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Detroit Red Wings

Halfway Home, Red Wings Have Work to do

Detroit would finish with 90 points at current pace

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3 months ago

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Moritz Seider, Red Wings
Red Wings defenseman Moritz Seider thinks the team has given away too many points so far this season.

The Detroit Red Wings are at the halfway point of the NHL schedule as they ready to play the Los Angeles Kings on Saturday at Little Caesars Arena. With a 20-16-5 record, that projects out to a 90-point campaign.

Last season, the Florida Panthers would garner the final Eastern Conference playoff spot with 92 points. Based on that number, the Red Wings will need to display improvement over the season half of the season.

“We’re on pace for 90 and that’s not going to be good enough in our conference and our division,” Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde said frankly. “We’d like to probably upgrade that, probably realistically where things are trending, to the mid-90s, maybe even 100 points like it was a couple years ago.”

There’s work to do to be postseason participants, but it’s important work. Last season, the Panthers went all the way to the Stanley Cup final. In other words, if the Wings can just earn that invitation to the dance, who knows what prizes might await them?

If they want to get there, though, there’s work to be done, areas in need of shoring up in the team’s overall game.

“I think we’re in a really good spot but I think we analyzed a lot of the prior games before the Cali trip. We definitely know we gave away easy points,” Red Wings defenseman Moritz Seider said.

Red Wings Striving For Consistency

Losses to NHL bottom feeders like the San Jose Sharks, Anaheim Ducks and Ottawa Senators immediately to mind. Especially galling to Seider was the 6-5 overtime setback to San Jose in which Detroit coughed up a 4-0 lead.

“It’s okay to lose here and there,” Seider said. “It’s just a matter of how you lose. I think we’ve given away too many games where we’re like this is too easy.

“We’re up 4-0 and then we lose the game 6-5.”

Detroit is showing an unward trend in being more stingy on the defensive end of the ice in recent outings. They held the powerful Edmonton Oilers to three goals in their last game. That was preceded by a 3-2 win at Anaheim. This was the first win all season by the team in which they didn’t require at least four goals to garner the two points.

“We want to stop doing that and focus on playing really solid defense and really want to aim for two or less goals (against),” Seider said. “I think you can see a little trend there in the last few games where we’re really trying to do that.

“We just can’t shut down any team but I think we’re doing a good job of containing them. I think that’s something we want to get better at, is playing consistent hockey and don’t have a lot of ups and downs.

“We just want to be a complete team, playing really consistent against other teams in the NHL.”

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