The Detroit Red Wings’ offensive issues are bigger than any one player can solve.
But Jakub Vrana is doing his best.
Vrana scored his sixth goal in seven games with Detroit Thursday, a highlight reel play that turned out to be about the only highlight for the Red Wings in a 3-1 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes at PNC Arena.
When Sebastian Aho mishandled a pass just inside his blue line, Vrana raced in to corral the puck, avoided a poke-check attempt from Brett Pesce, and snapped a backhand shot from close range that caught the far top corner of the net past James Reimer.
It was Vrana’s 17th of the season, including his 11 with the Washington Capitals before the April 12 trade for Anthony Mantha.
“There’s no doubt about it, he can score,” coach Jeff Blashill said. “What we’ll keep working on with him is just making sure he becomes that complete player that can score on a winning hockey team, but he’s got a real ability to score.”
Offense continues to be an issue for the Red Wings. They have two goals in their past three games after a season-high seven-goal outburst, including four from Vrana, against Dallas a week earlier.
“We have to get more pucks to the net, get traffic in front,” Luke Glendening said. “We’ve talked about it a lot, but we have to find a way to get dirty goals. Vrana had a really nice one, but the rest of us have to chip in offensively and give ourselves a chance.”
Scoring could continue to be a problem over their final four games with Dylan Larkin and Tyler Bertuzzi done for the season, and perhaps Robby Fabbri and Adam Erne as well. Erne missed the game due to COVID protocol; the others are out with upper-body injuries.
“How do you manufacture offense?” Blashill said. “You spend more time in the other team’s end. You grind them down. they chip it in your zone and try to make a change because they’re tired, you jam it down their throat. That’s how you create offense most of the time in this league, by grinding the other team down, kind of like they did over the course of the game.”
Vrana’s unassisted goal cut his team’s deficit to 2-1 at 17:31 of the second period.
But the Red Wings could not outscore their defensive mistakes. Twice they had the puck on their stick with a chance to clear the zone, but they turned it over. It led to goals by Warren Foegele at 13:29 of the first and Teuvo Teravainen at 9:48 of the third.
“Both were kind of unforced errors,” Blashill said. “Sometimes you’re under so much heat, there’s not much you can do. But in both, we had opportunities, we weren’t under that much pressure. We turned pucks over that we didn’t need to.
“The biggest thing you have to learn over time is how to have poise and not be careless. That’s a balance. You can’t just slap the puck around; you can’t throw the puck to them. We didn’t do a good enough job of that as the game went along.”
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The Link LonkApril 30, 2021 at 05:07PM
https://www.mlive.com/redwings/2021/04/jakub-vrana-provides-lone-highlight-for-red-wings-in-loss.html
Jakub Vrana provides lone highlight for Red Wings in loss - mlive.com
https://news.google.com/search?q=Red&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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