“Throughout every game, there’s kind of a theme,” Appleton said. “You either hurt or help yourself, and I think in Game 1 we gave up way too much and we knew that. A lot of it was self inflicted and a lot of that was corrected [on Saturday]. It’s learning for everyone, but you can’t shoot yourself in the foot five, six times in a game. You can only give up a few odd-man rushes, if that, and then from there you give yourself the best chance to win. [On Saturday], I thought we did a really good job of managing the game, controlling it and being predictable with risk-free hockey. We just got to do that again.”
As Detroit’s returning and new players get more familiar with each other early in the season, they’re also getting used to the systems and structure together. That naturally takes time and ultimately, is a learning process that doesn’t stop.
“Just when you feel comfortable, there’s something that comes up,” McLellan said. “When you’re playing well, you get to advance your game and take it a step further. When it’s not going well, you’re in repair mode and you never get to get ahead. For us to have success, we got to be able to advance a little bit. But right now, we’re keeping pretty simple.”