CSSI Analysis: Red Wings 1 - Stars 4

by J.J. from Kansas on Feb 25, 2011 7:11 AM CST in CSSI

Detroit faced off against a struggling Dallas team, losers of their last five, looking to improve on a decent, but not stellar home record and, well, they failed. Dallas played like a team possessed by the thought that they may miss the playoffs and as a result, earned all of the bounces. Detroit was the victim of a terrible waive-off of a goal, but Dallas deserved to win this game.

Detroit's penalty kill managed to prevent the still-struggling Dallas power play from scoring on their three chances in this game, but the man advantage for Detroit was given six chances and only managed the one late goal in the third period. The effort was just not good enough. Credit to Lehtonen for his 38-save performance though. Ultimately, he played very well.

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Goalie Ratings

The best thing Jimmy Howard did in this game was throw a punch at Mike Ribeiro. He made two big saves in the first period, both on Brenden Morrow, but he wasn't the story of this game. I'm hoping that his frustration at being left out to dry by the players in front of him is carried in the locker room by those players. Howard was average in a game where even stellar wouldn't have led to a win. +2 rating.

Reminder: The H2H2 Pledge Drive continues through March 5th

Scoring and plus/minus analysis after the jump.

The Goals

1st Period 16:42 - Dallas Goal: Mike Ribeiro (wrist shot) from Brenden Morrow and Jamie Benn
Ribeiro gains the zone and drops to Morrow, who throws it cross-corner where Benn takes on Stuart for it. Stu tries to poke it away, but Benn gets it to Ribeiro, who outmuscles Datsyuk behind the net and screens him long enough for Benn to come back in and pick it up to carry up the boards. Lidstrom picks up Benn, while Stuart is a bit slow to jump up on Morrow standing in the slot. Benn sweeps it to Morrow, who immediately finds Ribeiro all alone on the back door, after he slips his coverage from Datsyuk and disappears behind the net. Ribeiro has the entire net to shoot at and doesn't miss. Datsyuk's gaffe is the biggest here and he'll get an extra minus. Stuart and Lidstrom will each get an extra half-minus. Stu is slow to pick up on Morrow and Lidstrom actually takes a weak angle on Benn. Neither Cleary nor Hudler will get a minus.

1st Period 19:35 - Dallas Goal (SH): Loui Eriksson (backhand) unassisted
The Wings are on a power play thanks to a Jason Williams hook on Hank which will earn Zetterberg a plus. On the power play, the Stars pressure the puck on the boards and toss a bouncer up the boards. Kronwall can't corral the puck and Loui Eriksson moves down ice on the breakaway. He goes forehand/backhand on Jimmy as he comes in on the angle and dekes the Wings' goalie well enough that the momentum of moving backwards prevents Jimmy from being able to keep it out of the net. Kronwall will get an extra minus for this turnover.

Penalty Adjustment: 5:28 into the second period, Kronwall goes to the box for holding on Ribeiro. The call here is a bit tough because it's a bad dive by Ribeiro, but Kronwall put himself in position to be called in the first place. I thought he was playing pretty good D here, but there's a reach-in. Kronwall will get a half-minus.

2nd Period 08:54 - Dallas Goal: Krystofer Barch (wrist shot) from Jason Williams
Following a fairly long cycle in the Dallas zone with a couple of good chances, Ericsson steps up on the boards to collect a puck. He turns his back to the defender to try to shield the puck and ends up losing it to Jason motherfucking Williams of all people. Realizing he's lost the puck and now trying to take his man, Ericsson tries to body Williams off the puck right as he gets it to Barch at center ice, starting Barch up ice on a 2-on-1 with Benn against Rafalski. Raffi gets his stick on the ice to stop the cross-ice pass, but Barch picks it back up and weakly throws it at the net against the grain. Howard gets a piece of it, but it goes off his blocker and in. Ericsson will get the extra minus on this play. Rafalski does a decent job defending the 2-on-1, but he won't get any break here, as he needs to keep Barch from getting that shot off. Zetterberg and Bertuzzi will be cleared of their minuses. They're the deep forwards at the tail end of a long shift. There's nothing they could have done here to have prevented this.

Penalty Adjustment: 6:55 into the third, Draper bear-hugs Goligoski behind the net and goes to the box. Minus for Draper.

3rd Period 16:29 - Detroit Goal (PP): Tomas Holmstrom (backhand) from Pavel Datsyuk
On the last Detroit power play of the game, Jamie Benn forechecks deep in the Detroit zone with Lidstrom helping Datsyuk take the puck from him before starting the rush up ice. Pavel enters the Dallas zone and cuts across the ice before finding a seam for a backhanded pass to Holmstrom streaking towards the net. Lehtonen goes down very early on Holmstrom as he carries on the backhand at the goal. Homer roofs it over the goalie to break the shutout. This is an extra-half-assist-worth pass by Datsyuk. Lidstrom will also get an assist for helping Datsyuk separate Benn from the puck so cleanly deep in the Detroit zone.

3rd Period 18:17 - Dallas Goal: Jamie Langenbrunner (wrist shot) from Steve Ott and Alex Goligoski
Detroit pulls Howard with two minutes left looking to make up the two-goal deficit. They lose the puck deep in the Dallas zone to a lucky bounce off a downed Burish where Robidas pokes it to Goligoski in front of his own net. Goligoski throws it off the boards to Ott at the top of the far wing and he gets it to Langenbrunner at center ice. The Stars' forward gains the red line and fires it into the open net to ice the game. No adjustment here. All six skaters deserve their minus.

Bonus Ratings

-0.5 to Drew Miller: He gets it halved for playing three minutes of good penalty kill, but when you play five minutes of even-strength ice time in a game and I can only remember a bad turnover from you, then you get a minus.
+1 to Niklas Kronwall: He didn't play a great game, but he did save a goal in the third period.. This effectively cancels out the extra minus he got for allowing the puck to get by him on the shorthanded goal.
+1 to Jonathan Ericsson: Not every fight this season will lead to a plus or a minus, but I want to give Ericsson credit for taking on Ott, who needed a good punching early in the third as he continued to take liberties with Wings players. Ericsson winning the fight is good for a bonus plus here.

Overall, it feels like I should have more minuses to give out, but looking at the official ratings plus the already-adjusted ones, I think the numbers are pretty indicative.

Honorable mentions: The Adam Burish penalty 1:11 into the game was a dumb play by Burish, not a great play by Mursak to force a penalty. Instead of doing two penalty adjustments which would have canceled to zero for Helm, I'll just say that the interference on Ott in the first and then forcing Skrastins to trip him in the second equal out to zero adjustment for the speedster. The replay of Lidstrom's second-period holding penalty shows no such thing, so he did not get a minus for that. The exact same is true for the Goligoski penalty call five minutes later, meaning there will be no adjustment on that one either. Finally, on the last two Dallas minors, there are no adjustments because Kronwall and Abdelkader don't get extra credit for having high-stickable faces.

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Comments

In my CSSI, Jonny E got a +10

Winging It In Motown and now covering Hokie baseball at Gobbler Country
On The Twitter at @MrNorrisTrophy

by Casey Richey on Feb 25, 2011 8:12 AM CST reply actions

That's funny

because in my CSSI, Jonny is a -10. ZING…*sob

Seriously though, I’m rooting for him to do better and I’m hoping that fight did it. He actually played pretty well after he came out of the box.

by J.J. from Kansas on Feb 25, 2011 8:20 AM CST up reply actions

Question: What happens when Riggy Shitbox goes to the penalty box? does he become Riggy Shitbox^2

Winging It In Motown and now covering Hokie baseball at Gobbler Country
On The Twitter at @MrNorrisTrophy

by Casey Richey on Feb 25, 2011 8:31 AM CST up reply actions

Good question

but I think that’s what the box itself becomes – the Riggy Shitboxbox

by J.J. from Kansas on Feb 25, 2011 8:46 AM CST up reply actions

that sounds like a children’s toy.

Winging It In Motown and now covering Hokie baseball at Gobbler Country
On The Twitter at @MrNorrisTrophy

by Casey Richey on Feb 25, 2011 9:01 AM CST up reply actions

No CSSI stats for the waved off goal?

by Elfuego51 on Feb 25, 2011 8:14 AM CST reply actions

I hate the rule

but it wasn’t as egregious as the one we went ahead and counted earlier.

My problem is with the rule and how it’s written, not with the ref deciding to take the game into his own hands.

by J.J. from Kansas on Feb 25, 2011 8:19 AM CST up reply actions

It is my least favorite rule.

Which is kind of funny cause the Sean Avery Rule is my favorite (mostly because watching him piss off Brodeur is fantastic.)

Homer plays a pretty clean game, getting goals waved off because they tapped each other a little is terrible. Homer routinely gets slashed in the back of the legs by goalies and that never gets called, not to mention bear hugged by defenders trying to move him away from his spot on the ice. The goal might not have mattered in the grand scheme of the game, because we played terribly, but it might have turned us around instead of deflating our team even more.

by holmstrom96 on Feb 25, 2011 8:42 AM CST up reply actions

It would have mattered.

The game would have been 2-1 at that point, which is a MUCH easier jumping pad than 3-0. It’s a ballbreaker. How often does it happen that the team up by 2 gives up a goal then plays timid while the team who is down starts to surge?

In the end, the Wings still played like shit for most of the night.

JJ – what was the tally on Datsyuk takeaways? I decided my time was better served doing something else after the 3rd Dallas goal.

by Brion on Feb 25, 2011 9:14 AM CST up reply actions

I counted 3, the official scorekeeper stopped at 2.

by J.J. from Kansas on Feb 25, 2011 9:20 AM CST up reply actions

3 it is!

I’ll do $3 for Datsyuk, and even though Ott didn’t officially get injured, I’ll throw in $5 since he got to taste what Ericsson had for lunch.

by Brion on Feb 25, 2011 9:40 AM CST up reply actions

It was painful to watch. We would have had some momentum and instead it was the complete opposite. Totally demoralizing. I feel bad for the guys they deserved better than that.

by holmstrom96 on Feb 25, 2011 9:32 AM CST up reply actions

1st and 2nd Goals

If I remember from the telecast, I believe it was Mickey who called that a complete defensive meltdown. Four players were all on the same side of the ice, and above the dots. Everybody was deserving of their minus. Go ahead and punish Datsyuk with an extra minus if you want, he could have been more aware of his surroundings.

I also have a problem with Kronwall being charged with a turnover. I didn’t find a stat sheet where he was charged with one. With the camera angles I saw, I couldn’t tell what kind of crazy bounce that it took. All I know is it wasn’t an easy clearing attempt to corral. I know you gave him a +1 at the end of the game essentially making up for it, but on the original play, I would argue that he only deserved one minus for being out on the ice for a shorty.

by corvettes13 on Feb 25, 2011 9:14 AM CST reply actions

Cleary and Hudler did not deserve minuses. It took three Dallas stars players to make this play and three Detroit defensive mistakes.

In their own zone, the wingers’ responsibility is to cover the points; both Cleary and Hudler were doing that. Stuart moved slow to cover his man, Morrow, Lidstrom took a bad angle on Benn, and Datsyuk lost his coverage. For either Cleary of Hudler to have made a difference in this play, they would have had to have taken themselves OUT of good position.

As for the Kronwall “turnover”, I called it that because that’s what it was to me. Technically, he wasn’t charged with a turnover because he never had control of the puck, and that’s a prerequisite for turning it over. In context, Kronwall had the responsibility to make sure that the Red Wings retained control of the puck and he failed at that, making it a turnover in my eyes.

Easy attempt to get a hold of or not, Kronwall can not let the puck and a penalty-killer get behind him and that’s exactly what he did – If it was so difficult for him to stop it, he needed to back out of the zone to a place where he could have gotten it. Keep-in attempts like that are done pretty consistently by defenders all around the league and it has always remained high-risk. When the risk doesn’t pay off, the player will get an extra minus from me.

by J.J. from Kansas on Feb 25, 2011 9:27 AM CST up reply actions

Datsyuk totally blew his coverage on the first goal. He had that guy behind the net and then just let him go.
I agree about the Kronwall shorty turnover though. It looked like it took a strange bounce of the boards. If anything I’d expect his defensive partner (Lidstrom) to be responsible for backing up to cover him when he has to step up to keep it in the zone.
I didn’t think the no-goal was a bad call. Holmstrom clearly backed into their goalie after the guy had established position. Yeah, goalies get bumped like that fairly often by people that aren’t Homer, but that seemed pretty much like textbook “incidental contact with the goalie”.
That said, if they are going to call him on the letter of the law for minor contact like that, they need to stop letting other teams cross-check him in the back as hard as the want. Later in the game one of the Dallas D cross-checked him to the ice, then put his stick on his low back and jumped into the air so all his weight was coming down on the stick in his low back.

by NMJ on Feb 25, 2011 9:32 AM CST reply actions

If we want to talk about the concept of possibly giving Lidstrom an extra minus or half-minus for not backing out of the zone in anticipation of a tough keep-in, then that might be something worth exploring.

I debated last night whether to go ahead and do that, since the same argument could be made that if Kronwall should have backed out knowing that it was a tough keep-in, then the same could be said of Lidstrom. Ultimately, I decided against supplemental Lidstrom punishment, but I may have made the wrong call.

What do you think?

by J.J. from Kansas on Feb 25, 2011 12:25 PM CST up reply actions

I’d say it was 55% Stuart’s fault and 45% Datsyuk’s. As the defender being back it really is Stuart’s job to cover the crease. But….. he saw the pass going to the open guy and if he didn’t pressure him he could have had a good scoring opportunity.

I don’t know the answer however. I think on a night that the Wings are communicating better it would have been handled better.

Also, as Stuart’s jaw gets better he can shout at Dats to cover the back guy or something.

Oh well.

by sprout42 on Feb 25, 2011 12:39 PM CST up reply actions

I almost forgot...

I’m a little worried about Kronwall, I think he’s hurting.

There have been times in the last few games where he’s had an available outlet but he just hangs onto the puck until the opposing team comes to pressure it off of him.

by sprout42 on Feb 25, 2011 12:59 PM CST reply actions

Kronwall not keeping in?

The Wings were losing at the time, albeit it was only 1-0 and in the first period. But when they are losing, I’d like to see the dman step up and keep the puck in. I hate to say Lidstrom is at fault, but he could have taken a few steps back anticipating a failed keep in. Even if Kronwall does keep it in, there’s no way he feeds the puck over to Lidstrom. Eriksson deserves some credit too. They guy has great speed and helped force the play. Sometimes the +/- system the NHL uses nails it correctly. The minuses by Kronwall and Lidstrom were deserved. Whoever lost the faceoff deserved theirs. The wingers not getting to the puck before it can be cleared. They deserve theirs.

by corvettes13 on Feb 25, 2011 3:06 PM CST reply actions

Simple fix

Play better at home. The five game winning streak happened because they were a patient team again. They’ve slipped back to the old ways again these last two games.

by dewman8810 on Feb 26, 2011 1:56 AM CST reply actions