Good morning everyone and welcome to 2018. The Wings said goodbye to 2017 last night on a high note as they downed the visiting Pittsburgh Penguins 4-1 at Little Caesars Arena.

The Wings didn’t have the best first period as they were out-shot 12-6 (11-4 at 5v5) and out-attempted 21-15 (19-11 at 5v5), but they are the only team that scored in the frame. It was at 11:31 of the period when Gus Nyquist showed off his fancy stick handling skills and buried a wrister past Matt Murray. Tyler Bertuzzi was awarded an assist on this one for his second point of the season.

Only a minute into the second period, Dylan Larkin scored a beauty as he blew past the Pittsburgh defensemen and dangled around Murray to place the puck into the empty net. It was Larkin’s 6th goal of the season and, at 32 points, he’s now tied his point total from all of last season.

Pittsburgh wasn’t ready to lay down and accept defeat, though. Later in the frame, Nick Jensen was serving an interference penalty and the Pens were just peppering Howie with shots. At one point, he absolutely robbed Evgeny Malkin.

Unfortunately, they had another look at the play and deemed that Howard did, in fact, catch the puck, but he caught it behind the goal line. Here’s the replay they used to overturn the call:

Tough to make a clean call there, but the refs thought it was conclusive enough to award Malkin the goal. This did not sit well for the Red Wings, though, as they added one more before the period ended, sending the game into the third with a 3-1 lead.

In the third period, Detroit was once again out-shot and out-attempted pretty badly. Howard was really keeping them in the game. Nyquist scored one more time to really seal the deal. It was his 12th of the season and the 100th goal of his career.

That would be it as the Wings rang out 2017 with their second consecutive victory.

So…. yeah. Detroit was badly outplayed in this game. I think it’s safe to say that Howard is the real reason they won, as he turned away a whopping 37 Pittsburgh shots. Their 41.05% corsi-for is one of the worst performances of their season so far.

I have to go with Gustav Nyquist for this game’s Motor City MVP. Not only did his two goals lift the team to victory, he hit the 100 goal milestone and is back on pace to score 25 this season. It’s no easy feat and Goose has been slowly creeping up as one of the Wings’ best players.

Detroit’s got Ottawa in town next on Wednesday, January 3rd. The Senators have been struggling mightily as of late, so maybe the Wings can take advantage and turn this two game winning streak into a three game winning streak. Puck drop is 7:30 P.M. ET and you can watch the game on FS-D+ or Sportsnet if you’re tuning in from Canada. As always, Brock Seguin will have the pre-game report early in the afternoon on Wednesday.

From all of us here at WingsNation.com, have a very happy new year!