Detroit Red Wings ‘We weren’t prepared’ for pace against Sabres
Detroit Red Wings J.T. Compher, Emmitt Finnie, Alex DeBrincat & Todd McLellan, Oct. 22, 2025 in Buffalo, N.Y.
BUFFALO, NY — If the game holds up as a lesson, the Detroit Red Wings can at least take that with them down the road.
The Wings were a contrite bunch after losing, 4-2, to Atlantic Division rival Buffalo on the first stop of the first multi-game trip of the season. It wasn’t a good look on Wednesday, Oct. 22, when the Wings were shorthanded 30 seconds in and then again a little more than two minutes later, and in the end, they had to look at a two-goal loss and explain what happened to a team that had rolled off five straight victories.
“The start’s not good enough,” J.T. Compher said after scoring his first goal of the season. “Anytime you take two penalties in the first four minutes of the game, it’s going to give their other team a lot of confidence, and they get to play in their game before we’re able to even get most our guys on the ice. That kind of snowballed in the first, and we weren’t playing our game.
“When you give away periods or give away parts of periods in this league, it’s really hard to win.
Coach Todd McLellan said, “I don’t think our group was ready for the pace, and that’s probably why we took the penalties, and shame on us because we knew that they played that way.
“I didn’t think we got to our game real quick. By the time we got to the first time out or 10 minutes into the game, there were players that played five minutes, others that hadn’t even seen the ice. So we somewhat wasted the first period.”
The Wings were shorthanded twice in the first period, once in the second, and twice in the third. The penalty kill gave up a goal on the fourth one, which stood as the decisive goal. When the Wings had their first power play, which spilled over by 1:42 into the second period – so on fresh ice, with fresh players – they didn’t even register a shot on net.
“I thought the first power play we looked really good doing nothing,” McLellan said. “We just moved pucks around and we looked good, and at some point you’ve got to put some pressure on the goaltender. Isn’t that the name of the game, you’ve actually got to shoot the puck in the net, but we wanted to run these plays and roam around and do all this crap that led to nothing. There has to be some substance on your power play.”
The Wings lost the special teams battle, and Colten Ellis, making his NHL debut, won the goaltending battle over John Gibson, who, as in the season opener, didn’t get much help from his teammates. The Wings did see one of their rookies, Emmitt Finnie, score his third goal of the season – but that was overshadowed by the letdown in team performance.
“I don’t know if we prepared enough for this game,” Finnie said “We started slow. I thought we finished the game hard, but it’s a little too late.”
Contact Helene St. James at hstjames@freepress.com.
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Next up: Islanders
Matchup: Red Wings (5-2-0) at N.Y. Islanders (3-3-0).
Faceoff: 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 23; UBS Arena, Elmont, New York.
TV/radio: FanDuel Sports Network Detroit; WXYT-FM (97.1).
