Postgame: Red Wings Lose Opening Night to the Blue Jackets
5 years ago
A game most fans and players will want to forget – that is not one way to open up your season.
That was an absolute pummeling brought by the Columbus Blue Jackets. The Red Wings looked lost for the most part and they were not able to simply put any pucks even remotely towards the net.
The young kids were certainly exciting, but overall, the Wings were just letting the Blue Jackets walk all over them.
Worth Mentioning…
- Even though the Blue Jackets had three more powerplay opportunities than the Red Wings, that does not give them the chance to outshoot the Wings 39-20 – almost double the number of shots.
- Michael Rasmussen finished with only 12:06 TOI and Christoffer Ehn only saw 8:09 of icetime. If Blashill is going to have young kids that the Wings need to develop, in his lineup, he should at least play them for a good portion of the game. Understandably the Wings were on the PK for a lot of this game, but the question is still warranted.
- For the optimists, Dennis Cholowski scored his first NHL goal! Beautifully set-up by Dylan Larkin, Cholowski was able to show off his agility and shot, for this goal.
- Larkin had plenty of opportunities to show his new role as lead penalty killer. He was able to break-up some key passes and create a some strong forechecking pressure. A good sign for your two-way center.
- The only other Wings goal of this game came from Tyler Bertuzzi. A weird fluke bounce off of a shot from Larkin led to the puck going into the net and Bertuzzi being credited for the goal. Good for the young winger that looks to stay up in the NHL for the full season.
- If the Wings didn’t take so many penalties, they had a better chance of staying in this game and not making fools of themselves. An extra six minutes on the man advantage obviously helped the Blue Jackets have that 19-shot lead, but they still ran the show at 5v5.
- Only Mantha, Larkin, and Nyquist were able to stay above 50% in their CF% 5v5. Every other Wings player was completely taken advantage of by the Blue Jackets. Basically creating a walkway for Columbus to get scoring chances.
Final Thoughts
Penalties are what undid the Red Wings plan for this game. There were too many and way too close together – causing the Blue Jackets to just run away with this game. The score might have stayed even and went into overtime, but the Blue Jackets still had control. According to MoneyPuck, the Blue Jackets had 3.74 expected goals in all situations, while the Red Wings only had 1.76.
This is the definition of one team getting extremely unlucky and the other one just passing by on some flukey goals. Columbus should have beat the Red Wings in regulation – from the scoring chances they got to the amount of powerplay time they had.
It is a rough home opener, but the Wings should learn from this. Play the young guys more and just see what they can do offensively, you might as well Blashill. It is certainly exciting seeing all of these fresh faces and potential, but this is still a team with a long way to go.
The Wings now travel to Los Angeles to face the Kings on Sunday night. Puck drop is at 10:30 EST at the Staples Center.
Recent articles from Thomas Williams
