Red Wings wrap up season series with Hurricanes in 3-1 loss
By @StefanKubus –
DETROIT – After the Red Wings’ 3-1 loss Tuesday night, one thing is for certain: Detroit is happy to have seen the last of the Carolina Hurricanes this season.
Led by Cam Ward’s 25-save performance, the Hurricanes topped Detroit at Joe Louis Arena in the third of three meetings between the two teams this season. Jakub Kindl scored Detroit’s lone marker, while Petr Mrazek stopped 18 of 21. The Wings fell to 4-4-1 with the defeat, the second suffered at the hands of Carolina in this young season.
“I think, in the end, we still didn’t generate enough, though,” Red Wings head coach Jeff Blashill said. “We need to generate more than that. I didn’t think we gave up much at all, but we’ve got to do a better job of generating. I thought we actually passed up shots in the first period, and then we didn’t generate enough opportunities to shoot it in the third. I thought the second was a pretty good period.”
Just 3:59 into the game, Tomas Tatar and Oxford native Nathan Gerbe dropped the gloves in a welterweight bout, but both were given roughing penalties, Tatar a minor and Gerbe a double minor. That injected even more life into the already-lively Joe Louis Arena crowd.
At the 12:26 mark of the opening period, Mrazek left the goal to clear the puck, but his clearing attempt went right off of Victor Rask and the Canes forward had an easy empty-net goal in front of him. It was the kind of goal that was going to break the scoreless tie in that chess match of a game at that point.
“It shouldn’t happen,” Mrazek said. “I hit that guy’s stick, it bounced in front of me and went in. That was a mistake. (Kindl) scored a big one back, but it wasn’t enough.”
Blashill said that, when you have a strong puck-handling goaltender, those type of things are going to happen once in a while, but it doesn’t change the fact that his ability is beneficial to the team.
“Ultimately, I think we’d all like to have that one back, including him,” Blashill said. “The one thing about a goalie that plays the puck lots is it’s going to happen sometimes, so I expect him to go back and keep playing the puck next time.”
But with 2:16 remaining in the second stanza, Kindl threw a wrister on goal from the top of the right circle. The shot squeaked through Ward after deflecting off a Carolina leg to even things up at one aside. That marked Kindl’s first goal of the season.
Just 4:35 into the third period, Ron Hainsey’s point shot found its way past Mrazek, as former Plymouth Whalers forward Chris Terry was screening in front. That once again gave Carolina a one-goal lead.
Carolina captain Eric Staal added an empty-netter to cap things off at 3-1.
“They’ve been playing us pretty tough here from the start,” Red Wings captain Henrik Zetterberg said of the Canes.
“It’s just mental errors. We try to do too much or try to make the right play, but we don’t execute. We’ve been talking about it and just got to get better at it.”
The Red Wings host the Ottawa Senators Friday night in Detroit’s Hockey Fights Cancer game.