Ryan Whitney calls out Red Wings poor defensive play

The good news for the Detroit Red Wings is that they overcame a poor start last night against the Los Angeles Kings, rebounding from a two-goal hole and eventually emerging victorious by a 4-3 final score via the shootout. The bad news is that their defensive struggles remained in place, allowing far too many easy offensive zone entries by Los Angeles.

This has been a trend that not only continued earlier this week against the struggling San Jose Sharks, but for the last calendar month. It's a disturbing statistic that the Red Wings have an eyebrow-raising record of 0-17-1 when they fail to score at least four goals against the opposition.

Former NHL defenseman Ryan Whitney, who was full of praise for the Red Wings earlier this season and stated his belief that the League as a whole is better when Detroit is playing well, he stated the obvious when it comes to the current state of Detroit's blue line and goaltending. 

"It's kinda crazy to think that (Patrick) Kane looks this good and the Wings look this bad," he said during a recent episode of the popular 'Spittin' Chicklets' podcast. "He just looks healthy, looks like a different player from last year....but the Red Wings, they're giving up so many goals. They can't keep the puck out of their net. They've had to score four ore more goals to win a game. When they score less than four, they don't win."

"Derek Lalonde has been talking about that they're making unnecessary risks - they have defenseman jumping up into the rush and causing odd man rushes the other way. They couldn't score the way they wanted to last year, so they got Kane, DeBrincat, Sprong and Gostisbehere. But now, they can't keep the puck out of their net. Now, the big part of this is that Husso is injured, they need him back. But when you give up this many goals, it doesn't even matter how good your offense is. They need to kind of like, figure out the defensive side and get back to playing defensive hockey." 

Whitney is right on the money with this take! Detroit has demonstrated that they have no trouble scoring as one of the top offenses in the NHL, but they absolutely have to stop allowing such easy offense from the opposition!

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