Red Wings fall to Florida Panthers Tuesday night in Detroit

redwings_boxBy @SKubus

DETROIT – The Florida Panthers came into Joe Louis Arena Tuesday night and controlled their contest with the Red Wings, winning by a 4-3 final.

Little Caesars, Saginaw Spirit and Plymouth Whalers product Vincent Trocheck led the way with a goal and two assists and Roberto Luongo turned aside 38 of 41 shots in the win. Tomas Tatar, Pavel Datsyuk and Gustav Nyquist lit the lamp for Detroit, which saw its four-game winning streak snapped.

“Hockey is an honest and fair game, and you’ve got to be honest with your work ethic and your preparation,” head coach Mike Babcock said. “As a coaching staff, we never had the guys ready to play, we didn’t play hard enough. We tried to turn it up at the end; we made it close and exciting, but the right team won. Let this be a lesson to us; if you want to be at the top of the league, you’ve gotta play every night. You can’t play like that.”

With Panthers captain Willie Mitchell in the box for four minutes after Johan Franzen drew roughing and high-sticking penalties just 4:25 into the game, Tatar tipped home a Datsyuk shot past Luongo to give Detroit the early 1-0 lead at 6:47.

Stephen Weiss had recorded at least a point in each of the first three games since his return. After being held pointless Sunday against Vancouver, Weiss drew the secondary assist on the power play marker to give him his sixth point in his fifth game back from injury.

But Jimmy Hayes notched the equalizer for the Panthers at 15:11, with an assist going to Trocheck, sending both teams to the dressing room tied after the opening 20 minutes.

Florida capitalized on a Riley Sheahan defensive-zone giveaway to go ahead 2-1 with 7:39 left in the middle frame, as Sean Bergenheim potted his fourth goal of the season to give the Cats the lead heading into the final period.

Just 27 seconds into the third period, a Brendan Smith giveaway ultimately ended up on the stick of Trocheck and he deked Howard for a pretty goal to extend the Florida lead to 3-1. No. 1 overall pick in 2014 Aaron Ekblad potted his fourth of the season with a quick shot from the point to extend the Cats’ lead to 4-1 eight minutes into the period.

Datsyuk added his 10th of the season to pull Detroit to within two, banging home a rebound after Luongo stopped the first few opportunities. Jurco drew an assist for his eighth point in the last eight games to extend his point streak to five games. Gustav Nyquist made it interesting late, scoring his 12th of the season with 58.7 seconds left in the game to make it a 4-3 game before it was all said and done. But that’s as close as Detroit came in a disappointing effort.

“Unfortunately, we gave them too easy of goals,” Red Wings captain Henrik Zetterberg said. “A few times we had the puck under control, then they had it and it’s in our net. Against teams like this you’ve got to work so hard to get your own chances, so we’ve gotta be better taking care of the puck. We made a late-minute push there at the end, but unfortunately we couldn’t go all the way.”

The team consensus was that it simply needs to “flush this one,” as Nyquist said, move on and prepare for Thursday’s tilt against Dallas.

“I don’t even know how many minutes of effort we put in tonight,” Nyquist said. “We just didn’t execute from the D zone. They had a good forecheck, they skated well. We just couldn’t execute.”

The Red Wings’ bench boss said the team will have a day off Wednesday to regroup mentally before hosting the Stars.

“We can pretend that we were prepared, but we’re just kidding ourselves,” Babcock said. “Being honest with yourself as an athlete is the first thing, self-evaluation so you know whether you were good or not. We were no good, and that includes the coaches, because our team wasn’t ready.”