Jeff Riger: Babcock Claims Wings Were Awful!

Covering the Red Wings over the last 5 years, you feel like you get to know certain players and coaches on the team just a little bit. You usually can guess what guys will say before they say it and that is why last nights postgame media availability was so interesting. The Wings had just been dominated by the Nashville Predators, a team that just 4 days before had blanked Detroit 3-0 in the Music City. Nothing went right on Wednesday night. Detroit did not start on time, again and before you knew it were down 2-nothing after one period. The second period just got worse as Nashville got the next 2 goals to go up 4-nothing all while the Wings struggled to do anything right. Jimmy Howard was yanked form the contest after allowing those 4 goals on just 16 shots while Joey MacDonald took over. Finally late in the 2nd period, Detroit got a slight push, Ruslayn Salei netted his 1st goal of the season and maybe you were thinking, Detroit comeback. But that was hardly the case as that so called "push" went away as quick as it came and Detroit lost what could be the most embarrassing game of the season.

After the contest in a very somber dressing room, the Captain Nick Lidstrom admitted he was embarrassed by the performance and Henrik Zetterberg reiterated the same thing. Words like "trust" and "work ethic" were used and by the tone and sound of everything you would have thought the season was over. Of course it is not and as bad as things looked on Wednesday night, things relatively are still good. Detroit is still the 2nd best team in the Western Conference and still hold the best record in the Central division. Even more good news for the Wings had Thomas Holmstrom coming back form injury and before that Pavel Datsyuk and Dan Cleary as well. So went wrong? Babcock said that it seemed to start after the All Star break where Detroit won a 7-5 game against Ottawa. Since then, the Wings have dropped 3 of 4 games while scoring just 4 goals in that span. There is a lack of traffic in front of the net. There is a lack of quality chances when they do get to the net and defensively everybody is trying to win games on their own instead of focusing on their own job.

Things don't get any easier for Detroit as they embark on a home and home against the Boston Bruins starting Friday night in Bean Town (broadcast time 6:40 on "The Ticket") and then at the Joe on Sunday afternoon. (broadcast time 12:10 on "The Ticket") The Bruins are the 3rd best team in the Eastern conference and after goalie Tim Thomas gave up 6 goals on Wednesday night and also got into a fight with goalie Carey Price you would have to assume he will be back to his usual Vezina trophy candidate self. Listen to the complete Mike Babcock audio below for his breakdown of what went on against Nashville. You can tell that "Babs" is none too pleased, something that you don't hear that often in Hockey Town.