“Gotta stop the bleeding.”

by Junna Base November 12, 2024

Despite only minor personnel changes, the Detroit Red Wings have not been able to repeat last season’s success in the area of penalty kills.

Of the 40 times they’ve been shorthanded, they’ve been beaten 14 times, giving them a 65% penalty kill rating – second-worst in the NHL, behind only the Edmonton Oilers’ 59% – well below their 79.6 rating % in the rankings 14th in the 2023/24 season (also just ahead of the Stanley Cup runner-up Oilers, with 79.5%).

“Some of it is a small part of the details,” penalty scorer JT Compher said Monday. “A little bit of it is bad mishaps. I think sometimes when you falter on the PK it seems like everything is going in, every chance you give up is going in.”

“We continue to work on it every day. We watch videos, talk and do it in practice. I just think we need a little more from each player in the penalty shootout. Sometimes we’re stuck between being aggressive and not being aggressive, and if we go a little more aggressive, I think we’ll end up having a little more success.”

The Wings (6-7-1) play the Penguins on Wednesday in Pittsburgh. At Monday’s practice, they were without goaltender Alex Lyon, who is dealing with a lower-body injury but was well enough to walk on his own, and defensemen Ben Chiarot and Jeff Petry, who did not attend the hockey introduction Hall of Famers were able to appear in Toronto as guests of Shea Weber and the Montreal Canadiens.

On the penalty kill side, it’s been particularly disheartening for the Wings that they’ve conceded three goals while shorthanded in their last two games, having converted five of six penalties at one point.

“Unfortunately, I think there are two phases,” coach Derek Lalonde said. “Firstly, when things were difficult at the beginning, there was some structure. We weren’t good at the routes and missed some tasks so it ended up in our net. We had a chance to practice it and I thought structurally. “Unfortunately on the last three plays it was much better, two of them were broken and one was a shot from the point.

“I don’t want to panic about it just yet, like we did with our five-on-five game, which has been pretty good lately. We only gave Toronto 20 shots and maybe six or seven chances and they scored two power play goals and that was the difference in the game. And the other day we had a pretty good first period and the difference was they scored a quick power play goal. We will continue to work on this, but we need to stop the bleeding.”

In terms of personnel, it is still Compher, Chiarot, Petry, Moritz Seider and Dylan Larkin who lead the team in shorthanded minutes.

“We just have to step up our game a little bit,” said Seider. “We have to be focused as soon as the puck drops. Obviously if you can clear it it’s easier than being in the zone straight away and we didn’t manage to do that. I’m sure we’ll watch the tape and reassess what we need to do better.

Contact Helene St. James at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @helenestjames.

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Her most recent book, The Franchise: Detroit Red Wings, A Curated History of the Red Wings, was published in October 2024. Her books On the Clock: Behind the Scenes with the Detroit Red Wings at the NHL Draft and The Big 50 : The Men and Moments from the Event$de the Detroit Red Wings” are available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Triumph Books. Personalized copies are available via your email.

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