Red Wings slip on the oil-slick, lose 4-3 to Oilers

Some how, some way… This team whipped together a three-game win streak. With the Oilers in town, the Red Wings looked to make it four Saturday night. It didn’t go so well.

The Oilers came out whizzing around the Red Wings. So much so that they opened the scoring in the first minute. Connor McDavid jumped on Dylan Larkin during a dump in, he quickly fed the puck to Drake Caggiula for the tally. The goal largely falls on Jonathan Bernier who did not go after the puck to rim it out of the deep part of the zone.

The defense had a really frustrating showing in the opening minutes. Leon Draisaitl put Mike Green on a turnstile at one point and singlehandedly turned a one-on-one into a breakaway chance. Bernier calmed down and began making some really poised saves to neutralize a surging Oilers team.

The chemistry that both Michael Rasmussen and Gustav Nyquist have created has been an interesting and exciting development. Rasmussen has been the heavy lifter, which has really give Nyquist the chance to focus on making plays. That was the case when the Red Wings tied the game in the first period. Rasmussen put the puck on net which generated a rebound which he was able to pick back up and draw a man out of the play.. Nyquist picked up the puck and flipped it to Jacob De La Rose for his first tally as a Red Wing.

It was that play that seemingly turned the tide a bit for the Wings. They played strong through the final minutes of the first period. Still, the Oilers controlled shots on goal and scoring chances through 20 minutes.

Connor McDavid was again the the culprit of another goal in the first two minutes of the 2nd period. The Red Wings were on a delayed penalty, leaving them with a six-on-five situation. McDavid telegraphed a saucer pass across ice to Alex Chiasson for a one-timer.

The Red Wings wouldn’t be able to regain the kind of momentum they had after their first goal. Dennis Cholowski was among players who had a really rough second period. He was the player who Zack Kassian pressured into a brutal turnover that resulted in another Oilers goal. As a whole, it seems the defense just wasn’t playing up to par with what it usually is — slightly above mediocre. Call that sequence a learning opportunity for Cholowski. He’s been brilliant this season, but I’m comfortable with ugly plays like that happening so he can learn from it.

The Wings were (somehow) able to pull within a goal before the horn went. Danny DeKeyser picked up the goal, and I really have no idea how to describe it to you. It was a very dumb goal, but sometimes things are dumb.

The Red Wings spent the majority of the third period getting clowned by the Edmonton Oilers. There was no spark, there was no bite… Hell, there wasn’t even a bark. The team somehow made it close in the closing minutes with a goal by Tyler Bertuzzi while Bernier was pulled. The win streak ends at three, and it’s hard to see a streak like that happening again this season. Simply put, the Wings got their asses handed to them on a silver platter.