Hank and Pav line on FIYA
Well that didn’t take long. The two practiced on a line together as Helene St. James reported and were on the ice together last night for the game against St. Louis. The hope was that they’d boost scoring and they didn’t waste any time. Henrik Zetterberg scored the first goal of the game on the power play at the 2:34 mark of the first period. His Eurotwin Pavel Datsyuk got an assist on the goal. But the twins weren’t done just yet. Pavel Datsyuk would score less than 2 minutes later to give Detroit a quick 2-0 lead on a night when the Blues retired Brett Hull’s number 16. The Wings would go on to score an easy win, knocking off the Blues 5-1.
Whether the offensive outburst was due to the new Hank and Pav line or to the opponent (probably a little bit of both), it was good to see the Wings finally break out of their offensive rut. George Sipple of the Free Press has a quote from Zetterberg that talks more about the team as a whole than being paired up with Datsyuk:
“We did a really good job from the start,” Zetterberg said. “We had a good first period. The puck went into the net. It’s a little bit easier then. [ I ] think we skated good — the whole team. It was great to get a power-play goal, too.”
Ted Kulfan of the News has a quote from Mike Babcock that also focused on the effort the Wings received from all four lines:
“The bottom line is, they’re good players,” said Babcock of Datsyuk and Zetterberg. “They were a good line for us (with Mikael Samuelsson), but we had four good lines tonight.”
The Wings chased former Detroit netminder Manny Legace after Dan Cleary scored the third goal of the period at the 13:42 mark. Cleary has been the most consistent Red Wing over the past 3 weeks as far as offense goes. Valtteri Filppula scored his third goal of the season at the 10:04 mark of the second period. It looked like Tomas Holmstrom might have actually scored the goal as Filppula shot the puck on net but it seemed to take a bounce that would seem to indicate Holmstrom tapped the puck in. It was just that kind of night as Datsyuk’s goal was also re-directed into the net. Video review indicated Datsyuk’s shot hit a St. Louis player before going into the net and Pavel was awarded the goal. That must have been what also happened when Filppula put the shot on net that scored Detroit’s 4th goal. Robert Lang closed out the scoring for Detroit at the 15:20 mark of the third period.
The only remaining question at that point was whether Dominik Hasek would get his 5th shutout this season. The Wings played well in front of him, yielding only 6 shots on goal in the 1st period and 7 shots on goal in the 2nd. But the Blues were better about putting shots on net in the 3rd period, generating 12 scoring chances and finally beating Hasek at the 16:36 mark. Eric Brewer scored the goal, as he put a shot on net from the left point that bounced off Andreas Lilja before getting past Hasek. It was the only thing that went wrong for the Red Wings last night.
There was a brief moment when Dominik Hasek went down and stayed down on the ice and you had to have a sinking feeling. It turns out he was hit in the neck with a stick but was fine and was able to finish the game. He improved his record to 12-4-3, with a .911 save percentage and 1.83 goal against average. That is good enough to rank tops in goals allowed per game.
Dan Cleary Dominik Hasek Henrik Zetterberg Pavel Datsyuk Red Wings Robert Lang Tomas Holmstrom Valtteri Filppula1 Comment(s)
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[…] Busy day ahead school- and work-wise so I’m going to defer to two fellow Wings bloggers, Dave of Gorilla Crouch and IwoCPO of Abel to Yzerman. They both discuss the success of the reunion of Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg last night in St. Louis. Another quick comment: Dominik Hasek looked great last night. He scared us all in the third period, though, by seemingly getting hurt on a harmless play. He got up, though, and seemed to be none the worse for wear. […]