Pavelski hat-trick spoils Zadina Day, Sharks beat Red Wings 5-3

It’s the last game before the NHL trade deadline, and not only that, the top prospect in the Red Wings organization is appearing in his first NHL game. Despite that, A spirited first period was spoiled by San Jose in this Sunday tilt.

Filip Zadina made his first shift with Michael Rasmussen and Luke Glendening — they had some time in the Sharks’ zone, but the Sharks would pick up the first tally shortly after. Tim Heed threw the puck at the net and caught Rasmussen’s skate. After a couple of shifts, Zadina and Rasmussen got a look with Dylan Larkin as the center, which didn’t gain much traction. After the Sharks’ first goal, the Red Wings shifted the momentum and began buzz-sawing. Justin Abdelkader made a weak cross-ice pass to Darren Helm, who caught it in his skates only to recover and pick up the equalizer:

The momentum kept up for the Red Wings, the top line created a ton of chances, including this goal from Gustav Nyquist for his 16th of the season:

Great work from both Tyler Bertuzzi and Dylan Larkin to setup the play.

The second period began in the Red Wings favor, but it didn’t stay that way. Justin Abdelkader made a great pass to Mike Green as Detroit was on a delayed penalty man-advantage to make it 3-1:

The Red Wings at this point had scored three unanswered goals. The Sharks quickly answered — Goals from Brent Burns, and two from Joe Pavelski put San Jose back up with a three-goal lead. Each goal seemed to wilt the Red Wings a little more each time. After whipping 15 shots at Aaron Dell in the first period, they only managed three shots on net during the middle frame.

The Red Wings have been here before — it seems that they were set to knot the game back up and push it to overtime, but that wasn’t the case. They had a few good looks, but the best came from Dylan Larkin — he went coast-to-coast, nearly a highlight-reel goal:

Joe Pavelski would hit the Red Wings with the dagger-empty net goal — a natural hat-trick for the Sharks captain.

So where did it all go wrong? It happened in the second period when the Red Wings gave up three goals in under THREE MINUTES. Zadina saw just over 10-and-a-half minutes of ice time. Unless someone gets dealt Monday, I would expect that to stay around the same for his nine-game stay in Detroit.

I will wrap up this game with one question: Did we just see Gustav Nyquist score his last goal as a Red Wing?