All focus was on the kids going into Tuesday night’s game against the Dallas Stars. In addition to scoring his first career NHL goal, Tyler Bertuzzi shared a team-leading 3 points in the last 3 games with Anthony Mantha. Andreas Athanasiou had two points in his last three games and Dylan Larkin had one. Injuries to Darren Helm and Justin Abdelkader forced the Wings to call up Dominic Turgeon.

It was quite the challenge for the kids as the red hot Dallas Stars were in town. The Wings couldn’t cool them down as they dropped the game by a score of 4-2.

Trevor Daley opened the scoring in the first minute of the game off a solid effort by Tyler Bertuzzi.

Dallas responded pretty quickly with a shot from the point that was deflected by Radek Faksa in front of the net.

Dallas took a 2-1 lead while the Wings were killing off a 5-on-3 with Witkowski (elbowing) and Turgeon (delay of game) in the box.

Athanasiou gave us the equalizer in the second period on a classic goal for the speedy winger. Bertuzzi showed amazing patience to collect his second assist of the night.

Luke Witkowski decided that a fight was necessary after a clean hit on Dominic Turgeon and he collected an extra two minutes for roughing. The Stars converted once again on the powerplay, with Jason Spezza recording his second of the game.

Dallas scored an insurance goal about halfway through the third period when Ericsson was caught pinching in the offensive zone. It resulted in a 2-on-1 for Dallas and Martin Hanzal banging the puck into the net through a lot of confusion in the crease.

Detroit pulled their goalie with over four minutes left and neither team could convert. The game ended with a score of 4-2 in favour of the Dallas Stars.

 

Detroit was completely outplayed tonight, but they didn’t do half bad at 5v5. They had a 49.32% CF%, but had a hard time getting shots on net. This game came down to special teams as the Stars scored on two of their three powerplay opportunities and the Wings didn’t score once with the man advantage. In fact, they didn’t record a single shot at 5v4 and only had two shot attempts. That is embarrassingly bad.  This is starting to feel a lot like last year with the way the Wings’ powerplay is going. They need a spark soon at 5v4.

It can’t be anyone other than Tyler Bertuzzi, can it? Still riding the wave of his first NHL goal, Bertuzzi assisted on both Red Wings goals, giving him five points in his last four games. In addition to this, the assists he had against the Stars were real beauties. The first was an extra effort to maintain possession of the puck after a shot on net. The second showed great patience as he waited for the right opportunity to hit Athanasiou up the ice. His game continues to mature at the NHL level and it’s trending in the right direction. I’m excited to see where this takes him.

The Wings will have some time to recover as their next game isn’t until Saturday, January 20th, when they’ll be hosting the Carolina Hurricanes. Puck drop is 7:00 P.M. ET and you can watch the game on Fox Sports Detroit or Fox Sports Carolina.

As always, Brock Seguin will have the pre-game report early Saturday afternoon on WingsNation.com.