Krug’s OT winner propels Bruins past Wings (with photos)

Photos by Andrew Knapik/MiHockey

By @StefanKubus –

DETROIT – In front of a crowd of family and friends, Torey Krug delivered for the Boston Bruins Saturday night.

The Livonia native and Michigan State alumnus potted the overtime winner in a 4-3 overtime victory over the Red Wings at Joe Louis Arena. Henrik Zetterberg, Tomas Tatar and Jakub Kindl scored for Detroit, and Petr Mrazek stopped 27 of 31 shots in the loss. Malcolm Subban made 18 stops for the victory.

“There’s a lot of room out there just to skate with the puck and make plays,” Krug said of the space available in OT. “That’s my game. We have a few pretty good skilled players on our team that feeds right into that, as well. Just nice to get a chance on powerplay in overtime and be able to capitalize.”

Red Wings head coach Jeff Blashill was pleased with his team’s response after falling behind, but didn’t particularly care for the start.

“I thought the first two periods, we didn’t play well enough,” Blashill said. “And then I thought in the third period, we came out and played really, really well. That was the best jump that this group, that’s played together for two games has had. I thought it was actually great. Disappointed that we didn’t come out and play better in the first two, but I was very happy with the response.”

David Krejci potted a pair of first-period goals for the B’s to begin the scoring, one of which saw the puck take a crazy bounce off the boards and out in front as Mrazek left the net to corral the dump-in.

“First two goals, bad bounces,” Mrazek said. “It went off the boards and the second one, it hit the guy in front. The first period, unlucky goals, but I think overall it was a good game.”

While on a powerplay shortly after Krecji’s first goal near the middle of the frame, the Red Wings thought they had tied the game up, but Justin Abdelkader was ruled to have interfered with Boston netminder Malcolm Subban, who was rock solid in the outing, and Kindl’s goal was ultimately disallowed.

The Red Wings captain broke through, however, with a rocket of a wrister high over Subban’s glove from the top of the left circle to bring Detroit to within one.

Tatar popped home his fourth of the preseason after tipping home a Kyle Quincey point shot just 43 seconds into the second stanza. That even things at two apiece.

But Boston’s Brian Ferlin found twine for the B’s at 15:11 after a Brad Richards turnover in the Detroit zone to regain the one-goal lead for Boston.

Kindl evened the score again, this time at three aside, 1:35 into the third period. There was no question that this one counted for him.

Perhaps one big takeaway from the game for Detroit was the play of Kindl. Perhaps it’s part of the Blashill effect, but he looked like a dominant NHL defenseman Saturday night, something he was projected to be as a first-round pick in 2005.

“I thought (Kindl) played well,” Blashill said. “I thought he did a real good job. Obviously, the one shot was real good there from the point. To beat a guy clean from the blue line is not easy to do, but I thought his overall game was real good. I thought he did a good job.”

It took overtime to solve this one, and it was Krug who came through on a 4-on-3 powerplay, blasting a low slap shot through the five hole of Mrazek. Detroit had taken a too-many-men minor, the team’s 11th penalty of the game, to produce the B’s man-advantage.

“One thing that we haven’t talked lots about yet that we’re going to address, we took too many penalties,” Blashill said. “This team took too many penalties last year, and you can’t take this many penalties, for sure… We’ve got to be near the lowest, not near the highest penalized teams.”