If you happened to tune in for Saturday night’s game between the Detroit Red Wings and Toronto Maple Leafs, you saw the Red Wings come out flat in the first two periods as were down 7-2 heading into the third period.
But in the final period, the Red Wings stormed back with five goals to cut the Maple Leafs lead to 8-7 with about 10 minutes left. Unfortunately, that’s when the Red Wings ran out of gas and the Maple Leafs put up three more goals to win the game 10-7.
Following the game, Red Wings head coach Jeff Blashill acknowledged that it was probably an exciting night for the fans at Little Caesars Arena “but at the end of the day, it’s fool’s gold.”
“I’m sure it’s exciting for the fans and the building was loud,” Blashill said. “All I’m thinking about is, it’s not good enough. It’s great that we were able to finally start shooting the puck, and the pucks went in late, but at the end of the day, it’s fool’s gold.
“That’s not good enough. I think our guys know that. Cripes, I hope our guys know that. What happened out there wasn’t good enough.”
“We lost every puck race, every puck battle, every competition battle. We lost every single one of them.”
When asked how the Red Wings could look so disinterested in a weekend home game against an Original Six opponent, Blashill did not have much of an explanation.
“Yeah, it is hard to understand,” he said. “It’s a great building, great atmosphere. But it starts with not giving up easy chances.”
Red Wings D Marc Staal said that he and his teammates were not about to quite and he was happy for the fans who stuck around to see an exciting third period.
“We weren’t going to roll over,” Staal said. “We decided to start playing for each other and start trying to win some battles. We were getting beat all night long. Obviously it was too late, but we wanted to make some kind of push.
“We were out of the game and we start scoring like crazy. I was happy our fans stuck around, to be honest. They gave us a big boost with the amount of energy they were bringing. It was a fantastic crowd to stick with us, not give up on us.”
Staal added that it was embarrassing how the Red Wings played in the first and second period and that they did not deserve to win the game.
“Our first and second period were pretty embarrassing,” Staal said. “We just had no pulse. We deserved to be where we were. We didn’t deserve to win, that’s for sure.”
