Red Wings’ Todd McLellan reveals concerns after Kraken’s big win

The The Detroit Red Wings are one of the hottest teams in the NHL at this moment. Todd McLellan took over the Red Wings bench on Boxing Day after Derek Lalonde received a pink slip. The Red Wings lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs in McClellan’s first game as the head coach. However, they haven’t lost since. Detroit’s 6-2 victory over the Seattle Kraken on Sunday marked their seventh straight victory.

Detroit’s seven-game winning streak is the longest active streak in the league at this point. Furthermore, it’s the team’s first winning streak of at least seven games since 2012, per Max Bultmann of the Athletics. However, McClellan was not entirely satisfied with the game. And he opened up about concern has about the team’s upcoming day off.

“Tomorrow is a day off—a mandatory day off.” Actually, it worries me a bit because of the way this game played out. Very quickly you have a 4-0 or 5-0 lead and it’s gone,” said the Red Wings bench boss, via the team’s official YouTube channel. “Some things don’t really matter and you tend to give something back.” In an ideal world, it would be nice to have practice tomorrow. But we’re doing it, so we’ll see how the group responds to that test.

Todd McLellan evaluates the Red Wings’ performance in the Kraken victory

The Red Wings took a 4-0 lead in the first period, as Todd McClellan mentioned. The Krakens were on the back foot the entire game. It was Detroit’s goal. Seattle had played the night before, and Detroit certainly wanted to take advantage of that.

However, McClellan noticed some problems with how the team performed during the game. The veteran bench boss saw his team loosen up as the game wore on. And this allowed the Kraken to score a few goals to make the score a bit closer than the game itself suggested.

McClellan noted that wins and losses don’t matter when judging his team’s performance. There are good results in defeat as well as less than ideal efforts in victory. There are lessons to be learned in every game, and McClellan found things from Sunday’s performance that he would like to clean up.

“I don’t think you have to win or lose to judge how you played.” Today we won 6-2. It wasn’t our best game of the series in my opinion. We gave up too much, we were too loose. That’s why I would like to have that practice tomorrow,” the Red Wings coach explained. “It’s a bit harder to sell because they knew it was 5-0 or 6-1 and it didn’t matter that much.” But I don’t think you have to win or lose to get a point.

The Red Wings are back in playoff contention. In fact, they are just two points behind the Columbus Blue Jackets for the final Wild Card spot in the East. However, their coach wants a more complete performance. He might get that performance Tuesday when Detroit goes for its eighth straight win against the San Jose Sharks.