Wings Postgame: Zamblowout

Photo Credit: Leon Halip/USA TODAY SPORTS

“All good things must come to an end” is such a downer phrase. First off, it’s untrue; have you seen this team’s record over the years?! Secondarily, it ignores that bad things also go away over time, like the losing streak that the Detroit Red Wings carried into this afternoon’s matinee and snapped with a 5-1 victory.

The way this game unfolded made little to no sense in the beginning. The New York Islanders took 10 of the game’s 13 shots, yet it was Detroit who put two of them into the back of the net. Tomas Tatar opened things up with a quick wrister in the slot fifteen minutes into the first period, and shortly after, Dylan Larkin took advantage of the wide open space that penalties to each team provided and set up Kyle Quincy for his second of the year.

Midway through the second, with the Wings on the powerplay, Mike Green turned the clock with a great bit of quarterbacking that led to his fourth goal of the season. He faked the one-timer, cycled the puck, faked it once again, and then ripped a wrister to put the Wings up 3-0. Tomas Tatar followed up with his fifteenth shortly after, rebounding Andreas Athanasiou’s shot to give the rookie his first NHL assist and an end to his six-week, multi-league point drought.

After an elongated second intermission, Larkin made a return to the scoresheet, scooping the puck away from the boards and ripping a puck past Jean-Francois Berube, who had come in to replace Jaroslav Halak after Tatar’s goal. John Tavares snapped Petr Mrazek’s shutout bid a minute and a half later, but that was as close as the Islanders would get in this one.

*aggressive shrug*

The Wings were constantly outshot, and even the possession chart makes things look better than they were. When they did have changes, those attempts happened to hit the boards and the bodies of the Islanders more than they made it towards Halak and Berube. It’s a good thing that the former of the netminders was awful tonight; when the Wings got a chance, you better believe it was buried.

Ultimately, you count your blessings with this game and focus on making the next one a little bit easier of a process, because this wasn’t exactly a dominant effort by the winning team.

I don’t quite understand how a nail ends up on the ice, let alone being dragged by a Zamboni, but full credit to the crew for fixing things up to allow the game to keep going.

The Red Wings return to the ice on Monday night to take on the Florida Panthers. Their last matchup was one that Detroit would love to have back, but with home ice advantage available to them, what better time to take revenge? Puck drop is at 7:30 PM.