DETROIT — Seventy-seven seconds.
That is how close the Detroit Red Wings’ season came to finishing early on Monday. With just a 4-3 deficit against the Montreal Canadiens remaining, the Red Wings’ prospects of making the playoffs were all but gone.
The goaltender was pulled by Detroit. The puck managed to go past Canadiens goalie Sam Montembeault and land on his leg, managing to avoid the net. Shayne Gostisbehere had shown it how to jump really high to keep a puck in the offensive zone after instantly hitting the goal post. However, it had failed to see the much-needed objective.
“It was kind of a crazy sequence,” Lucas Raymond said. “Puck was bouncing all over the place it felt like, a lot of sticks flying everywhere.”
“It felt like the puck might never go in for us,” J.T. Compher said.
The puck then came over Raymond, a 22-year-old. NHL season three. And as much moxie as possible.
You are aware of what occurred by now. Raymond remained calm. He made full use of the space available to him at the goal line, where there was no defender. After curling up in front of the net, he entered and chose his location. He then buried it.
“The poise he had in that moment, to take a few steps up with how hectic it was,” Compher said, “what an unbelievable play to get us tied and get us to overtime.”
A minute and seventeen seconds later, regulation ended, buying Detroit is season an extra day. The Washington Capitals shut out the Boston Bruins 2-0 on Monday, so the Red Wings had little assistance from the scoreboard outside of town. However, advancing through regulation with a point guaranteed that Detroit would enter Game 82 with at least a hope.
That was not insignificant, given that the Red Wings trailed 4-1 on Monday at one point. By the middle of the third quarter, they were behind 4-2 already. It was better that they were still alive than what appeared to be their fate.
Realistically, though, they needed more. They needed to win it in the extra frame to give themselves the best chance possible at snapping a seven-year playoff drought Tuesday.
Raymond was again found by the puck with 32 seconds remaining in the extra session; this time, it was in his defensive zone, some 200 feet away from the Montreal goal. He would been out on the ice for almost a minute already. It gassed him. However, he witnessed Dylan Larkin break the ice, and he used a stretch pass to surprise him.
“Thought he was going for a breakaway at first,” Raymond said.
But Larkin had run out of petrol too. Thus, while he was gathering the puck, he crossed the blue line and bided his time for Raymond to follow suit. He successfully completed his pass. And once again, the Red Wings’ youngest forward stepped up to the plate.
“Just tried to get off a shot,” Raymond said. “Yeah. Happy it went in.”
The child has a talent for nuance. As the Red Wings prevailed 5–4, Little Caesars Arena erupted.
Loudest he’s heard the building, in his three years with the team?
“I kind of blacked out, to be honest,” Raymond said. “There was a lot of guys in (the celebratory huddle). It was punches being thrown. It was probably pretty loud, yeah.”
Wow. pic.twitter.com/7I2g9foYtu
— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) April 16, 2024
For Detroit, Raymond’s play this season has been astounding. He became the Red Wings’ highest draft selection in over thirty years when they selected him fourth in the 2020 draft. Put differently, their greatest opportunity to discover a star.
That is the way he is looked the entire season. Back home in Sweden, he worked very hard during the summer to get ready for the upcoming year. And the results of that labor were evident right away. With his goals on Monday, Raymond now has 31 goals and 71 points for the season, which is more than any other player in the Red Wings.
Raymond took over as the team’s offensive leader after Larkin missed a significant amount of time earlier in the season, which was a terrible spell for Detroit. Last week, with the Red Wings behind Pittsburgh by two goals late in the game, Raymond turned in a hat trick (and a 4-point performance) to send the team into overtime and earn a crucial point.
And Monday, in a true do-or-die moment, it was Raymond again. Think about what that says, about a player that young.
“It’s impressive,” Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde said. “That’s why we need to get in these moments. There’s huge growth in it. It’s just, he’s been impressive to watch in my two years he’s been here. And he’s starting to shine in these really critical moments.”
But the truth is, he is not just getting started. Raymond is this person. The person he once was.
He was a prodigy back home in Gothenburg before becoming the most promising young player for the Red Wings. At the age of sixteen, he made his debut in professional hockey with the legendary Frölunda program.When Detroit originally selected Raymond, Tobias Johansson, one of Raymond’s youth coaches in Frölunda, said to me, “I believe Lucas’s greatest skill is his ability to perform at his best when the team needs him and the game is most crucial.”
Raymond wanted the pressure, Johansson felt back then. “He feeds from it.”
The Red Wings also observed this aspect of Raymond. Kris Draper, the director of amateur scouting for Detroit, previously talked about how much it meant to watch Raymond rise to the occasion and score a hat trick in the U18 World Championship gold medal game. “When you watch it, it makes you grin,” he remarked.
Really, goals like Monday’s were the kind Raymond was drafted to score.
The tricky thing is that you never know which elite talents will be able to translate their success from lower levels into the hardest league in the world. Simply said, the pressure is different. It is impossible to predict who will actually shrink and who will rise to the occasion.
Raymond is answering that question each day now.
Even his best friend was taking notice of him last month due to his performance filling in for Larkin. It has also fallen on Patrick Kane, a young, talented potential, to perform at the greatest level. And he has, several times over. He is among his generation’s real megastars.
What did he see while watching Raymond take this next step?
“I think that’s what can happen with a young player like that,” Kane told The Athletic in late March. “When you realize your abilities, you can understand you can start taking over games, right? And I think we’re seeing him at that point right now.”
Monday, he left no doubt.
And the Red Wings are still very much in the hunt with one game remaining.
(Photo: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
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