Home Opener Thoughts

As I posted to Bluesky immediately after the game ended: Well. That happened.

I think if this was a random weeknight game in January, there would be a bit less of a doom-and-gloom feeling about a 5-1 loss to the Montreal Canadiens. But opening the season with that effort sets the tone.

It’s hard to spend the week riding the excitement of the start of the season – with three rookies making the opening night roster – and after just two periods of play see a team that just can’t seem to make anything work. It feels like we need to ascribe more to it.

The fact of the matter is that the Red Wings’ third defensive pairing still isn’t figured out. Some of that is small sample size. Was this an off night for Albert Johansson and Travis Hamonic or do they just not work well together? Or are they the wrong players in general?

Johansson looked solid for stretches last season but I didn’t love the Hamonic signing in the first place so my gut feeling is to blame the veteran. I really thought we’d see Jacob Bernard-Docker on the ice tonight. It’s hard not to think that JBD will get his chance on Saturday against the Maple Leafs. I hope he swaps in for Hamonic but Johansson shares some of the blame for the play of that pairing so I can see him coming out.

And I’ve always said that I’m okay with the Red Wings playing poorly if they’re playing the kids and it’s a matter of rookie mistakes. So I’m willing to forgive Johansson more easily than Hamonic. Similarly, I’d rather see the younger Bernard-Docker making mistakes than Hamonic making them.

One of the things I’m uncertain of is how much blame to place on John Gibson in goal. Five goals in about two periods is too many for a goalie to give up. But one of those was an odd-man rush, one was a short breakaway, one was through heavy traffic, and one was from a guy left alone on the doorstep on a power play. If this was a goalie who I’d had time to build up my fandom for, I’d probably defend that. You want your goalie to make those stops but you can see why he might not be able to.

While the Canadiens made the most of those offensive opportunities, it never felt to me like the Red Wings were threatening in the offensive zone, aside from Dylan Larkin’s early power play goal. There were two shots off the post but no times I really felt like Detroit was pushing.

So it’s a bad game all around. A “burn the tapes game” perhaps except I don’t believe in burning the tapes. It sucks that this happened in Game One, now it’s time to learn from that and fix what can be fixed.