Everyone wants to talk about Dylan Larkin right now, and almost nobody wants to talk about John Gibson. That's backwards, and it's costing the Red Wings games.
Calgary beat Detroit 4-1 on Saturday. The score matters less than what it ended: Detroit hadn't lost to the Flames since March 2022, an eight-game run that included four straight wins in Calgary. That streak is gone, and so is Detroit's own six-game point run, both ending the same night. The fan reaction has been to reach for the biggest lever available: trade the captain or shuffle the lines, with ownership getting blamed too. None of that touches the actual hole in this team.
The hole is the net. Gibson came into this season already shaky, and Saturday did nothing to fix the picture: four goals allowed, a save percentage sitting in the high .860s, a goals-against average pushing 3.5 through his first eight starts of the year. It's a pattern that's hard to miss, and the number is ugly enough on its own. A team that wants to compete can't spend two months hoping a goaltender finds rhythm that isn't there.
RatingThen there's the penalty kill, which might be worse than the goaltending: it's a failure of the whole group. Detroit has allowed goals on the power play at a rate that's among the worst in the league this season, and over their last stretch of games they haven't been able to kill off penalties at anything close to an acceptable rate. Calgary scored twice with the man advantage Saturday alone. It's a system and a coaching staff failing to fix a problem everyone can see coming before the puck even drops.
Now compare that to the Larkin argument. People want him gone because the team is losing and he's the biggest name on the ice. That's scapegoating. He played Saturday, centered his line, did his job. There's no indication he was the reason three unanswered goals went in during the second period. Moving your best center because the kill can't clear a zone and the goalie can't make a save is punishing the wrong guy to make yourself feel like you did something.
This team hasn't lost its spirit. Even in a loss like this, there were moments on the ice that kept people watching instead of switching off the TV. But a team can be fun to watch and still be badly run where it counts.
Calgary has won four of five games after starting 0-5 on the season. Nobody's writing columns demanding their captain get traded. They fixed something. Detroit needs to fix the net and the kill before it touches the lineup card. Until the front office says that out loud instead of letting trade rumors about Larkin do the talking, this slide is a choice, one they're making every night Gibson starts and the kill doesn't hold.
