After a few days off and some work on their 3-on-3 in practice, the Wings were ready to host the Los Angeles Kings at Little Caesars Arena Tuesday night. The night was underscored by a purple hue and a fighting spirit as the team welcomed cancer patients for #WingsFightCancer night. The ceremonial puck drop was done by young Noah. It was the first and perhaps most important highlight of the game. Then, the hockey started.

The Kings got off to a speedy start in the first as Detroit struggled to keep up with them. A penalty to Drew Doughty six minutes in slowed them down a bit, but the Wings powerplay was so static that they couldn’t get anything done. They did manage to strike first, though. At 14:12 of the first period, Frans Nielsen found Mike Green sneaking through the neutral zone, creating a 2-on-1 chance on Jonathan Quick. Instead of passing, Green decided to shoot and beat Quick glove side.

This would be the only goal of the period, despite both teams getting a powerplay opportunity in the second half. Luckily for Detroit, Jimmy Howard appeared to be on his game as he turned away 14 L.A. King shots in the first.

In the second period, the Red Wings decided they should just move into the penalty box. Ericsson, Green, and Helm all took penalties at different times this period. Luckily, the penalty kill was on point for two of them. Larkin and Glendening even created a scoring chance that forced Jonathan Quick to make a sprawling save. Quick came up big more than once in this period, robbing Xavier Ouellet, Henrik Zetterberg, and Gustav Nyquist of goals.

Things started to fall apart for Detroit in the final minutes of the period. At 17:43, Dustin Brown picked up the puck in the corner, carried it to the top of the circle, and sniped it past Jimmy Howard into the top corner of the net.

Then, with fifteen seconds left in the period, Darren Helm took an interference penalty. It was kind of a sketchy call, but valid enough to not warrant an argument. Detroit just wanted to escape the period in a tie, but it wasn’t in the books for them. It took eight seconds for the Kings to end the penalty on an Anze Kopitar powerplay goal.

The Kings kept it coming in the third, scoring a mere 58 seconds into the third period.

From there, Detroit just couldn’t get control of the game back. They were outshot X-X in the third period as they gave up one more goal to Anze Kopitar.

The final would be 4-1 as Detroit fell to LA on hockey fights cancer night in Detroit.

Jonathan Quick played a great game tonight, but Detroit was largely outplayed in all situations of tonight’s game. At 5v5, they racked up a terrible 42.65 CF% and an even more dismal 40.00 SF%. There’s only so many games Jimmy Howard can keep them in and it’s becoming painfully clear that if he’s not on his game, this team can’t win. With two big games coming up this weekend, they really need to turn their game around to remain in the hunt.

Tonight’s Motor City MVP is Frans Nielsen. Nielsen made a pretty backhand pass in the first period that resulted in Mike Green’s second goal of the season. It was Nielsen’s 10th point of the season and the 400th of his career. Congratulations to the Danish Backhand of Judgement on this wonderful career milestone!

The Red Wings get a day of rest tomorrow before hosting the Montreal Canadiens on Thursday evening. This will be an important game as their division rival is only a couple of points behind them in the standings. Losing to the Kings hurts, but losing to the Canadiens will hurt even more. They need the next two points to put some distance between them and another contender for third place in the Atlantic Division. Game time is 7:30 P.M. ET and you can watch the game on Fox Sports Detroit or TSN2 if you’re in Canada. If you’d like to watch the game in French, RDS will be carrying it as well.

As always, Brock Seguin will have your pre-game report on WingsNation.com.