Wings Wasting Best Start since '72 - A Study Hall Moment

"FFFFFFFF...!"

I can imagine this is what Babs is doing, and has been doing, since the end of last night's game.  I know I am.

Detroit played host to Todd McLellan San Jose last night and was defeated by him them 4-2.  I apologize for the political correctness of correcting myself here, but even though most anyone would agree that the only reason the Sharks can deal with Detroit is having the former assistant coach for the Wings be their head coach, it's just not something that's nice to say.

As if that's ever stopped me before.

I'll say it right now: If Todd wasn't their bench boss, the roles would be the complete opposite.  No, this isn't whining, especially when you look at the stats.  Sharks players themselves will tell you that the games are extremely closely contested, but when your head coach used to work with almost every guy on the other team, he knows stuff about them that he can exploit.  Perhaps we'll see something similar in time with Ottawa now being commanded by Paul MacLean, but Ottawa does not have the talent that San Jose does--at least not yet.

Anyway, enough about that.  The bigger problem here is that Detroit lost. Again. For the third straight game.  That, my friends, is a losing streak. It is also unacceptable.  I simply can't fathom how a team like the Wings can come out the gate so hot and cool so completely!  Outside of the top line, nothing is happening with the skaters, offensively OR defensively.  Last night was a perfect example: Offensively, there was such poor passing through most of the match that it was painful to watch.  It showed a terrible lack of proper communication between the players.  Speaking of lack of communication, defense was...

Yeah, that sums that up.  I mean come on, look at the 3-2 goal for the Sharks.  Three guys back and Ian White, one of them, takes a guy to the boards.  Okay, fine, but do you think that maybe one of the other two skaters near the other end of the boards could try to, I don't know, get back and take away the middle???  Joe Thornton knows what a gimmie is, and if you offer him one like on that play, he will take it 8 days out of 7.

Sadly, even the return of Jimmy Howard wasn't enough to break Detroit from their funk.  None of the 3 goals he allowed, to me, were unstoppable, and I really feel he should've had that 2-1 goal from Marleau.  Such was not to be though, and Detroit now sits at 5-3-0 after winning their first 5 games, their best start in almost 30 years.  The Wings have wasted a great opportunity to pad their place in the standings when the inevitable injury list piles up as it always does through the regular season.  On tap tonight is a date with the Wild, where the Wings will meet the former Sharks Dany Heatley and Devin Setoguchi.  More on that later tonight, for right now the focus is on where the Wings are going performance-wise.

Somebody help me out here, what do you think is the best solution to the flash-meltdown the Red Wings are having all of a sudden? I'm not pressing the panic button, of course, but this is still a little bit of a concern.  2 of the last 3 games were definitely winnable games, which would have had us sitting at 7-1-0 to start the season, 14 points in 8 games.  Do you think a shuffling of the lines would spark something? Is the reported waiving of Fabian Brunnstrom and return of Mike Commodore enough to stir Detroit from their recent slumber?

Feel free to give it some thought and leave a comment, I'm curious to see what people feel is the key problem at the moment.

Class dismissed.