When Jeff Blashill wants to send a message to a player, he'll often take away ice time. But the coach was so disgusted with his team's level of effort in an 8-1 home loss to the Canadiens Wednesday night that he kept throwing the Red Wings back onto the ice.
"All taking away ice time (is doing) is giving them an out," Blashill said. "Keep playing. You started this thing, so keep going."
In the Red Wings locker room, Niklas Kronwall, Dylan Larkin and Frans Nielsen all used the same word: Embarrassing. It was the second time Montreal has blown out Detroit this season, and the third time in the past two seasons.
"From the drop of the puck, we weren’t even close. That was absolutely embarrassing," said Kronwall, who stood up in the locker room during the second intermission to address the team. "I talked about, you want to be able to look yourself in the mirror after the game. That was absolutely embarrassing. Our fans deserve a hell of a lot more than that."
The Habs dominated the first and then lit up the scoreboard in the second, building a 7-1 lead after two periods. Several of those goals were due to careless plays by the Red Wings, who consistently left Jimmy Howard out to dry. Jonathan Bernier replaced him in the third.
"It was straight-up embarrassing tonight," said Nielsen. "Whatever position you’re in the standings, you still have to go out there and compete. That’s the number one thing. If you don’t compete you don’t have a chance."
Asked how to explain it, Larkin shook his head.
"There’s no explanation. It’s embarrassing. No explanation at all. We’ve been saying it for too long, too may times coming in here in front of you guys (the media), in front of our fans, who spend time and money to come watch us play. We gotta have pride, we gotta believe in each other, believe in what we’re doing -- and that was doing nothing.
"That was embarrassing for our fans. They deserve better, the city of Detroit deserves better. Just the effort was not there. We’ve had this question asked too many times, why we were out-competed, why we were out-skated. We’re a fast team. When we’re skating well, it’s going well for us, but too many times coming back in here and having that question asked."
For Larkin, the frustration boiled over late in the third period after he ended up in a fight with Montreal's Brett Kulak. On his way down the dressing room hallway, Larkin ripped off his helmet and hurled it to the ground.
"It was frustration in myself and with what happened there," said Larkin. "I don’t know what that guy (Kulak) was doing, if he was angry or mad about the little slash I gave him a couple shifts before. It was pretty ridiculous. I just tapped him, it’s a 7-1 game and he comes after my head.
"I wasn’t happy about that and with the effort there, with myself and the way it’s been going, and it all added up."
Both Kronwall and Nielsen said it was good to see that someone cared enough to at least be upset.
"That’s our best player, someone’s showing emotions," said Kronwall. "We all need to be so much better. That can’t be who you want to be. We have to want to be so much better, to a man, and all we have to do is play."
Said Nielsen, "I think Dylan has been the one guy all year that’s brought it every night, and it’s good to see some emotion from him."
Larkin, for his part, said he was in no position to stand up afterward and say something to his teammates.
"When you’re not playing well and you play like I did tonight, you can't say anything. You can go in the gym and work out and work hard tomorrow in practice and then maybe have a good game and then you can say something. But I try and do it through my play -- not tonight. I wasn’t nearly good enough tonight," he said.
The Canadiens beat the Red Wings 7-3 earlier this season, and 10-1 last season. They've won eight in a row against Detroit. That made the Wings' performance on Tuesday particularly vexing to Blashill.
"That team out-competes us on a regular basis. It’s a joke," Blashill said. "We’ve competed hard all year, since probably the last time we played these guys. For the most part we’ve been pretty good about that. So why are you going to let that happen? It’s stupid. No reason for it."
The Red Wings have a young lineup at the moment, especially after the trade deadline departures of Gustav Nyquist and Nick Jensen. But that's no excuse not to play hard. If anything, said Kronwall, it should be motivation to play harder.
Take it from Blashill, who's looking for reasons to believe in the team's young players.
"We all get paid money to come out here and do it right. I think there’s a whole bunch of guys that think with more opportunity we can put this organization in a better spot. Well, here it is, man. You got lots of opportunity, so show us what you got," Blashill said.
They showed him very little Tuesday night, and that goes for the veterans as well. From top to bottom, it was Detroit's worst game of the season. In the end, Blashill echoed his players.
"It was embarrassing," he agreed. "I’ve said this lots -- in this town you can hold your head high if you work your ass off and you compete your ass off. I think this town's got lots of room for blue-collar work ethic. When you give up and don’t finish the game the way we did, it is embarrassing."