DETROIT — Todd McLellan said this Detroit Red Wings team would write its own story in the month of March. That it was another month in a season, and that there were new faces in the locker room from the ones that went through late-season collapses in the past three seasons. And in fairness, the month’s not over yet.
But up to this point, the story sure has been familiar.
On Tuesday, that was true right down to the opponent, as the Ottawa Senators came into Little Caesars Arena without their two best defensemen and skated to a 3-2 regulation win, leapfrogging the Red Wings — who entered the month fifth in the Eastern Conference — and dropping Detroit down to 10th in the East with 11 games remaining.
“Obviously very, very disappointing outcome tonight,” defenseman Moritz Seider said afterward. “You have the chances, you play good hockey, but then simple mistakes end up in the back of the net. And that’s frustrating, because you’re playing against an opponent (and) you just opened the door for them. Kind of hard right now, but I think we have plenty of games left, great challenge in front of us, great opportunities, and got to make the most out of it.”
There is still time for the Red Wings to find their footing. They’re getting key players back from injury, with captain Dylan Larkin making his return to the lineup against the Senators Tuesday and scoring on the power play. They also got some help on the out-of-town scoreboard, with the New York Islanders, Pittsburgh Penguins and Boston Bruins all also falling in regulation. In that sense, their path didn’t actually change too much, despite the disappointment.
But after suffering consecutive regulation losses, at home, to teams in that same race — including letting Ottawa back into it — what happens elsewhere has to be secondary. It’s all about what the Red Wings are doing. And on Tuesday, the answer was … not enough.
“We were a little bit slower, little bit sluggish for whatever reason,” McLellan said. “We put pucks into areas that we wanted to, but we didn’t win those areas after. So all of the sudden, we’re coming out of the end. Got some pucks to the net, but we didn’t get to the screen or the tip-in or deflection areas — which I thought we did against Boston, but we didn’t do that tonight against Ottawa.”
Entering the night, the Red Wings had won all three previous meetings against the Senators — a team that has haunted them late in recent seasons, dealing them some of their toughest blows in failed playoff races in 2025 and, more infamously, 2023.
After an overtime win in Ottawa less than one month ago, it looked like this Detroit team might be ready to change that. In a game with crucial playoff stakes, though, it was once again the Senators finding a way to win, while the Red Wings were left once again to pick up the pieces and find a response.
All year, McLellan has emphasized mental toughness and resilience. For the most part, his team has responded. But the truest test is happening right now, with the fallout from this latest loss pushing the Red Wings down the standings. While they remain just one point behind the second wild-card, they now have another team standing between them and their hopes of snapping their nine-year playoff drought.
“It’s like, what are we going to do?” Larkin said. “The room is mad. The guys are mad. That was a big game for our hockey team. Unfortunate how well we played against those guys all year, and then this one tonight, it kind of wipes away our record against those guys, because that was a big game. But we’re going into Buffalo on Friday night, so we have to pick ourselves back up, and that’s mental toughness. … We’ve got to pick each other up and find a way through the next 11.”
The Red Wings did show a measure of that within the game on Tuesday, fighting back from a 3-0 deficit to give themselves a chance late. They outshot Ottawa 34-21.
Dylan Larkin scored in his return to the Detroit lineup after an injury. (Jaime Crawford / Getty Images)
But even with that said, this was a different game than their weekend loss to Boston, when the Red Wings played well enough to win only for Jeremy Swayman to stymie them. This time, the Red Wings’ energy looked off early and seemed to dip further when an Alex DeBrincat power-play goal was overturned by a challenge for offside. A Brady Tkachuk power-play goal for the Senators soon after swung the early momentum in Ottawa’s favor.
The real let-down, though, came after the Senators’ second goal by rookie defenseman Carter Yakemchuk — which was followed soon after by a third that put the Red Wings at three-goal deficit midway through the game. Two goals against in short succession turned a manageable situation into a long shot.
Detroit didn’t roll over, with Dominik Shine scoring on a redirect less than four minutes later, but the hole proved too deep. Larkin scored his power-play goal early in the third, with more than 15 minutes remaining, but the Red Wings couldn’t find a third to force overtime.
The loss itself is the biggest problem, of course, as Detroit — which sits at 84 points — could very well need 98, or more, to get into the postseason in a highly competitive field. But it’s the circumstances that make this one such a missed opportunity.
The Senators came in to Little Caesars Arena on the second night of a back-to-back and debuted two rookies on the blue line because they were missing both Jake Sanderson and Thomas Chabot, their two most relied-upon defensemen. That’s a situation the Red Wings needed to be able to take advantage of. And they didn’t.
“We got to be honest with ourselves, that’s a very winnable game,” Seider said. “And if we’re not upset with ourselves, we’re doing something wrong. And I think we’ve just got to regroup, analyze, be honest with each other. Tell each other the truth. And then come ready to go tomorrow, to get a little bit better, because the next game is right around the corner and we need two points.”
The Sabres team Detroit will face on Friday has been among the hottest in the league for months now. They have a deep, talented young blue line, a dynamic top scorer in Tage Thompson and they’re getting strong goaltending, too. In other words, they’re far from an ideal matchup for a team trying to pick itself back up.
By wasting a prime opportunity on Tuesday, though, the Red Wings have sacrificed any margin for error, as they risk getting left behind altogether — letting another season end in mid-April.
There is still time for them to avoid repeating that fate. With their lineup back healthy after a rough few weeks, they can still change the story. But it won’t just happen because they want it to. And it has to start now.
“Obviously we’ve been in that situation before, we know how much it can stink,” Seider said. “We better come up with an answer for that. It’s all on us right now.”
