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Sabres top Red Wings on ’97 Stanley Cup celebration night (with photos)

MiHockey Staff


Photos by Andrew Knapik/MiHockey

 

By @StefanKubus –

DETROIT – On a night when the Detroit Red Wings honored the 1997 Stanley Cup-winning team, the current squad struggled to deliver in Tuesday’s battle with the Buffalo Sabres.

The Sabres topped the Red Wings by a 4-3 final in a see-saw affair that saw the teams trade goals throughout. Petr Mrazek allowed four goals on 22 shots, while Buffalo’s Robin Lehner turned away 40 of 43 shots he faced. Jack Eichel, Evander Kane and Sam Reinhart scored for the Sabres, while Drew Miller, Henrik Zetterberg and Thomas Vanek found twine for the Wings. Detroit fell to 15-16-4 on the season.

“The biggest thing for us is we need points right now, it’s a tough loss,” Miller said. “You want to keep that rolling, we had a good win there going into the break. We wanted to have a big effort tonight. I thought we fought back there pretty hard and to come up short like that, we’ve gotta find ways to win those games.”

MORE: Yzerman, Bowman, Shanahan and Holmstrom reflect on Red Wings’ 1997 championship (video)

Kane opened the scoring at 7:12, banging home his own rebound at the side of the Detroit goal after an initial wrap-around attempt.

Reinhart added one eight minutes later, as he tipped home a Rasmus Ristolainen point shot to put the Sabres up by a pair. The helper marked Ristolainen’s sixth in four trips to The Joe.

In an effort to rejuvenate his team in the second period, Anthony Mantha dropped the gloves for the second time this month – the second fight in his NHL career – in a bout with Marcus Foligno.

With 5:14 to play in the middle frame, the Red Wings’ captain got his squad on the board. From the corner, Zetterberg threw a puck toward the net, and it bounced off Lehner’s back and into the cage to pull Detroit to within one.

Just 23 seconds later, Eichel potted his sixth of the season to put Buffalo back up by two. But with 3:46 left, Miller banged home the rebound of a Dylan Larkin shot to pull the Wings back to within a single goal. That’s how things stood after what developed into an eventful period.

“It’s not optimal, you would like to build on that momentum that you get from scoring a goal, but we couldn’t do that tonight,” Zetterberg said of the back-and-forth battle.

With 13:27 left to play in the third period, Detroit finally converted on the man advantage. After a struggling power play sequence with more passing than shooting, Vanek corralled a loose puck, turned and fired a shot that beat Lehner to even things up at three.

But just two minutes later, it was Kane who snuck behind the Detroit defense capitalizing on poor defensive, far-side coverage by defenseman Nick Jensen, took a pass from Brian Gionta and snapped home his second of the evening to put Buffalo up 4-3. That was a goal Blashill said cannot happen, but acknowledged mistakes come with young players.

“I didn’t like the defensive play on the fourth goal at all,” Blashill said. “That was the one to me that is crazy. You’ve got to be above people, you can’t not be above people. But those are young mistakes, and that’s part of the process, as players mature. The only way to get better is to play them, and I’ve made the decision to do that, and they’re gonna have to grow from those mistakes.

“As a hockey team, we’ve gotta make sure that we do a better job of defending. I know we talk lots about scoring here, but I’ve said it for two weeks now, you can talk about scoring, but you better be careful; if you start giving up goals, you’re in trouble, and we can’t give up four goals and expect to win.”

Shortly after, the Wings nearly tied it up once again. Lehner took a stick to the neck from his own defenseman, Zach Bogosian, with the puck near his goal. The puck entered the net shortly after Lehner went down, but because the whistle was blown for his injury, the goal didn’t count.

That was as close as Detroit got, however. The Wings pulled Howard with just over a minute remaining, but to no avail, as the Sabres held on for the 4-3 win.

“We need to win hockey games,” Blashill said. “I thought we threw the puck away too much. I thought we had opportunities to skate with the puck and didn’t, I thought we had opportunities to move the puck and we didn’t, but with all that said, from a chances standpoint, we played good enough to win, but we’ve gotta find ways to win these games.”

Notes: With the Wings’ loss, Buffalo tied Detroit in points at the bottom of the Atlantic Division, with 24.