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Wings rally for win after squandering another lead |
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Before answering questions from the media, Detroit Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill posed one of his one.
“Before we start,” Blashill asked after his team rallied from a 4-3 deficit for a 5-4 shootout win over the Buffalo Sabres Tuesday at Joe Louis Arena, “is that blowing a lead or coming from behind to win?”
Well, Jeff, you tell us.
“A little bit of both, obviously,” admitted Blashill, whose team squandered 2-0 and 3-1 advantages. “I thought we did a lot of really good stuff.
“In the second period we had chances to make it 4-1, maybe make it 4-2 once they scored and unfortunately we didn’t.
“In the end we scored four goals. That should be enough.”
And yes, while it was the fifth successive game that the Wings surrendered a lead, here’s another number to crunch – it’s the eighth straight game in which the Wings have collected a point. They are 8-3-3 in their last 14 games.
“As much as you don’t want to give up leads, and mistakes happen, we’re getting points and that’s very good,” forward Drew Miller said. “You look at the end of the year, you don’t want to miss (the) playoffs by one or two points. You look back now and you’re getting one or two points losses but you’re getting the one point that helps a lot down the line.
“So I thought tonight we had a good character win. Finding a way to win is big in this league, so I think we’re learning that and that’s big for our team.”
Blashill often talks about the process and likes what he’s seen in that train of thought from his team.
“I think you should grow from your experiences for sure,” Blashill said. “I can look back at different years I’ve coached and you have some moments that are hard sometimes and really hard to handle but I think our teams have always grown.
“I think this team will grow from these experiences and be better. One thing we focus on lots is being better every day. We want to be a better team tomorrow than we were today. When you go through different trials and tribulations you end up being better if you learn from it.
“We want our process to be great. It hasn’t been great every night but through this stretch of games it’s been really good. I thought our process tonight was pretty good in a lot of ways.
“We’ve just got to keep getting better as a hockey team and in the process and in the interim of that earn as many points as we can. We don’t want to give up leads but that’s the nature of hockey. Sometimes you’re going to be in those spots.
“I want to continue to be in a spot where we have the lead. I thought tonight obviously we got down in a game late where we haven’t been in that spot much and we showed a lot of character coming back I thought.”
Smith Steps In
Blashill was delighted to see defenseman Brendan Smith come to the aid of captain Henrik Zetterberg when Buffalo’s Evander Kane went after Zetterberg in the second period.
“I would tell Brendan Smith get involved in that every day, all day,” Blashill said. “He’s going in to help Hank out and I was really glad he jumped in there.
“I’d tell him to do it again for sure and if we’ve got to kill a penalty for it, we’ll kill a penalty for it. Over the long haul of the year, we’ll stick up for each other every night.”
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