PREVIEW: Red Wings back in Tampa Bay for finale of four-game road trip on Saturday

TAMPA -- Making one last stop on their four-game road trip before playing five of their next six contests at home, the Detroit Red Wings will face off against the Tampa Bay Lightning at Benchmark International Arena on Saturday night.

“It’s tough not to have come out with a point so far on this road trip, but I think we can take positives from every game even if the results might not have been there,” Carter Mazur said. “I think we’ve had good starts in most of the games, and I think we just have to keep adding and play a full 60 minutes.”

Puck drop for the second matchup in the past 10 days between the Red Wings (7-10-3; 17 points) and Lightning (13-4-2; 28 points) is set for 7 p.m. ET, with broadcast coverage on Detroit SportsNet and the Red Wings Radio Network (97.1 The Ticket in Detroit). At Amerant Bank Arena last Tuesday, in the first meeting between these Atlantic Division foes, Detroit lost 4-1. 

“The last time we were here, we didn’t play our game for 40 minutes,” Sheldon Dries said. “We played a good third period, but it was too little too late. So (on Saturday), we focus on the start and go from there.”

Thursday’s 5-4 setback to the Florida Panthers at Amerant Bank Arena, admittedly a frustrating one for Detroit, stretched its losing streak to five consecutive games. Although the Red Wings got goals from four different players (J.T. Compher, Andreas Englund, Lucas Raymond and Marco Kasper), they were unable to hang onto the three-goal advantage they’d built shortly after the midpoint of the second period.

Detroit head coach Todd McLellan described their first contest in the Sunshine State this week as “an outstanding two-period game” that unfortunately saw his group start to “tighten up” when the momentum began to swing in Florida’s favor.

“We’ve got to get through that experience instead of playing safe and not making mistakes, we have to play aggressive,” McLellan said. “And when the mistakes come, we’ll have to live with them. We chose the first way, and it cost us.”

For the Red Wings, Saturday’s game will also be their 21 st — a quarter of the way through their 2026-27 campaign. According to McLellan, he views their performance to this point in two distinct parts.

“There’s the on-ice, the statistical part, the wins and losses, and then there’s the team-building part,” McLellan said. “On the on-ice part, we’d like to have a better record, obviously. We’ve been in a lot of games that haven’t gone our way for whatever reason. Sometimes it was a lack of offense, sometimes it was self-inflicted through mistakes. So for me, I think we can fix some of that and try to improve our record. I give the team-building and team-spirit part as high a mark as you possibly can with the chaos we’ve gone through, and it’s been well documented.”

Tied with the Montreal Canadiens for first place in the Atlantic Division ahead of Saturday’s NHL slate, the Lightning have won five of their last six games — a stretch that began with last Tuesday’s 4-2 victory over the Red Wings at Amerant Bank Arena. Their latest victory came on the road on Thursday, a 3-1 decision against the Columbus Blue Jackets.

Behind Nikita Kucherov’s club-leading 28 points (eight goals, 20 assists), Brandon Hagel (13 goals, 11 assists) and Jake Guentzel (11 goals, 13 assists) have 24 apiece. Goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy, who made 19 saves against Detroit last week, brings a 9-4-1 record with a 2.86 goals-against average and

“They’re a really good team over there,” Mazur said. “So, it’ll be about getting off to that good start and taking it to them instead of giving it to us in a way. We have to establish a forecheck early, get on their defensemen and just try to cause chaos right away.”