Just a few general, brief thoughts on this one.
First, the effort in the last few minutes would have been unsustainable for the whole of a game, so saying “where was that the whole night?” misses the point. That was a special last ditch effort from a team that didn’t have much left in the tank but was still not that far out of striking distance on stealing a point or two anyway. It’s a mark of the Flames’ incompetence that it was close enough to allow for that kind of late push.
Clearly, the Wings need a break, or believe they need a break, because they look tired. I’m not sure what that means for them down the stretch as they face a fairly compressed schedule after an uncompressed one in the first section of the season, but here they are: a team that looked like it just wanted to get over the finish line to the Christmas Break. I want to believe it’s all about fatigue and that a couple days of overeating and interfacing with family will mean they’ll be ready to go Monday night, so I’m going to. Anything else is disturbing.
So, yeah, it was a total team failure. With a few exceptions (mainly Pavel’s line, and Drew Miller), everybody was flat. To single one guy out, the last two games were not Kronwall’s best.
But I need to point out that Ty Conklin is no more reliable than Chris Osgood ended up being. And because I don’t have Conklin-colored glasses like I did Osgood, I feel comfortable saying that I’m uncomfortable with him as backup. The Wings maybe still would have lost with Jimmy playing as First Crutch last night, but maybe not. Conklin, or any backup, obviously isn’t going to match Jimmy Howard but you like to think the assigned goalie gives you a shot at winning on a given night. When the Wings look to be in a posture of “well, we can’t play Jimmy every single night because he’d pass out, so I guess we have to prop Ty up in net” rather than, “let’s give Jimmy a breather, Ty’s ready to go”, it’s not good.
So the Wings get a break now and then get to play Nashville Monday night. The Preds just emphatically pointed out how horrible the Blue Jackets are, so they’re entering the holiday weekend on a high note. I hope they come out of it overconfident and ripe for a toppling by a Red Wings team that had better have its head on straight.