Red Wings’ McLellan asking questions amid defensive slide

DETROIT – They’re not defending well around the crease. They’re getting caught out of position. They’re not controlling opponents’ sticks. They’re getting burned by tip-ins. They’re allowing pairs of goals in short bursts.

The Detroit Red Wings aren’t getting the job done defensively as a team, having allowed 24 goals in five games following Friday’s 6-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning.

And coach Todd McLellan is asking questions.

“First, you got to look and say, ‘Are we good enough? Do we have enough talent?’ Yeah, we do,” McLellan said. “We don’t get 13 wins 25 games in without having a team that can play well enough. Are we playing well enough? No, we’re not. Why aren’t we? There’s a little bit of disconnect between forwards and D right now. And then in a team game, you sometimes get punished as a team, score-wise, momentum-wise, win-loss wise, for individual mistakes. And that happens. Team breakdowns are much more repairable than just an individual faux pas.

“So, let’s take care of what we can take care of. If you’re an individual and you’re playing, clean it up. And if you can’t, then we got to start asking ourselves, ‘Do you belong?’ This is about all of us. If you can’t clean it up, we got to figure things out.”

The Red Wings (13-11-1) have lost three in a row and four out of five. A team that allowed only nine goals during a five-game winning streak in October now ranks 26^th in goals-against per game (3.44).

That stat must improve significantly for this team to compete for a playoff spot because this group isn’t good enough to outscore its mistakes.

Many of their miscues during this Black Friday matinee came around their crease, where the Lightning created a lot of chaos in front of goaltender John Gibson and won a lot of battles.

“Todd talked a lot about net play in the last few days, and they get a couple in front of our net,” Dylan Larkin said. “It’s frustrating when we talk about it a lot and it just keeps happening.”

Players are listening, Larkin said. They’re just not executing.

“We’re almost trying too hard and we’re not playing the game,” Larkin said. “When things aren’t going well, we just kind of sag and it seems like the things that we talk about just keep happening.

“We’re just a little fragile and mistakes seem to be compounding.”

Said J.T. Compher: “There’s definitely some frustration throughout the room.”

McLellan echoed Larkin’s sentiment that effort is not the issue.

“Let me make that really clear. They care,” McLellan said. “We had a really good practice (Thursday). They do care, but that only gets you so far.

“We’re trying to give them some guidance, but when it doesn’t go well, we got to stay with it. And the unfortunate thing tonight is that we could have said, ‘Here’s two (goals), and now we’ll start playing. We gifted them the second (goal) and the four-on-four (fifth) one. And we’re not good enough to be giving stuff away for free.

“So, until we take care of it, we’ll keep having these issues.”