Detroit 2, New Jersey 1
Jim McIsaac - Getty Images
Dominik Hasek was robbed of his 5th shutout of the season by a pretty questionable penalty. He was penalized for delay of game by handling the puck behind the goal line. The momentum of his stick might have crossed the goal line, but it wasn’t obvious, even as the replay was shown several times. It was similar to offsides, where officials only call a play offsides when it is cleary evident and tend to let close calls go. Hasek was livid, as he busted his goalie stick on the ice and gave the nearest official an earful. He was also given an unsportsmanlike penalty, so the Devils were given a 4:00 power play.
The Devils were able to score goal just about when the first penalty was expiring. Brian Gionta threw the puck at the net from near the blue line. It actually hit Nicklas Lidstrom’s stick and the redirected puck slipped past Hasek near the 11:00 mark of the second period. Scott Gomez was credited with the goal.
The game had pretty good momentum with both teams generating plenty of quality scoring chances. Both goaltenders played well, with Hasek stopping 21 of 22 shots (.954 save percentage) and Martin Brodeur stopping 34 of 36 shots (.944 save percentage). The Devils maintained a 1-0 lead heading into the final stanza when a stat was shown for Detroit’s goal differential. The Wings have one of the best goal differentials in the league (basically a plus/minus rating for your whole team). But the one thing that stood out was how much the Wings tend to outscore their opponents in the 3rd period. That stat proved to be telling as far as how the third period would go.
Pavel Datsyuk got Detroit on the board when he fired the puck past Brodeur, who overplayed Mathieu Schneider’s wide shot from the point. Datsyuk was just off to the left of the New Jersey goal for the rebound and easily put the puck past Brodeur, who was covering the other side of the net. So the Wings tied the score at the 8:27 mark. The Wings kept pressue up in the offensive zone and it would eventually pay off for Detroit. The Devils had trouble clearing the puck out of their zone around the 11:00 mark. Robert Lang gathered up a pass near the blueline and passed the puck to Jason Williams along the boards. Williams then made a nice pass to Brett Lebda, who had moved up from the blueline and headed towards the net. Lebda received the pass and put a shot on net that tucked in between Brodeur and the goalpost. As a result of that game winning goal, Lebda was the first star of the game and Williams was the second star. Hasek was awarded the third star.
The top two lines continued to pace the Wings offense, with the top line generating 1 goal and the second line generating 2 assists. Johan Franzen played on a line with Kirk Maltby and Kris Draper. Valtteri Filppula played for 6:48 on a line with Tomas Holmstrom and Jiri Hudler and was effective, getting 3 shots on goal. Niklas Kronwall returned to the lineup and looked solid, playing for 21:42 and going +1 for the game. He was paired up mostly with Nicklas Lidstrom, but also saw ice time with Mathieu Schneider and Brett Lebda. Detroit also scored another power play goal, although they went 1 for 7 with the man advantage.
Matt over at On the Wings has a very thorough recap on the game with some great details. I particularly like his recap of the final frantic two minutes of play:
As the period wound down, the Wings assumed a defensive posture, trying to force the Devils to put in the effort to come back. New Jersey continued to trap, however, but their patience nearly paid off as Robert Lang took his second penalty at 17:49.
The resulting New Jersey power play started pretty slowly, with a play stoppage and a timeout cutting it up, but after they pulled Brodeur at 1:05, the Devils stepped it up, putting on some strong pressure. With 31 seconds left, Chris Chelios made the bonehead play of the day by pushing Gomez over onto Hasek, who fell with his knee in a very awkward position. Hasek laid there long enough for Piet Van Zant to come out, but seemed none the worse for wear before too long.
Chelios was called for interference on the play, effectively handing the Devils a 6-on-3 power play for 31 seconds. Fortunately for the Wings, New Jersey squandered the opportunity and a handpass with 5.9 seconds left resulted in a game-ending center ice faceoff. 2-1 Wings, final.
Detroit’s next game will be against Columbus on Monday night. The Blue Jackets have shown improvement since Ken Hitchcock was hired to coach the team. They had won 5 straight game before losing in overtime to Phoenix on Thursday night. Right now they are losing to Chicago 5-4 in the 3rd period.
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[…] Update (17. Dec, 12:31 AM): Dave of Gorilla Crouch has his own comments on the game here. - Matt […]