Game Recap: Red Wings embarrassing overtime sequence leads to 4-3 loss against Flyers

First Period

After the teams went back and forth a couple of times getting their legs warmed up, the Red Wings were able to sustain some chances via the.. Wait for it.. The OMG line. Yes, I know. The OMG line sustaining pressure.. It’s like a rare Pokemon! The Flyers first shot came around five minutes in on a breakaway chance for Nick Cousins which was shutdown by Petr Mrazek. The break was due to an unfortunate mishap for Danny DeKeyser who was trying to get the puck in deep, and Brandon Manning sprung the stretch pass to create the chance. DeKeyser recovered decently, and thankfully did not commit a penalty trying to prevent Cousins from going in alone.

NOTE: Oh my god, these Flyers jerseys are real bad.

At 13:15, the Red Wings opened up the scoring on a redirect goal from Dylan Larkin (assists to Mike Green, Gustav Nyquist). Larkin created space on Andrew MacDonald and threw it towards the net, which ended up deflecting in off of Jake Voracek’s stick:

It took about 16 seconds for the next goal to come, fortunately for the good guys, it went in their favor. Andreas Athanasiou zipped one past Michal Neuvirth (Assists to Jonathan Ericsson, Riley Sheahan):

Despite a look with one aside for each team, that would do it for scoring in the first period. Goals from Dylan Larkin, and Andreas Athanasiou. Shots in favor of Detroit (9-8), as well as 5v5 shot attempts (17-13).

Second Period

The Flyers came out a lot faster than the Red Wings did in this period. Clearly has a lot to do with score effects, but the Red Wings did do a fine job at keeping the Flyers along the perimeter, taking away a lot of space. Alas, the Flyers were in complete and utter control in the Red Wings’ zone.

Hey, Steve Ott got into a fight with Brandon Manning. I actually like it.. You shorten their defense by one man, and you get Ott off the ice. I’ll take it.

The next goal, in completely predictable fashion, came from the Flyers. Chris VandeVelde pulled off a nifty little move on a feed from Brayden Schenn. Not much Mrazek could do to prevent this, the defense, however... Well:

Worth noting that the officiating in this game up to this point has been pretty awful. Lots of missed calls on both sides.

Scary moment for the Red Wings when Brendan Smith went down with what seems to be a hit to the head from Brayden Schenn, though I do not believe Schenn did this on purpose, it’s still a reckless hit:

So, the Red Wings managed to take the first penalty in the closing seconds of the period. At the end of the 2nd frame, the Red Wings still lead 2-1, but the Flyers have taken control of shots on goal (25-15) and 5v5 shot attempts (41-31).

Time to wake up! Please?

Third Period

It didn’t take the Flyers too long to tie it up. Some KHL veteran named Roman Lyubimov scored on a really ugly rebound from Petr Mrazek. The team is still not playing well, but Mrazek absolutely needs to control this rebound:

After about five or so minutes of sitting in my living room, steaming over the team playing like garbage for the past half-hour of my life, I abruptly brought my eyes to my television at the sound of Doc Emrick yelling “SCAAAARRRRSSSSS” in response to a wonderful sequence from Justin Abdelkader and Tomas Tatar to setup Henrik Zetterberg for a goal that made it 3-2:

I am not sure why, but for whatever reason, coach likes to use the OMG line in a one-goal game late in the third period. I was a little pink and partially unclothed over that. But hey, believe it or not, the Red Wings got a penalty called in their favor. Despite that, the team couldn’t do anything to put the dagger into the Flyers.

The Flyers tied the game. Because, well, when you are up one goal late in the third period and the other team has it’s goalie pulled, you should DEFINITELY put out Luke Glendening and Drew Miller. It looked like a goal that could be pegged as goalie interference, which Jeff Blashill challenged, but upon further review, Frans Nielsen clearly pushed the player into Mrazek:

Guess we’ll go to overtime.

Overtime

Great work, Helm. Great forward match, Blashill. Poor decision b

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Cool first period, awful everything else. The Red Wings have now lost three in a row, and they deserve it. Embarrassing sequence in overtime, which shouldn’t even have gotten to that point. Players didn’t play, coach didn’t coach. An all-around collapse.

See you on Friday, where we play the Winnipeg Jets, and will probably get torched so badly that Jacob Trouba decides that it’s probably a good idea to just swallow his pride and spend the next century in that frozen hellscape.