Red Wings eliminated from playoff race with loss to Devils

DETROIT -- The Detroit Red Wings were eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention with a 5-3 loss to the New Jersey Devils at Little Caesars Arena on Saturday.

Detroit led 3-2 in the third period, but Cody Glass tied the game at 11:18 and Jack Hughes set up Jesper Bratt on a 2-on-1 break for the go-ahead goal at 16:26.

“I’m as down as I could be right now,” said Red Wings captain Dylan Larkin, who blamed himself for Bratt’s goal. “We talked about it before the game - they are a transition team, and I needed to cover for (Simon Edvinsson) when he pinched in. Two guys jump by me, and it is in our net.”

On Jan. 25, the Red Wings were 32-16-5 and leading the Atlantic Division by a point over the Tampa Bay Lightning. 

Since then, they have gone 9-14-4.

“This is hard,” Red Wings coach Todd McLellan said. “It doesn’t matter if you miss by five points or 20 points, but we were playing well enough until the last month or so.”

The Red Wings have missed the playoffs the past 10 seasons. Larkin is the only Red Wings player who has played in the playoffs for Detroit. He had one point - a goal -- in a five-game defeat by the Lightning in the first round in 2015-16. 

“We did a lot of great things and put ourselves in a really good position,” he said. “But when it gets tight, we come up short. We talked about it a lot this season and it happened again.”

Justin Faulk, David Perron and Emmitt Finnie scored for Detroit (41-30-9), which has lost six of eight (2-5-1). John Gibson made 27 saves.

Bratt scored twice and had an assist, and Hughes had a goal and an assist for the Devils (41-36-3), who had lost two straight. Jake Allen made 25 saves.

“This is the best league in the world, and none of us are going to take these games for granted,” Glass said. “That’s a good team playing hard hockey to try to make the playoffs, but we weren’t just going to hand them a win.”

Faulk gave the Red Wings a 1-0 lead at 9:41, taking a pass from Larkin and beating Allen through the five-hole with a wrist shot from the right face-off dot.

Hughes made it 1-1 at 10:40, putting a wrist shot over Gibson’s blocker from the right face-off dot for his 27th goal.

“The first goal was identical to the fourth goal,” McLellan said. “We had a defenseman pinch and not get covered. You are going to make that mistake, but you can’t do it twice in a game.”

Perron put the Red Wings ahead at 11:59 of the second period, sweeping a one-timer off Johnathan Kovacevic’ stick and past Allen from the high slot.

Bratt made it 2-2 at 15:16, putting a long wrist shot through traffic inside the post for his 21st goal.

Finnie gave the Red Wings a 3-2 lead at 7:00 of the third period, jamming the puck over the line in a goal-mouth scramble, but Glass put in a rebound to make it 3-3 at 11:18.

“I liked a lot about our game today,” Devils coach Sheldon Keefe said. “It took us a while to get going, but I thought we dominated the second period, and we had them on their heels in the third period.”

After Hughes and Bratt gave New Jersey the 4-3 lead, Dawson Mercer scored into the empty net at 19:00 for the 5-3 final.

“We knew we were going to keep the gas pedal down all night,” Bratt said. “We knew we could play well with our pace, and we got better as the game went along.”

NOTES: Larkin had two assists, giving him nine points (four goals, five assists) in a four-game point streak. … Hughes has 39 points (15 goals, 24 assists) in 23 games since scoring the golden goal for the United States in the final against Canada at the 2026 Winter Olympics.