Red Wings fall to Lightning in shootout

By Stefan Kubus –

For the first time ever, Tampa Bay has defeated Detroit in consecutive meetings, extending the Red Wings’ consecutive shootout loss streak to 11 (the last win came on Feb. 28, 2013 in San Jose) Thursday night in Tampa.

Defenseman Kyle Quincey scored his first of the year for Detroit, while rookie Nikita Kucherov scored for the Lightning. The NHL’s reigning Art Ross Trophy winner Martin St. Louis had the game-winner in the shootout, while Detroit failed to score a single shootout goal against Ben Bishop.

Bishop stopped 28 shots, while Jonas Gustavsson was solid again, stopping 26 pucks.

In the first, Quincey took a lateral pass in the slot from Gustav Nyquist, put a backhand shot on net that was stopped, but he was able to bang home the rebound between the right post and Bishop’s left pad. Quincey’s tally put Detroit up 1-0 after 20 minutes.

It seems that whenever there is a big save at one end, it leads to at least a quality scoring chance at the other end.

Late in the second frame, Bishop robbed Daniel Alfredsson’s one-timer set up by Pavel Datsyuk. Then, with 43.7 seconds remaining in the period, Kucherov corralled a puck at the top of the right circle in the Detroit zone, turned and threw the puck low on net. Gustavsson never saw the puck through traffic and Kucherov tied the game up for his Lightning.

Halfway through the third, Bishop made another exceptional save on Detroit. This time, it was on Tomas Tatar, as the 23-year-old Slovakian-born forward took a pass at the back door, one-timed the pass, but Bishop shut the door. Although Tatar shot the puck more into Bishop’s pad than toward the open net, it still required a fast move across the crease.

Gustavsson was up to the challenge at the other end, though, as he was strong all night long, but notably stoned the Lightning late in the third period with under a minute left when it looked like he was beat.

Joakim Andersson nearly won the game for the Red Wings shorthanded on a 2-on-1 break with seconds left, but couldn’t put one past Bishop.

Overtime solved nothing, so it took a shootout. Gustavsson did his best to stymie the Bolts’ shooters, stopping five – including former Red Wing Valtteri Filppula – but couldn’t shut the door on St. Louis.