Red Wings Score In Final Minute, Beat Ducks 3-2

Toto, we're not playing Columbus anymore.

The Ducks were ready to play, and gave the Wings all they could handle. But Nick Lidstrom's second goal of the night with 50 seconds left in the third period gave the Wings a 3-2 win and a 1-0 lead in the series.

Game 2 is Saturday afternoon at Joe Louis Arena.

The bigger story will be what will happen to Mike Brown. Brown delivered a vicious hit to the face of Jiri Hudler with his stick and fist in the first period near the blue line. The pool of blood obscured Hudler's helmet, and gave the Red Wings a five-minute major in addition to sending Brown to the locker room (and giving Colin Campbell some video to look at, especially after the five-game suspension handed to Donald Brashear for his elbow earlier in the playoffs). Hudler would come back after getting 10 stitches.

On that power play, Johan Franzen went in from the left side and put a great shot past Jonas Hiller: a shot that was so dramatic that Hiller lost his helmet. That evened the score at one.

Prior to that, the Wings gave up the opening goal when Corey Perry scored from the top of the faceoff circle.

In the second period, Brad Stuart puts a pretty pass right on Lidstrom's stick. He fired it from the top of the circle past Hiller to get a 2-1 lead.

Then, on a four-on-three power play, Teemu Selanne set up camp at the face-off dot to the right of Osgood and took a pass from Ryan Getzlaf had a one-timer that went past Osghood with just 16.1 seconds left in the second.

The third period was a taut, back-and-forth affair. The Wings had a couple chances (at one point Valteri Filppula put a shot on net and Hiller looked over his shoulder to see if it was past him; it was not).

Finally, after a setup pass from Dan Cleary, Lidstrom put a shot on net that was saved by Hiller. But in the scrum in front of the net, none of the Ducks paid any attention to Lidstrom, who skated right in to put it between the pads of Hiller.

Hiller came out of the net with 28 seconds left, and after two wild chances, the Wings held on for the win.

Player of the game: Nick Lidstrom. Involved in all three Red Wings goals, with 27:15 TOI on 30 shifts. He played strongly all night, and his hustle on the game-winner was impressive.