A homestand that showed the worst and best of the Detroit Red Wings ended with a thriller.
It was late to come Saturday at Little Caesars Arena, with the Wings spotting the Columbus Blue Jackets a four-goal lead, but the deficit was down to one with four minutes to play. Their rally came up just short, with the Wings losing, 4-3 to the team with the worst record in the Eastern Conference.
“We weren’t ourselves the first or second,” coach Derek Lalonde said. “It’s frustrating because you give way too much easy offense to their skill. It’s very disappointing to waste a performance like that in the third with what we did the rest of the game.”
Olli Määttä was credited with a goal six minutes into the third period because he was the last Wings player to touch the puck before Mathieu Olivier knocked it into his own net. Jake Walman livened up the crowd with an unassisted goal a minute later, pulling the Wings within two with nearly 13 minutes to play. Lucas Raymond powered his way down low to make it 4-3 with 4:04 to play, on a setup by Filip Hronek and Ben Chiarot.
The Wings hadn’t offered much up till the third period, with Ville Husso carrying the workload in net. It was such a contrast to the energy and determination they showed in one of their best outings of the season when they beat the Toronto Maple Leafs on Thursday. That came two days after they played what Derek Lalonde termed the Wings’ “worst game of the season” and still managed to beat the Winnipeg Jets. 7-5.
“There was no jump, no life on our bench,” captain Dylan Larkin said. “We were kind of just looking around and waiting for something good to happen and it didn’t. They scored four and we can’t give that lead. It’s disappointing after a good game.
“We finally decided to show up in the third and ran out of time. It’s unfortunate. We just didn’t start. We didn’t battle enough, let their top line have time and space, let them just float through without stopping and making it hard on them.”
Lalonde said the Wings “will be nauseous with video” as they review what went wrong against Columbus. The Wings are off on the road for the next three games, starting Monday for a…