” For many, those were the first words they’d see in print from the new coach’s mouth.
Coming in midseason, McLellan had to adapt the system Detroit had been playing in for nearly two and a half years at that point without the time to properly implement his own. The results last season were mixed. The Red Wings playing stretches of good hockey, but collapsing and losing almost as many games as they won.
Detroit went 15-4-1 from Dec. 28 to Feb. 7 in their first 20 games with their new bench boss. They’d only win 11 more games over the course of the next month and a half and missed out on the playoffs for the ninth season in a row. That included a six-game skid to start the month of March that the Red Wings never recovered from, only managing to string together consecutive wins again in April.
This season, McLellan came in with more time and new players ready to be molded into his system. Through the first two months of the season, we saw flashes of what the Red Wings could be under McLellan, and we certainly heard about what he thought his team should be doing under him.
One of the most noticeable changes was the penalty kill. McLellan preaches an older, more physical style of play, and Detroit took a bit to get used to it. The Red Wings ended last season ranked dead last for the penalty kill, and in fact got slightly worse under McLellan over the second half of the season. This year, however, the Red Wings are ranked 16th on the PK and have shown more of a willingness to finish their checks.
Detroit Red Wings are moving in the right direction
They certainly aren’t the Avalanche, but most nights Detroit isn’t a team that’s about to be pushed around. Perhaps this was best exemplified in their game against the Dallas Stars before this year’s Christmas break.
The Red Wings found themselves down 2-1 to start the third period of a game they’d found the net first in. They’d been outshot in the second 13-5 and had given up two goals after having one of their own waived off.
Emmitt Finnie, a seventh round rookie (no, we sportswriters will not stop tacking that on anytime he’s mentioned) playing top line minutes and the netfront on the second power play unit tied it at two with a power-play goal.
Then, the Stars struck back, and that 2-2 tie turned to the Red Wings being down with half the period left to play. In previous years, heck even previous months, that would have been when the Red Wings folded. Instead, Dylan Larkin put the team on his shoulders.
Larkin would score the tying goal with just over four minutes left in the game.
In overtime, Larkin got into the slot and fired it in for his 20th of the season and the game-winner.
“Last year this night we got booed off the ice all three periods. It was a negative place, where we were down,” said Larkin. “...I would give Todd a lot of credit for a full year now, and I'm sure he'll tell you it's just a start. There's a lot of work to be done.”
Now, after a full calendar year with the team, Todd McLellan has taken the Red Wings from the bottom of the Atlantic to the top of the division. They just went blow for blow with the second-best team in the league, and came out on top.
Oh the times, they have a-changed.