GDT: Game 1 | Detroit Red Wings @ St. Louis Blues | 8:00 PM EST | FSD (HD)

[WingedWheel1987]

Defense looks like the love child between Helen Keller and Ray Charles.

Kyle Quincey is a joke.

 

[PullHard]

Defense looks like the love child between Helen Keller and Ray Charles.

Kyle Quincey is a joke.

Holland's worst trade in recent history by a country mile. Maybe his worst ever.

 

[nik jr]

Because for a guy like Jagr to score, you need some speed, energy, and a decent offensive defenseman to get him the puck? This isn't rocket science.

agree

jagr needs a lot of puck support.

Hagelin and Kreider don't do much for me, personally. I don't think Nash, Richards and Callahan are going to carry you past the Bruins, Pens or Flyers. But Torts is a good coach so maybe.

agree

STL played NYR last season, and dominated them. 4-1, and outshot NYR by a fairly big margin.

Tonight's game in a nutshell:

true

 

[PullHard]

agree

STL played NYR last season, and dominated them. 4-1, and outshot NYR by a fairly big margin.

also, don't forget that West is best and East is least!!!! woot woot

Sorry, my brain melted after watching the game.

 

[Vladdy84]

imo, it is definitely worse than 0-8 and 2-8 losses to nashville and CBJ in '09, or 0-6 loss to NYI in '10, or 3-10 loss to STL in '11 b/c i still was confident DRW were good enough to be competitive.

this loss is so bad b/c it could be foreshadowing.

Those games seemed like just an anomaly. A let down or underestimating an opponent in the middle of the season. We were dominated tonight and outmatched. I didn't recognize my team here.

 

[HTT3*]

Perhaps the most regular season disappointing Wings game I can recall.

My vote goes to the Islander's blowout a few years back.

 

[aar000n]

That was as bad as it gets.

 

[sarcastro]

If it's any consolation, the 09-10 season started off kinda like this one. And that year wasn't a total disaster...

 

[ScottyBowman]

We could always have some comfort with #5 back there but not now. The defense just looks horrible. Quincey is continuing his poor play from last year. On the bright side, its only the first game and if we lose 3-2 or 6-0, it really doesn't matter.

 

[Goalie guy]

Okay all the hey lets see what the team can do before we blame kenney, how bout it now? he has sat on his hands for four yrs now doing nothing at all, his only defense is the pizza king is putting all his money in the tigers. this team is small, old, slow, out of position, flat footed and just flat out not a N H L competitive team. they now need a full rebuild not just a retool sorry guys.

 

[Fugu]

Everyone kvetching about our defense. How many shots on goal did the Wings get?

That's the D's fault too, right?



Can't say I'm surprised they lost, generally speaking. I mean, it is the first game after a half season long lockout.

That said, Tarasenko? Wow. 91 suits him.

Blues just look fast, gritty, great offensive pressure and puck movement. That's a very good team.

Our top forwards looked average, at best.

 

[Fugu]

Blues add one more pretty good Dman and they are my cup favs

Hey, they figured they could use Redden as depth or something.

 

[sarcastro]

Everyone kvetching about our defense. How many shots on goal did the Wings get?

That's the D's fault too, right?

et tu, Fugu?

Blues basically had four skaters and their goalie parked in their crease the whole night with one guy doing circles at the Wings' blue line.

Any offense is going to have a hard time breaking through that kind of shell. Including the slow/disinterested/disjointed offense the Wings appear to currently have.

 

[ScottyBowman]

et tu, Fugu?

Blues basically had four skaters and their goalie parked in their crease the whole night with one guy doing circles at the Wings' blue line.

Any offense is going to have a hard time breaking through that kind of shell. Including the slow/disinterested/disjointed offense the Wings appear to currently have.

Not to mention the Blues had like 4 or 5 breakaway goals. After 2 periods we had given up 27 shots.

 

[Fugu]

et tu, Fugu?

Blues basically had four skaters and their goalie parked in their crease the whole night with one guy doing circles at the Wings' blue line.

Any offense is going to have a hard time breaking through that kind of shell. Including the slow/disinterested/disjointed offense the Wings appear to currently have.

Why would their D come out and do anything else when they know our forwards are just going to skate around the perimeter? At least when you had Homer, they had an excuse to stay parked there.

 

[DatsyukToZetterberg]

I feel much better now, I beat some guy on NHL 13, it's allowed me to realize that it was only the first game of the season and as long as we come out with a much better effort Monday night we should win. I mean I don't think the NYR, LA or Canuck fans are freaking out like us...

I still feel like we NEED atleast Nyquist up here & possibly one other AHL guy, whether it's Tatar, Ferraro or Sheahan, we need that young blood in the lineup. I don't care how we get it in there but if after 8 or so games and we're below .500 we have to try infusing the youth.

 

[nik jr]

Everyone kvetching about our defense. How many shots on goal did the Wings get?

That's the D's fault too, right?



Can't say I'm surprised they lost, generally speaking. I mean, it is the first game after a half season long lockout.

That said, Tarasenko? Wow. 91 suits him.

Blues just look fast, gritty, great offensive pressure and puck movement. That's a very good team.

Our top forwards looked average, at best.

F's sucked ass, too, but taking only 14 shots is partly the d-men's fault. they could barely get out of the defensive zone, and looked confused generally. plus teams generally lose morale and play worse when they're losing 4-0.

 

[sarcastro]

Why would their D come out and do anything else when they know our forwards are just going to skate around the perimeter? At least when you had Homer, they had an excuse to stay parked there.

They definitely came out flat and stayed that way, both the forwards and the D, there's no debating that.

I think Babcock will do what he can to light a fire under the forwards in the games ahead, but there's no amount of lipstick that will make that pig of a defense look good. If anything, telling them to play harder will only make them worse.

 

[SnowblindNYR]

STL played NYR last season, and dominated them. 4-1, and outshot NYR by a fairly big margin.

Hate to crash a game thread after a debacle of a game like this. However, that's both true and not true. What's true is that the Blues dominated play for the most part. The Rangers didn't look good at all. However, 1 of those goals was a huge fluke and the other was an empty netter. Really despite the difference in play it was a 2-1 game. Also St. Louis was the 2nd best home team in the NHL last year (or were they better than you guys?) losing to them is not something that's embarrassing.

Regarding the stuff about the Rangers not being able to beat the Penguins, Flyers, or Bruins. Well if this game today was any indication they won't be able to beat the Blue Jackets. That said they have had the Bruins number since Lundqvist came into the league. Against the Flyers and Bruins the Rangers were 9-1 last season. Why are people pretending like they're out of the Rangers' league? Granted, today's TERRIBLE effort (about as bad as they had in years) doesn't help their case. Still going by last year's results the Rangers were 9-1 and the Rangers improved more than both those teams. The Pens are a different story.

Anyway good luck this season guys. The Wings are my second favorite team.

 

[Fugu]

F's sucked ass, too, but taking only 14 shots is partly the d-men's fault. they could barely get out of the defensive zone, and looked confused generally. plus teams generally lose morale and play worse when they're losing 4-0.

No, I'm not going to give the forwards a pass for a lack of any effort, creativity or anything. There were two guys who looked like they even knew there was a game-- Dats and Brunner at various points.

I mean, you had 4 forwards on the PP units. You gonna blame that on the defense too?

At the end of the day, you can blame the poor defense on the forwards for lack of defensive play and helping the D. Or you can blame the D, as you did, for the lack of offense.

The real answer may be that they have to find a new system or style that may work for a Wings team w/o Lidstrom, Stuart, Rafalski, and a prime Z, Dats et al. I also think we have a rather disjointed set of personnel that's not really suited to the puck possession style of play, nor something that Babs might prefer. It's like the purgatory in between heaven and hell.

 

[detredWINgs]

They definitely came out flat and stayed that way, both the forwards and the D, there's no debating that.

I think Babcock will do what he can to light a fire under the forwards in the games ahead, but there's no amount of lipstick that will make that pig of a defense look good. If anything, telling them to play harder will only make them worse.

This is the difference between years past and this season. I think people expect Cola, White, Ericsson, and Quincey to have some "reserve of talent" that a coach can bring to the surface, but the fact remains, the core of our defense is made up of journeymen defensemen, book-ended by the veteran Kronwall and the rookie Smith. Everything in between needs to be surrounded by talent in order to be effective themselves, and there's not enough talent on the back-end to do that. There's a reason Ericsson didn't enter the league til he was in his mid 20s, Kindl has never been able to stick full time, and the other 3 have bounced around between several clubs in a short period of time.

It doesn't matter who the forwards are or who the coach is, this defense clearly has capped abilities - and that cap is very average. It would take a goalie a la Roy or Brodeur in their prime to stabilize this defense.

 

[Actual Thought*]

That was as bad as it gets.

Not so fast! I think the Wings were pumped to get the season started. I expect that they can and will play much worse once the doldrums of the season get underway. This team is the worst Wings team iced since the 80's. At this pace they will be out of the playoff hunt in 2 weeks.

 

[Brick Top]

Just finished watching the game on DVR. I guess I've always been morbidly curious about what it must feel like to be a Blue Jackets fan, and for one night anyway, I guess I know. And it's not fun.

Anyway, quick thoughts on the woodshed beating the Blues administered tonight:
I wonder if Bert will get an assist for passing mono on to the entire team- seriously, nobody looked good apart from a random shift here or there. Also amusing to see Mickey in full Wing-homer mode, including saying that Franzen was one guy who could match Backes physically. Priceless!

I also hope that Quincey was kind enough to sign the game puck for Tarasenko after tonight's festivities, as he definitely rolled out the red carpet for the kid. I can only assume that Babcock paired Quincey with Smith as a kind of cautionary tale, teaching the kid how NOT to play NHL defense in a reverse-mentoring situation.

I know that injuries/illness changed the lines somewhat, but our 2nd PP unit and 3rd line had to be a couple of the least threatening units a Wings team has iced in a long time. Our defense was terrible and the offense didn't help out by not creating and sustaining ANY pressure on the Blues. At all.

I think Kenny may have gone next level in his cap/asset management strategy by assembling such a porous defense corps that Howard could have .985 save % and still have a GAA of over 4.0 for the season, thus driving down his leverage and asking price going into his contract talks. Sneaky smart, right?

Post game, I was hoping for a John McKay situation where Trevor Thompson would ask Babcock about his team's execution, and Babs would give him the trademark scowl and a "I'm in favor of it" response. Well, on to the next game!!

 

[detredWINgs]

No, I'm not going to give the forwards a pass for a lack of any effort, creativity or anything. There were two guys who looked like they even knew there was a game-- Dats and Brunner at various points.

I mean, you had 4 forwards on the PP units. You gonna blame that on the defense too?

At the end of the day, you can blame the poor defense on the forwards for lack of defensive play and helping the D. Or you can blame the D, as you did, for the lack of offense.

The real answer may be that they have to find a new system or style that may work for a Wings team w/o Lidstrom, Stuart, Rafalski, and a prime Z, Dats et al. I also think we have a rather disjointed set of personnel that's not really suited to the puck possession style of play, nor something that Babs might prefer. It's like the purgatory in between heaven and hell.

Completely agree with this too. Sadly, I don't think we have the personnel to be a trap team either, particularly because none of our defensemen are stay-at-home oriented.

 

[RedWingsNow*]

Guys on the Red Wings I could live without-- no problems
Bertuzzi
Samuelsson
Cleary
Miller
Eaves
Emmerton
Abdelkader
ERicsson
Quincey
Colaiacovo
White

Think about that. That's a lot of really expendable players. I'm sure a couple of you really like some of those guys..
I'm not a big fan of Kronwall (gutless) and Franzen (coward), but I recognize we need them.

Here are the guys that this team really needs:
Datsyuk
Zetterberg
Filppula
Franzen
Kronwall
Helm
Howard
And that's it. That's how average our team is.