Wings Come up Short in Game 5
The Red Wings were 48 seconds from taking a 3 games to 2 lead in their best of seven Western Conference Finals series against Anaheim. But the Ducks pulled netminder J-S Giguere when Pavel Datsyuk was sent off the ice for interference with 1:47 left in regulation. With two extra attackers Anaheim was able to score when Scott Niedermayer’s shot deflected off Nick Lidstrom’s stick and went over Dominik Hasek’s shoulder into the the Red Wings net.
Teemu Selanne scored the game winner at the 11:57 mark in overtime when Andreas Lilja fanned on a clearing attempt while in front of the Detroit net. Selanne scooped up the puck, went in all alone on Hasek and roofed the puck over the sprawled out netminder to give the Ducks a 2-1 victory. So Anaheim instead holds the 3 games to 2 lead.
Aside from a Game 3 blowout this has been a very competitive series. The Wings played well enough yesterday to be up 3-2 but that’s the way the puck bounces. Nick Lidstrom was in perfect position to block Nidermayer’s shot but it just didn’t work out Detroit’s way. The Red Wings can also point to the fact they outshot Anaheim for the second game in a row, holding a 36 - 24 advantage in shots on goal. But Giguere stood tall in net for the Ducks as he had a .973 save percentage to be awarded the second star of the game.
For the Wings the loss has got to sting. But there isn’t much they really need to change. They can possibly point to a power play that didn’t register a goal despite 7 tries during Game 5. Detroit had scored at least one power play goal in every game in the series until yesterday. Just one goal while on the power play would have possibly given Detroit an insurance goal and proved too much for Anaheim to overcome.
So the Wings head back to Anaheim knowing that they are as close as you can come to winning games without actually pulling out the win. That sucks but they need to just keep coming out in waves on shift after shift as their coach likes to say. There’s really nothing else they can do or you can point to as a problem right now. So long as they keep up the effort the puck will hopefully start to bounce their way in Game 6 on Tuesday.
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[…] With Detroit facing their biggest patch of adversity this season I figured I’d take a look around and see what other people are thinking and writing. I touched briefly on my feelings in this post. …there isn’t much they really need to change…So the Wings head back to Anaheim knowing that they are as close as you can come to winning games without actually pulling out the win. That sucks but they need to just keep coming out in waves on shift after shift as their coach likes to say. There’s really nothing else they can do or you can point to as a problem right now. So long as they keep up the effort the puck will hopefully start to bounce their way in Game 6 on Tuesday. […]