Wings sleep through two periods, lose in OT
Pierre McGuire reported during the game against Colorado that Mike Babcock quipped “wakey wakey” to his team early in the game. The words apparently fell on deaf ears as Detroit fell behind 2-0 before coming back to tie the game at 3-3. The Red Wings ultimately lost the game 4-3 in overtime.
Milan Hejduk and Tyler Arnason put the Avalanche up by two goals. Detroit finally got on the board when Pavel Datsyuk made a nice cross ice pass to Valtteri Filppula at the 19:03 mark of the second period. Filppula put the puck past Peter Budaj to cut Colorado’s lead in half.
Kris Draper scored two goals, the second one tied the game at three. But Colorado got a 2 on 1 rush when Mathieu Schneider turned the puck over at the blue line when the Wings were in the offensive zone. Wojtek Wolski made a nice pass to Brad Richardson who scored on a shot that trickled beneath Chris Osgood and ended the game.
Helena St. James has blog entry over at the Free Press where Mike Babcock talked about the poor start that doomed Detroit:
“[The Avalanche] were ready; how come we weren’t? As a coaching staff we have to look at what we did yesterday and as players we have to look, because this wasn’t good enough for us.”
Detroit started the day two points behind Nashville. Since both teams lost after regulation they both gained a point, so the Wings are still 2 points behind the Preds for the lead in the Central Division and the Western Conference.
Kyle Calder played well, crashing the net and getting a couple good scoring chances. He was also in front of the crease on Kris Draper’s goal to tie the game at three. Mike Babcock reunited the Grind Line of Draper, Kirk Maltby and Johan Franzen. Both of his linemates assisted on Draper’s first goal.
I’ll give Mike Babcock the last quote. This comes from Ted Kulfan’s article over at the Detroit News:
“We left the game out there, and it’s probably the right team that deserved the two points,”
…
“They came in here, and they’re still fighting, and we didn’t feel we had the urgency you need to be successful,” Babcock said. “I can live with losses if we work like we’re supposed to and do the right things. But the issue is we weren’t ready to go.”
Nope. The Wings probably played like themsleves for roughly 5-10 minutes out of the first 30 minutes of play. That’s the reason they were down 2-0 and ultimately lost the game.
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