Red Wings out-battled by Sharks, fall 3-2 at Joe Louis Arena
By @StefanKubus –
DETROIT – Despite going up early and outshooting the San Jose Sharks, 28-14, the Red Wings failed to respond when their opponents climbed back into the game at Joe Louis Arena Friday night.
Detroit fell to 8-7-1 with a 3-2 loss to the Sharks. Tomas Tatar netted his fourth goal of the season, while Teemu Pulkkinen tallied his fifth. Jimmy Howard allowed three goals on 14 shots in the loss. Melker Karlsson, Matt Nieto and Sharks captain Joe Pavelski scored for the 8-8-0 Sharks, while Martin Jones turned aside 26 of 28.
“I thought we came out and played pretty well,” Red Wings head coach Jeff Blashill said. “Until their third goal, I thought we played with good energy, I thought we did some things really, really well. I thought that third goal deflated us too much, we can’t allow that to happen. I would also give credit to them a little bit; they do a real good job of clogging up the neutral zone, so we had a really hard time once we gave up the lead like that, getting through the neutral zone to create enough pressure. Some of the credit goes to them, but some of it I thought we allowed it to deflate us too much.”
Blashill was also concerned with the amount of one-on-one battles his group lost Friday night.
“The one concern is we didn’t win enough one-on-one battles in the offensive zone, so we’re going to be a team that pays an extraordinarily hard price to score because we’re not the biggest team, and that’s fine, we’ve got really good players that will take on a team any day, but we’ve got to be ultra-competitive, and I didn’t think the second half of the game we were ultra-compeititve enough,” Blashill said. “From a possession standpoint, we had a lot more time in their end than they had in our end; they had very little time in our end, but we’ve got to pay a bigger price to score goals still.”
Despite doubling up on San Jose in the shot department, Detroit captain Henrik Zetterberg said there simply weren’t enough threatening opportunities.
“We have to create a little bit more than we did, and I know we got almost 30 shots, but a lot of them were not really good quality chances,” Zetterberg said.
Pavel Datsyuk made his season debut, playing 20:53 and leading the team with four shots on goal. The Red Wings said he looked great for his first game back, but even The Magic Man will need a couple games to get back up to speed, especially having no training camp under his belt, as Blashill pointed out.
“He hasn’t played in a long time, so it might take him a couple games to get used to the speed again. Even though he is Pavel Datsyuk, he is human, but still liked what I saw out of him tonight,” Howard said. “He was slick with his stick and he’s only going to get better, so that’s only going to make us more dangerous.”
Prior to puck drop, the Red Wings held a moment of silence for the victims of the attacks in Paris, France.
Datsyuk came out for his first shift of the season just 20 seconds into the game, and he received a loud ovation from the Joe Louis Arena faithful.
Tatar’s fourth of the season opened up the scoring as the winger broke down the right side and, being a left-handed shot, was able to snap a wrister from the middle of the ice in the far corner, beating Martin Jones for the early lead.
Karlsson evened things up at one aside shortly after with his first goal of the season at 7:40. Late, with just 2:08 to play in the opening period, Nieto attempted a wrap-around, which he couldn’t bury, but he followed up on his own rebound and – lost by the Red Wings in their defensive zone coverage – roofed it to give San Jose the lead heading into the first intermission.
With 9:37 to play in the middle frame, Pavelski tipped home a Paul Martin point shot to extend the Sharks’ lead to 3-1.
With Howard pulled late in the third period, Pulkkinen cut the lead to 3-2, as his high point shot went off the leg of a Sharks defender and in. But that was as close as Detroit got.
“I think we came out, played really good in the first, we spent some time in their end,” Zetterberg said. “Sometime, in the middle of the second period I think they took over a little bit, but then they really played on their lead, played real simple, rimmed the puck all the time, it was tough for us to get anything going. We couldn’t really sustain any pressure in their zone there.”
Notes: Washington forward Alex Ovechkin – who had 15 shots against Detroit in the Wings’ 1-0 victory over the Capitals Nov. 10 – has still not scored that elusive 484th goal to break former Red Wings great Sergei Fedorov’s mark to become the highest-scoring Russian-born forward. Washington’s next game is Wednesday back at Joe Louis Arena.