Red Wings fall to Panthers on the road
By Nick Barnowski –
Just three days after suffering a loss to the Florida Panthers at home, the Detroit Red Wings were unable to exact revenge on the road, losing 3-2 in a shootout Tuesday night.
It marked the 10th consecutive shootout loss for the Wings (15-9-7) dating back to last season.
Brad Boyes scored the game-winning-goal in the shootout for the Panthers (9-17-5), capping his team’s two-goal comeback to tie the game at two and force overtime. After Aleksander Barkov and Tomas Tatar traded goals in the shootout, Boyes fired a snapshot that never left the ice past Red Wings goalie Jimmy Howard to give the Panthers the win.
How they got there, though, shared headlines along with the return of Stephen Weiss to the city he played in for 10 seasons and Pavel Datsyuk’s first game back after missing seven due to a concussion.
The Red Wings led after two periods after goals by Todd Bertuzzi and Datsyuk in the first and second, respectively, but would have been up by three if not for a goal being disallowed early in the starting frame.
At the 12:35 mark, Jonathan Ericsson let a shot go from near the blueline that got past Florida goalie and Davison native Tim Thomas, but was waved off after Thomas fell down during the play. It was ruled that Daniel Cleary had interfered with Thomas, and though he was not penalized, the goal was disallowed.
Less than two minutes later the Red Wings almost scored again after a Johan Franzen saucer pass that turned into a shot hit the post behind Thomas. The Panthers couldn’t keep Detroit out of the score column for long, though.
On Detroit’s second power play of the game they converted to make it 1-0. Daniel Alfredsson made a cross-ice pass to Franzen, whose shot on net was deflected by Datsyuk and stopped by Thomas, but the rebound when straight to Bertuzzi who stuffed it home.
The second period opened with back-and-forth play with both teams missing a couple of scoring chances until Datsyuk converted with 13:13 left in the period.
His team leading 13th goal of the season put the Wings up 2-0. Franzen – for his second assist of the day – passed the puck from near the right side of the goal line up to Ericsson who found Datsyuk in the opposite corner with a pass designed to look like a slap slot. Datsyuk easily redirected it past Howard for his second point of the game.
The third period was where Florida began to mount their comeback. Five minutes in, Dmitry Kulikov’s shot from the point was tipped by Sean Bergenheim and got past Howard to put the Panthers within one.
Then, with 5:22 left in the game, Nick Bjugstad muscled past Datsyuk deep in the Detroit zone and powered his way to the front of the net where he roofed the puck over Howard to tie it at two. It was one of the 6-6 forward’s five shots on goal in the game.
Niklas Kronwall nearly won the game in overtime when his slap shot from the point hit the crossbar.
Howard made 25 saves in the loss while Thomas stopped 24 of 26 shots.