WINGS PRESEASON POSTGAME: Blown out in Toronto
By Cameron Kuom
4 years agoThe Red Wings concluded their final game before the regular season Saturday night in Toronto. But they didn’t go out nicely. The Leafs completely stomped on them, handing out a polite 5-0 loss to the Wings, but it very well could have much more lopsided.
The good news: The preseason is over!
The bad news: This was pretty much a dress rehearsal for Detroit’s opening night roster.
Now we don’t want to overreact to a glorified regular season game, but the Wings just looked over-matched by the cup-contending Leafs. Sure, that isn’t much of a surprise, but you would like to see some life throughout the game. The second period is when it got particularly bad. Toronto’s powerplay looked in midseason form. That, or the Red Wings penalty-kill looked in midseason form. Probably both.
Thoughts and Highlights
- The line combinations were worth taking an extra look at. The groupings we saw will presumably be the ones deployed in Nashville.
- The only regular missing from action was Andreas Athanasiou, who is dealing with a minor injury. Insert Double-A on the second-line left wing position, bump Rasmussen down to the third-line and those are probably your lines. Obviously, Jonathan Bernier will replace Filip Larsson as the back-up.
- During the second period, after William Nylander scored for TO on the man-advantage, Jeff Blashill opted to challenge the play for offside. From the camera angles made available to the public, the offside challenge looked inconclusive. The referees must have agreed, allowing the goal to stand, which subsequently gave Toronto another powerplay (which they scored on).
- One has to think Blashill had a much better camera angle from the bench, as he was livid over the goal standing. Also, who challenges for offside in the preseason?! He had to have been certain the near side forward had his skate up in the air.
- In terms of actual highlights, there weren’t many. The Wings got shutout. So watch Filip Hronek do Filip Hronek things:
Gif of the Game
Steve Yzerman realizing this team is much worse than he originally thought:
Motor City MVP
Anthony Mantha?
Can’t really say anyone is truly deserving of being dubbed the Motor City MVP for the game. The team lacked urgency by the time it became 5-0. It was a very lethargic effort overall.
I’ll go with Mantha, just because I can recall him generating a scoring chance or two, including this one:
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