Wings Postgame: Holding A Grudge

Photo Credit: Dennis Wierzbicki/USA TODAY SPORTS

The Detroid Red Wings had a tough go at it in their last game against the Chicago Blackhawks, wherein they were handily defeated at the mercy of their former divisional rival’s star forwards. With a few days of rest behind them, the team showed up to the rink prepared to not let that happen to them again.

It happened to them again, this time resulting in a 4-1 loss.

In fact, it took just 21 seconds for the Hawks to go ahead in this game. Patrick Kane poked away a puck that appeared on its way to Danny DeKeyser, and before anybody could react, he was already off to the races and ready to fire a wrister past Petr Mrazek. Six minutes later and with Brendan Smith in the box, Duncan Keith followed up Chicago’s second goal in just five shots, ending Mrazek’s night before it should have started.

Gustav Nyqvist responded quickly with his sixteenth of the season, and Jimmy Howard began to hold the fort while the Wings looked for some way, any way to come back and restore balance in this game. Despite outshooting the Hawks throughout, it simply wasn’t happening for them.  With eight and a half minutes to go, Artem Anisimov redirected a powerplay slapper by Artemi Panarin to give the opponents some insurance, and Jonathan Toews removed any shred of doubt a minute later with a redirection of Andrew Desjardins’ shot. 

Ultimately, it was a night of disappointment that left Red Wings fans even less amused than they were on Wednesday; Mrazek’s shaky start was no doubt concerning, but the inability to put more than one of their 34 shots into the back of the net made it evident that it didn’t matter which of these two goaltenders was in net.

Goose’s wrister was extremely loose for this shot tonight, but he was also Detroit’s most effective possession forward; the team managed 64% of the attempted shots while he was on the ice. Granted, there was some sheltering involved in that, but anytime you can make an impact in both underlying and overly abundant performance, it’s a good night.

Now that these two games are behind the Wings, they can move on to a theoretically easier opponent in the Columbus Blue Jackets. They’ll have tomorrow off before heading Ohio; puck drop is at 7:00 PM.