The Detroit Red Wings’ issues go much deeper than just missing Dylan Larkin

It’s been a difficult month of March for the Detroit Red Wings. After winning six consecutive games in February, the team from Hockeytown has lost eight of their last nine games and find themselves on the outside looking in for a playoff spot.

Going into the March 19 slate of games, the Red Wings are 34-28-6 with 74 points, one behind the Washington Capitals for the second Wild Card spot in the Eastern Conference. After Sunday’s 6-3 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins, Detroit will try to right the ship on Tuesday as they host the Columbus Blue Jackets.

On Tuesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Tyler Yaremchuk and Colby Cohen are joined by The Athletic’s Red Wing reporter Max Bultman to discuss Detroit’s playoff chances.

Tyler Yaremchuk: A month ago, Frank Seravalli and I were talking about how this Red Wings team could be a threat to win a playoff round, let alone get into the playoffs. Since then, things haven’t gone well. I know a lot of people point to captain Dylan Larkin being out of the lineup, but surely there’s more to it than just missing Larkin, right?

Max Bultman: Missing Larkin is a big part of it. If you look at how they’re constructed, they’re much easier to match up against when you don’t have a guy like Larkin leading the way. That being said, no one player should be worth that big a swing, and it’s been a pretty steep one.

I think all year, people were monitoring the underlying numbers and how they were giving up more chances than they were getting. I think you’re seeing that now, as they’re not getting bailed out by goaltending. The biggest thing has been the mental fragility when you’re on a losing streak, and how it is when any little thing goes wrong. I think that’s what we’re all seeing right now.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…