Trending: Mantha scores as Red Wings lose, 7-1, to the Wild

DETROIT -- Mama said there'd be days like this.
Unfortunately for the Red Wings, Thursday's 7-1 loss at Little Caesars Arena at the hands of the Minnesota Wild turned out to be one of those days.

The Wild scored three goals in a 2:20 span of the first period to take a 3-0 lead, sending the Wings to their fourth consecutive loss and their eighth defeat in their last 10 games.
With the win, the Wild swept the two-game season series from the Wings for the first time in franchise history.
Anthony Mantha scored Detroit's lone goal.
Ryan Hartman, Ryan Donato, Matt Dumba (two goals, one power play), Jordan Greenway, Kevin Fiala and Eric Staal lit the lamp for Minnesota.
Detroit goaltender Jimmy Howard (2-23-2) gave up five goals on 17 shots for a .706 save percentage. Jonathan Bernier replaced Howard between the pipes and finished with a .778 save percentage stopping seven of nine shots the Wild fired on goal.
Alex Stalock (17-9-4) picked up his first career victory over the Wings in his first career start against Detroit. Stalock stopped 25 of the 26 shots he faced for save percentage of .962.
Up next for the Red Wings (15-47-4) is an Atlantic Division clash Saturday night in Ottawa against the Senators.
Minnesota (31-25-7) will play the second game of back-to-back contests when the Columbus Blue Jackets entertain the Wild on Friday night.
1.Anthony Mantha: Playing in his ninth game since missing 20 games with broken ribs and a punctured lung, Mantha stole the puck when Minnesota defenseman Greg Pateryn fumbled it and Mantha broke in alone on Stalock. Mantha buried the puck in the top left corner as an off-balance Stalock stumbled. It was Mantha's 14th goal of the season, moving him into sole possession of third place on the team in that category. Tyler Bertuzzi leads with 18 and Dylan Larkin is second with 17. Mantha has eight points (2-6-8) in the nine games. In his last five games against Minnesota, Mantha has six points (3-3-6). In eight career games against the Wild, Mantha has eight points (4-4-8). Since Nov. 24, 2018, Mantha has 70 points (32-38-70) in his last 82 games. Mantha finished with 20 shifts for 18:04, had three shots, one hit, one giveaway and was even.

Quotable: "I don't know for what reason. It seems like we have the puck on our stick, something goes wrong and we give it up. Something goes wrong and then it just gets worse from there it seems. I've ever seen anything like it. I don't know what it is but it just seems like when things go wrong for us they're catastrophic and we can't come back from it. I think we've tried to talk that these last games were to show people what we're made of. It can't be that, with the two efforts we've had the last two nights since the trade deadline." - Larkin
Quotable II: "We've talked about it a lot, get scored one, get scored another and we kind of go down a little bit instead of just trying to play the right way. Maybe we take a little too many risks something and there's two-on-ones, three-on-twos. Good teams, good players capitalize on those, but we have to keep trying to play the right way the whole game and not think about the score as much." -- Valtteri Filppula
Quotable III: "There's lots of ways to get the best out of people. We gotta do it right. There's no excuse ever for not doing it right. So when we're not doing it right, they have to know. That doesn't always have to be screaming and yelling. Sometimes it's just talking, sometimes it's showing video, all those things. I also have to … there's times where you gotta put an arm around a guy's shoulder and there's times you gotta boost them up a little bit. So those are all things you have to do in the position that I'm in. At the end of the day, confidence comes from within, within each guy. We gotta look in the mirror, each guy, including myself, and we gotta find a way to be better tomorrow." - Wings coach Jeff Blashill
2. Slow start: In the two games since losing defenseman Mike Green and forward Andreas Athanasiou at the trade deadline, the Red Wings have been sluggish at the start. By the time the Wings got their second shot on net at 12:15 of the first, the Wild had a 3-0 lead. It took New Jersey two periods Tuesday to take a 3-0 lead. On Thursday, the Wings appeared to get some momentum when Mantha cut the lead to 3-1 at 7:33 but then the Wild immediately got the goal back on the power play at 10:30 when Dumba scored his second of the game.

Quotable: "The starts have been a problem recently. We've started and just put ourselves in a hole for the past little bit here. That's on me. That's on guys that have been around. We gotta make sure our team's ready to go. We can't give them easy chances. We work so hard for our chances. We have to make them work twice as hard for theirs. I take responsibility for the slow starts. We gotta be ready to go more in games here and give ourselves a chance from the start." - Larkin
Quotable II: "We get down early, and we have a tough time scoring in the first place. When you're down 3-0 in the first, that's a pretty deep hole for this team. Not that we couldn't do it but we haven't done it lots this year. It's something we're gonna have to continue to work on." - Luke Glendening
Quotable III: "I addressed this the other day. Each one is a little bit different. We got to find a way to make sure on a team that doesn't have much confidence not to give up goals right away." - Blashill
3. Sam Gagner/Jimmy Howard: It was certainly not the optimal game for Gagner to have as his first Detroit memory. Gagner started on a line with Darren Helm and Filppula and also got power-play time. Although the game itself was not wonderful, Gagner did provide a nice moment at the end of the first period. As Howard skated off after allowing three goals in the frame, Gagner waited to give him a little tap on the pads as encouragement. Gagner finished with 17 shifts for 13:53, had two shots one hit, one giveaway and was minus-1. Howard started his first game in goal for the Wings since Feb. 16 in Pittsburgh, when he was pulled in the second period after surrendering four goals on 16 shots in Detroit's 5-1 loss to the Penguins. Howard was also pulled in the second period Thursday after giving up the Wild's fifth goal at the 12:05 mark of the second. Howard's last win came on Oct. 29, a 3-1 victory over the Edmonton Oilers at Little Caesars Arena.
Quotable: "It's frustrating. The way we showed up, especially after the bad showing against New Jersey. We had a great practice yesterday. We worked extremely hard. We were competitive, battling each other. We had a good feeling after that practice, and then we just didn't show up today. A team that's fighting for a playoff spot, great opportunity for the guys in this room to try and disrupt their season and play a spoiler, and take something out of it. We didn't do that. We didn't show up for our goalies. We didn't backcheck. We didn't cover backdoors. We just made it so easy on them to generate chance after chance. It's extremely frustrating right now." - Larkin
Quotable II: "Sometimes it's like we can't stop the leak. One turns into two and two turns into three. At the end of the night, it's not pretty again. Back to work tomorrow. No one's gonna feel sorry for us, that's for sure. We're paid to play this game. It's a game we love to play but we gotta go out and put out a better performance than that." - Glendening
Quotable III: "Obviously you can't blame the goalie. We have to play better in front of him. It's hard obviously for all of us, hard to see. Like I said, we gotta be better in front of him." - Filppula
Quotable IV: "I'd like to go and give (Howard) an effort where we don't give up many chances and try to get his game back going. I think that there's a responsibility of the team to do that. We didn't start the game to help him. So we gotta, as a group, we gotta look after each other and one way to look after each other, we've talked about it in a lot of other ways, one way is to make sure, you got a guy that's had a tough year, let's make it an easy game on him. We didn't do that." -- Blashill