Red Wings struggle for offense, lose 2-1 to St. Louis (with photos)
By @StefanKubus –
DETROIT – For the second-consecutive game and 14th game this season, the Red Wings managed to score just one goal.
The Red Wings fell to the St. Louis Blues Wednesday night, a 2-1 final. Dmitry Jaskin and Ty Rattie scored for the Blues, while Henrik Zetterberg potted the lone marker for Detroit. Petr Mrazek turned away 18 of 20, while Brian Elliott was a rock for the Blues, stopping 29 of 30 shots he faced.
“You want more quality because the odds are the more quality, the more goals, so we score one goal and that’s probably, on a lot of nights, not good enough,” Red Wings forward Brad Richards said. “We’re going to have to look at it, keep getting more traffic there (in front). They did a good job, too. In the third period, it was really tough to get anything in the middle of the ice to the net. They’re protecting a lead and that makes it even harder to get things through and get your body in front of the net, but can’t feel sorry for ourselves. It’s hard to score in this league right now, gotta keep plugging and believe that it will go our way and stay our way if we do the right things.”
The shortcomings on offense weren’t for a lack of trying, as the Wings posted 30 shots on the Blues and also had 15 attempted blocked and nine that missed the goal. Red Wings head coach Jeff Blashill said he believes the offense will come if they continue to pepper goaltenders.
“We’ve got a group in here that have been around a lot, so they understand process and how important it is,” Blashill said. “I don’t have to say it; they know it. They police themselves that way. We have a young team with great veteran leadership.”
Photos by Michael Miller/MiHockey
The Red Wings’ captain credited Mrazek for keeping the Wings in the game and also said he felt the team just couldn’t find that second goal.
“Petr was good again in net, he gave us a chance, but we’ve just got to score more,” Zetterberg said. “I don’t know if we really have to create more, but we have to score more.”
With just 1:59 to play in the opening frame, St. Louis defenseman Alex Pietrangelo fired a wrist shot on net from the right point and it found the backside of Rattie and deflected past Mrazek to open the scoring.
Seconds later on the ensuing shift, Pavel Datsyuk nearly knotted the game at one after he had Elliott scrambling, but ultimately found iron on the far side.
The Blues carried that 1-0 lead into the locker room after the first two periods and then built on it 12:13 into the third period. Jaskin took a feed from Blues captain David Backes, broke down the middle of the ice, waltzed around Mike Green and made a great move around Mrazek to tuck in his third of the season to make it a 2-0 Blues lead.
But 5:34 later and with 2:13 to play, the Red Wings showed signs of offensive life, as Zetterberg struck on the power play to bring Detroit to within a goal. With traffic in front on the goal, the Blues challenged on goaltender interference, but the goal was upheld after video review.
That was as close as Detroit managed to get, however, as the Blues held on for the two points.
“We played a good hockey game tonight,” Blashill said. “We’ve got to find a way to score a little bit more. Let’s just keep plugging away and keep getting better and hopefully, by the end of the year, we’ve gotten better at it enough that nobody asks us (about) that, but we’ll see.”
Notes: Tomas Tatar was announced as a late scratch as he was under the weather with the flu. Joacim Andersson dressed for Tatar and skated just 6:44.
