Red Wings take 3-1 loss to Islanders into bye week (with photos)
By @StefanKubus –
DETROIT – The Red Wings were hoping to head into their league-scheduled break on a three-game win streak.
It was the visiting New York Islanders that crushed the notion, topping Detroit, 3-1, Tuesday night at Joe Louis Arena. Red Wings captain Henrik Zetterberg scored his team’s lone marker, while Josh Bailey, Calvin de Haan and John Tavares found the back of the net for the Isles. Petr Mrazek allowed three goals on 22 shots in the loss, while Thomas Greiss stopped 26 of 27 shots he faced.
Detroit fell to 25-25-10 after winning its previous two games.
“It’s never fun to lose, if that’s game 60 or game 10,” Zetterberg said. “We know what we’re up against. Every night is big points for us, and unfortunately we couldn’t get any tonight.
“Even though we didn’t get the result we wanted, we started to play some good hockey. We had a lot of pace in our game. It’s something we can hopefully get here again when we get refreshed, both mentally and physically, and come back and go on the road and grind out some wins.”
Waterford native Dylan Larkin said he felt his team generated a number of quality chances, but ultimately gave New York too much. That’s been a trend for the Wings this year, as Detroit has the second-worst goal differential in the Eastern Conference at minus-28.
“We gave up too much coming back the other way,” Larkin said. “I think we could’ve been faster in our own zone, but when we had good possession in their zone, we were creating and swarming them and we had some chances that we could’ve buried.”
With exactly five minutes to play in the opening frame, the Isles struck first after Josh Bailey picked off a Petr Mrazek pass and deposited the puck into a yawning cage.
But when things are going right, they’re simply going right.
The Red Wings mounted pressure in the Isles’ zone in the dying seconds of the period, ultimately forcing New York to take a penalty with 3.2 seconds remaining on the clock. It took just 3.1 for Detroit to score. When it looked like Detroit would begin the second period with fresh ice for their power play, Zetterberg scored his 14th of the season with a tenth of a second on the clock to even things up.
But the good fortunes ended there for Detroit.
At 10:46 of the second stanza with his Islanders on the man advantage, de Haan fired a puck on goal that found its way in. In a bad break for the Wings, Mrazek made the initial stop, but his rebound hit Xavier Ouellet in the chest and bounced in the goal.
But Mrazek continued to battle between the pipes, making a gorgeous diving stick save on Islanders captain John Tavares with just over three minutes to play in the period.
Tavares got his revenge on Mrazek early in the third period, as he buried a gorgeous pass from Bailey at 3:18 to put the Isles up 3-1. Blashill challenged the play on the basis of being offsides, but it was deemed a good goal.
That was the final blow for the Wings, as the Isles snapped their two-game win streak.
The Red Wings head into their five-day, league-scheduled bye week and will resume play in Vancouver on Tuesday, Feb. 28.
“We’ve got to come on that Monday, we’ve got to get better in practice, and we’ve got to go win a hockey game in Vancouver,” Detroit head coach Jeff Blashill said. “There’s no other message. Every game has been critical from Game 1, that’s the way we’ve looked at it, because we know what the league is, we know how tight the league is… Do we know there’s urgency? Of course we do, but we’ve known there’s been urgency for a while, so we’ve got to continue to grind here.
“What’s our pre-game skate gonna look like on Tuesday? You can’t make up for five days in a pre-game skate and a practice, so we’ve got to be careful there. The number one thing is, we’re gonna have to have lots of energy there in Vancouver.”