LET’S CLINCH THAT PLAYOFF SPOT, BABY.
Just kidding. Let’s play like we live in a diaper bin, and drink Capri Suns as we search for a moral victory. The Red Wings dropped this game in embarrassing fashion. The team simply gave up. They only managed 15 shots on net, and two shots in the third period. They looked tired, and defeated before the 10th minute even struck in the first period.
Let’s get on with this recap, because I’m ready to move on from tonight.
First Period
There’s no real way to sugarcoat the start the Red Wings had.
It was bad.
Boston opened up the scoring on a play that looked offsides, but the coach’s challenge from Jeff Blashill revealed that it was a fair play. David Pastrnak dipsy-doodled into the zone around Mike Green who got caught flat-footed, and buried it past Howard. Tough way to start a period, but they did stop there. The Bruins were able to pull ahead by another on a goal from Brad Marchand. Torey Krug had a really nice sweep feed to set him up with the one-timer.
The Bruins came out buzzing. The Wings were back on their heels, and they couldn’t get with it. They looked exhausted. The power-play had two looks, but they were too busy passing the puck around the Bruins trying to create chances. Spoiler: It didn’t fucking work.
At the end of 20 minutes, it’s Bruins 2, guys watching the puck 0. Shots are all Bruins 11-8.
Second Period
The Wings came out with some more hop in their step to start. They drew a penalty when Matt Beleksey cross-checked Luke Glendening. Unfortunately for the fans, the Wings looked like a disaster on the power-play again.
Boston drew the next penalty. Jonathan Ericsson went off for holding Landon Ferraro. Jimmy Howard negated an icing that would have blew the play dead, so that was a bit of a flub on his end. The Bruins then went up by three goals when Torey Krug notched a power-play goal.
The next goal came from Alexey Marchenko assisted by Henrik Zetterberg and Gustav Nyquist. Marchenko tossed it at the net from the half-boards and the puck deflected off of Adam McQuaid’s skate. The Wings needed a break like that.
The Wings had a really good opportunity to take over the game, but some untimely plays suppressed their ability to do anything meaningful. Brad Richards and Justin Abdelkader have been absolutely dreadful up to this point. It seems whenever Richards needs to shoot, he passes, whenever he needs to pass, he makes a poor one. After a great break, the Wings couldn’t do anything.
After 40 minutes, Bruins lead 3-1. Shots are 23-13, Bruins.
Third Period
It took the Bruins less than a minute to make it 4-1. It then took them less than 30 seconds to make it 5-1.
Andreas Athanasiou scored a late goal to make it 5-2. He didn’t celebrate. He just stood there, took fist-bumps from his teammates and skated to the bench. I liked that.
That’s all.
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I’m not mad. Just really sad. I don’t want to hear blame pinned on anyone but the skaters. The defense was porous, the offense was anemic, and the adjustments were not there.
This isn’t a very good recap, so I am sorry for that. Usually I have some fun jokes to make, and some nifty GIFs to show you what happened. Not tonight. Tonight doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is Saturday.
All I can say is move on. We’ll wait and see what happens with the standings and assess how the Wings can clinch later.
