The Detroit Red Wings will play their first home game since the end of January when they host the Pacific Division-leading Vegas Golden Knights on Wednesday.
The Red Wings, who are in the third place in a very tight Atlantic Division race, last played at Little Caesars Arena on Jan. 31 when they dropped a 5-0 decision to the Colorado Avalanche.
Detroit has played five straight road contests (3-2-0) sandwiched around the three-week Olympic break, capped by a 4-2 victory at Nashville on Monday.
Alex DeBrincat and Lucas Raymond each collected a goal and an assist versus the Predators and Cam Talbot made 18 saves in relief of the injured John Gibson.
Detroit enters Wednesday’s contest just four points behind first-place Tampa Bay and two points in back of the red-hot Buffalo Sabres in the Atlantic. The Red Wings are one point ahead of the fourth-place Montreal Canadiens and three points above the fifth-place Boston Bruins, with the latter two teams currently holding the two Eastern Conference wild-card spots.
The win over the Predators was a nice bounce back for Detroit after head coach Todd McLellan called out his squad following a 5-2 loss at Carolina on Saturday.
“Right now, we have some players who are playing well and hard,” McLellan said. “Then we have some guys who are just jerseys, and what I mean by that is, they’re wearing jerseys and skating around and eating up some minutes, but we need more. We just flat out need more.”
McLellan didn’t have any complaints after the win on Monday.
“I thought we played well right from the start,” McLellan said. “Coming into this, we knew it was like a must-win for us, so I thought we responded pretty well.”
Talbot also drew kudos for coming in off the bench after Gibson went down.
“To come in and pinch-hit the way he did was impressive,” McLellan said. “Right at the end of the (first) period (Gibson) took a shot high up in the shoulder area, and it was kind of like a stinger, if you will. When you get those, you don’t get the feeling back right away. I think he’s OK now.”
Vegas will be playing the second game of a back-to-back that began with a 3-2 loss at Buffalo on Tuesday, the team’s third straight loss.
It’s the final contest of a five-game road trip that started with a 6-4 victory at Los Angeles last Wednesday which featured a five-goal third period by the Golden Knights. But that was followed with losses at Washington (3-2), Pittsburgh (5-0) and Tuesday against the Sabres.
Slow starts have continued to plague Vegas.
The Golden Knights have been outscored, 12-3, in the first two periods of the four games on the trip. They fell behind 3-0 against the Sabres before mounting a comeback that came up one goal short.
“It’s not easy going down 3-0 every game and then try to come back, especially in this league,” forward Ivan Barbashev said. “It’s hard to score goals. We’ve got to do a better job with the starts, especially with trying to get an early goal in a game.”
“We’ve been down this road before,” Vegas coach Bruce Cassidy said. “We get behind, sort of get punched in the face, and we kind of get into our game. We’ve been talking about trying to get there before that happens a lot. I thought that we stuck with it and, if there’s more time, who knows? We just have to do that sooner. It can’t always be when you get behind.”
