Wings overcome Sharks 4-2
I’m not going to do the full game recap because it’s pretty late. This game was less specialty teams oriented than the Anaheim game and was tied 2-2 at the end of the second period. Kyle McLaren took shots at several Red Wings players, knocking Dallas Drake out of the game in the first period and followed that up by trying to goad Hank Zetterberg into taking a penalty by rough-housing him while Detroit was on the power play near the end of the second period. The Wings were patient and they waited for their time to respond.
Then at the 3:47 mark of the third period they struck. Aaron Downey squared off with McLaren and definitely held his own. From that point forward it was all Detroit. The Red Wings scored two goals in the final stanza, the first one coming from Matt Ellis on a nice pirouette shot that somehow eluded Evgeni Nabakov. The insurance goal came on a Pavel Datsyuk power play goal on a nice cross-crease pass from Henrik Zetterberg to Datsyuk.
Kyle McLaren wasn’t the only player who went after Red Wings players and paid a price for doing so. Joe Thornton tried to go after Henrik Zetterberg earlier in the game and once again the Red Wings waited. Near the end of the game when Thornton went for the puck behind the Detroit net Cheli got him pretty good with an elbow. Thornton was beside himself, obviously not happy to receive the same treatment he dished out to Zetterberg earlier in the game.
Zetterberg scored a goal and notched an assist to build his point total to 15 points thus far on the season. Nik Kronvall scored his first goal on the season and former Grand Rapids Griffin captain Matt Ellis scored his first NHL goal. The Wings appear to have three solid lines.
Top Line
Datsyuk - Zetterberg - Holmstrom
Third Line
Cleary - Draper - Maltby
Fourth Line
Downey - Ellis - Drake
This was a nice win for Detroit for several reasons. The main reason is that the team has taken two out of three games on their current west coast road trip. Last year they struggled mightily out west. It’s also a great sign that they could beat a team many prognosticators have proclaimed the Cup favorites and do so without their #1 goaltender and without two top-six forwards. And finally, with the win the Wings moved into a tie with Minnesota for the highest point total in the Western Conference.
UPDATE:
Ansar Khan is absolutely right in pointing out that Chris Osgood has looked sharper than Dom Hasek early on. Hasek is a notoriously slow starter so that’s to be expected, but the Wings cannot afford to get off to a slow start like they did last season so I think it makes sense early on to give Osgood a larger portion of the starts than he usually would receive.
In the Khan article linked above there’s a Mike Babcock quote that Brian Rafalski is fine. That’s great news as the Wings cannot afford to lose him. Drake might have a concussion so he’s going to get some tests to determine just how bad of a headache he has.
In this article Babcock reports that Mikael Samuelsson and Johan Franzen are close to returning. With how dominant the top line has been, I wonder if Babcock puts the Mule on the second line. A lineup of Mule-Fil-Sammy would have decent size, could muck it up in the corners and would feature sound two-way play. Even if that doesn’t become the de facto second line I’d like to see them get some shifts together and see how they look.
Zetterberg is starting to get some notice - sitting atop the point total for league will do that - and not just the type of negative attention he got in last night’s game. The Free Press has a nice article and looks at his projected stats if he can maintain his torrid early pace:
Few players sustain the same pace throughout the season, so Zetterberg’s current projected total of 154 points in 82 games is just that – a projection. But it does bear note Zetterberg is also on pace for a plus-51 rating, since that shows just how good he is in his own end, too.
“Z plays against the best people and shuts them down,” Mike Babcock said. “I think he’s the best two-way player in the game, bar none. Can he continue to score at this pace? Maybe, but winning is our focus.”
If he stays on the top line with Datsyuk and Holmstrom I don’t think there’s any doubt he scores 40 goals and 50 might be feasible. I projected that Hank will score 40 goals and will tally 50 assists, so obviously that projection is looking very conservative right about now.
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Dazed and Confused
the Drake left the game after a check from McLaren that looked
as though he had learned it from the Drake
Can’t do that
A rather heated discussion about it later in the game, Downey duked it out with
McLaeren. The Shark got a few good pops in early, but Downey just kept getting
stronger as the Bout went on, very Kocuresque.
here it is on uTube