Post-game: Wings Fall Flat

Welcome back to Carolina! I feel like I have déjà vu… something seems so familiar about this game… anyways, the Wings came into tonight trying to finish off the rare three-wins-in-three-days feat. Last night the Wings seemed to be visibly outplayed, but ended up winning in overtime on the second overtime breakaway winner in two nights by young star Andreas Athanasiou.

We are all relieved to see that Eddie Lack is doing okay after his scary injury on the winning play last night. Athanasiou was also injured on the play, and will not be playing tonight. Ben Street draws in for him.

After a moderately quick start for the Wings, things settled down a bit and there weren’t too many chances for either club in the first half of the first period, other than a nice backhand chance on Ward by Tomas Nosek in the very early minutes. It is fun (and a bit weird) to see such a young lineup in Detroit. Much like last night Carolina would get on the board early when Lee Stempniak took a pass from Derek Ryan at the top of the circle in the Wings end and put a relatively harmless looking wrist shot behind Jimmy Howard to give the Canes a 1-0 lead. On replay, the shot deflected off Danny DeKeyser’s stick and up over Howard.

Anthony Mantha, who had a great game last night, had a breakaway chance to tie it up with 7:00 to go in the 1st, but lost the puck before he could get a shot off. After a poor change by Detroit with 5:15 to go in the frame, Carolina had a nice 3-on-2 chance foiled by Howard. The Wings couldn’t clear the zone, however, and Joakim Nordström beat Mike Green to a big rebound off of Jimmy’s pad and put home Carolina’s second of the night.

Detroit seemed to lose a bit of steam after the second goal against, and Carolina was buzzing for the last few minutes of the period. The Wings finished the first period down 2-0 with only 4 shots on Carolinas net.

The Canes came out in the second must the same way that they finished the first. Detroit looked to be finally feeling the effects of the 3-in-3. Larkin took a bit of a crosscheck in an awkward spot on his arm, and seemed to be in some pain, but he would remain in the game. Mike Green picked up the first penalty of the game with a trip 5:14 into the period. The Hurricanes kept the puck in the Wings end on the power play, but Lindholm negated the man-advantage after 1:03 with a holding the stick penalty.

After minimal action on the 4-on-4, Detroit continued their trend of struggling on zone entry during their power play. Zetterberg attempted to fix that on his own with a breakaway, but couldn’t quite finish it off for what would have been his 900th career point.

With 6:24 left in the second, ex-Penguin and known Wing-killer Jordan Staal picked up the puck around the Wings blueline, skated into the zone, and beat Howard with a shot around DeKeyser from the faceoff circle to make it 3-0 for the Hurricanes. As before, it seemed like the shot may have hit DeKeyser on its way by.

The rest of the second continued with Carolina dominating play, and the Red Wings struggling to establish any consistency. Somewhat surprisingly, with five rookies in the Wings lineup looking to gain experience, Henrik Zetterberg led all players in ice time after 40 minutes of play. The period ended with Detroit down 3-0 and the shots 22-10 in favour of Carolina.

The third period started slow for both teams with a few stoppages of play in the first minute alone. Dylan Larkin was booked for hooking just :38 into the frame, giving the Hurricanes a good chance to build even more momentum. The Canes hemmed the Wings into their end on the man advantage and managed an incredible chance on a wide-open give and go between Rask and Stempniak, but Jimmy flashed his glove and robbed Rask of what seemed to be a certain goal. The Wings first good chance of the third (the game?) came with Nyquist and Larkin buzzing around the Carolina net for a bit with 11:32 remaining in the game.

After a relatively benign game, Dylan Larkin was run hard into the end boards behind the Carolina net by Tennyson, drawing a bit of a scrum. It looked like Larkin lost an edge as Tennyson made contact, and Tennyson finished his check anyways. Tennyson came out of it with a 2 minute minor for boarding, and Larkin remained on the Wings bench. The Red Wings, again, struggled on zone entry for the duration of the power play and never really got established in the offensive zone until the very end. After finally getting a shot on net, there was another big scrum sparked by Larkin taking exception to his treatment in front of the crease.

The rough stuff seemed to energize Detroit a bit, and with 6:27 remaining Tomas Nosek buried the puck behind Ward after it took a bounce off the end boards for his first NHL goal! He was in the right place, behind Ward in the crease, and the bounce off the boards came to the perfect location for him to move past Riley Sheahan in season goal scoring.

The Wings picked up some momentum from this and were moving around the ice attempting to get within one. Then, with 3:01 remaining in the game, Robbie Russo took an interference penalty to put the Canes back on the man advantage. Elias Lindholm took full advantage and buried the Canes 4th goal of the night. This would remain the final score, with Carolina beating Detroit 4-1 and a final shot total of 32-21 for the Canes.

It was not the easiest game to pick a Red Wings MVP, but we will give it to Tomas Nosek. He had a solid all around game, a chance or two early on, and finally broke the Carolina shut out with his first career goal. He provided a bit of a spark to an otherwise exhausted Detroit team.

This loss will, most likely, mathematically eliminated the Red Wings from the NHL playoffs for the first time in 25 years. Look out for an in-depth article on that in the next couple of days. After tonight the Red Wings finally get a much deserved rest and play again on Thursday against Steve Yzerman and the Tampa Bay Lightning. Brock Seguin will have your GameDay Preview on Thursday!