Red Wings fall to the Dallas Stars in first November home game
By Stefan Kubus –
DETROIT – For the second straight game, a Red Wing lit the lamp for the first time in his NHL career.
Unfortunately for 22-year-old blue-liner Adam Almquist, like Danny DeKeyser on Monday night, his goal came in a losing effort, as Detroit dropped their first game back at Joe Louis Arena following a four-game road trip, by a score of 4-3.
Cody Eakin scored a power-play goal late in the third period to tie the game, and Rich Peverley buried the game-winner in overtime. Red Wings captain Henrik Zetterberg racked up three assists, while Pavel Datsyuk tallied a goal and an assist in the losing effort.
Red Wings head coach Mike Babcock said simply his team needs to find a way to thrive on home ice, citing the need for depth scoring.
“The bottom line is, we’ve got a possible three points out of a possible eight last available at home, and we’ve got to do better than that,” head coach Mike Babcock said. “Pav and Z were outstanding, but two guys don’t make a hockey club; you have to have everybody going. We’ve got to get our second line generating some offense, and our bottom two can’t be giving up offense.”
In the 244th all-time meeting between the Red Wings and Stars and first of two this season – Dallas and Detroit were Central Division rivals from 1993-1998 before Dallas moved to the Pacific – Todd Bertuzzi opened the game’s scoring, his fifth of the season, 7:44 into the second stanza, after some great work along the boards down low by Datsyuk.
With nearly five minutes remaining in the period, Almquist snuck down into the high slot, took a pass from Zetterberg and buried his first NHL goal past goaltender Kari Lehtonen to put his team up 2-0.
“I got a really, really good pass from Z there, walked into the slot, shot it and luckily it went in,” the 22-year-old Almquist said. “It’s always good to be around guys like that. I’m blessed to be here in this locker room right now and I try to do the best with it. I just try to watch and learn from those guys.”
Despite a strong second period, former Michigan State Spartan Shawn Horcoff kept his Stars in the game, scoring with 20 seconds left in the second period to pull Dallas to within one.
“Their first one is a tough one at the end of the second period,” Zetterberg said. “Still, I think the second period we played really well. We knew they were going to hang around. We just needed to score more goals. Unfortunately, we couldn’t do that.”
Early in the third period, Stars’ captain Jamie Benn took the puck end to end before deking Howard with a terrific forehand-backhand move while falling down to tie the game up at two aside.
However, Datsyuk answered for Detroit with a gorgeous ‘Datsyukian’ goal of his own. With 8:26 left in the game, No. 13 took a pass from Zetterberg, completely undressed a Stars defender and beat Lehtonen for the go-ahead goal, his seventh of the year.
“It’s fun to see him out there,” Zetterberg said of Datsyuk and his line’s contributions. “But I think it’s not just our line that created chances tonight. I think there’s more lines that did. We found a way to get the puck in the net, but I think other guys did a good job in creating a lot of chances, as well.”
After a questionable goaltending interference call against Justin Abdelkader late in the game, the Stars pounced on the opportunity, as Cody Eakin sniped a power play goal over Howard’s blocker with 1:10 to go in the game.
“I would think a penalty 200 feet from home isn’t a good one,” Babcock said of the penalty. “All you’ve got to do is flip it in the corner, hang onto it, grind some time off the clock and life’s good for you. What you can’t do is take a penalty in the offensive zone… It wasn’t his intention to hurt the team, but that’s a lesson learned; it just can’t happen.”