Wings Give Back 2 Points to the Flyers

Two nights after stealing two points after getting dominated by the Penguins the tide turned as the Red Wings thoroughly outplayed the Flyers only to fall 4-2. The Red Wings had a Corsi of 72.53% at EV but again seem unable to find the back of the net. Sheahan scored early after the new Kid Line used their size to work the puck in front, but it was given right back when Grossman caught Kronwall and Tatar sleeping in the d-zone. Then Ericsson attempted a dangerous and aggressive play on Voracek, and managed to get a stick on the puck, but Voracek did enough to hack it into the middle and give Raffl a breakaway. The Red Wings would tie it up again after Helm does a great job to retrieve the puck and find Pavel alone in front. But what was in my opinion a soft call on Kronwall found the Flyers on the PP and Schenn sneaks one through Monster. Smith was unable to get the puck to the net when out on the 6-5 and the Flyer find the empty net to seal the deal.
First lets say that if the Red Wings continue to dominate possession like they did tonight the goals will eventually come. This early in the season I would much rather see a performance like this, dominate possession undone by a lack of goalscoring and defensive miscues, than the game Thursday night. Offensively the team is just not getting enough pucks on net to consistently score more than 1 or 2 a night. Looking at our best offensive threats, Z, Tatar, Datsyuk, Franzen and Nyquist only Tatar is really snakebitten shooting 5%. Zetterberg is slightly above his average at 11.5, everyone else is above 20%, they're scoring more than would be expected for their shots.

Obviously one way to improve those number would be to see a bit more production out of the power play. However as I analyzed previously here creating a threatening Power Play with only left-handed shots is no easy task. Without a threat on the opposite side of the ice teams are able to load up one side and force the Wings to basically play 4-4. As much as people will complain the Red Wings aren't playing "hard enough" or not getting to the "dirty areas" on the PP, when has that ever been the case? As I commented previously right now the biggest problems are the aforementioned lack of a R-handed shooter to spread the D and the lack of a true scoring threat in the slot/net front area. Abby and Helm simply don't have the hands to consistently score after Pavel/Z/Nyquist/Tatar/Kronwall/DK work the puck around the perimeter. Hopefully the return of Mule will alleviate some of these issues, but we have to realize despite the Red Wings were 17th in terms of generating shots on the PP last year, this isn't a new issue and it isn't going anywhere.

Defensively the Red Wings just showed their youth and inexperience and the Flyers are talented offensively so they took advantage. Tatar simply lost his man on the 1st goal, there were some other mistakes leading up to it but Grossman was quoted as saying Tatar never looked at him. The second one was a couple of minor mistakes that ended up combining to something horrible when Voracek made a great play. Then finally Smith on the 6-5 at the end has to keep pucks in deep but again one of those pucks gets through and this is a non issue.

As I said Thursday night, we have to look big picture at this early stage of the season. The Wings played pretty well, didn't get some bounces and saw their youth come back to bite them. All things considered there is no need to be in an uproar over this game. The offense will come, the PP will improve at least a bit and the mistakes can be corrected. It's still October, we still need another month before we truly know anything about this squad. Until proven otherwise I'm confident they will be in the playoffs come April.