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Howard’s 46 Saves Not Enough: Wings Lose 2-1 In Shootout

You can look at the outcome of Sunday’s matinee against the Pittsburgh Penguins in a couple ways:

The Red Wings took on one of the better teams in the Eastern Conference and managed to ride a blisteringly hot goaltender in Jimmy Howard (who made 46 saves) to earn a needed point.

The Red Wings laid one of the bigger eggs of the season, netting only 11 shots in the first two periods, and only by the grace of a Brad Stuart shot that glanced off Dan Cleary and banked in did they get a most undeserved point.

In either case, it was a pair of goals by Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin in the shootout that topped off Crosby’s goal in regulation and gave the Pittsburgh Penguins a 2-1 win at Mellon Arena.

The Red Wings were held to 23 shots in the game, 12 of them coming in the third period and a frantic overtime period. Seemingly unable to get their offense going in the first two periods, the Red Wings finally managed to come alive late, punctuated by the tying goal with 8:50 left in the third period.

The Red Wings finished 0-for-5 on the power play, while Pittsburgh was 0-for-3.

Pittsburgh opened the scoring as Crosby skated across the Alex Gligoski skated toward the left hand side just across the blue line, then passed the puck across to a full-speed Crosby. Howard went down quickly, but Crosby waited just one more moment and put the puck off the post for his 34th of the season. Malkin picked up the second assist.

In the third, Henrik Zetterberg found the puck behind the net and passed it along the far-side boards to Stuart. Stuart’s slap shot from the blue line deflected off Cleary, who was screening Marc-Andre Fleury. Cleary picked up his 11th goal of the year.

In the shootout, Pavel Datsyuk shot wide and Jason Williams‘s shot was handled by Fleury, while, after Kris Letang‘s shot was handled by Howard, Crosby and Malkin put their pucks into the back of the net to seal the deal.

The Wings head to San Jose on Tuesday to take on the Sharks.

Player of the game: All our commenters. We had a blast putting on our Hockeytown for Haiti event, and want to thank everyone to was a part of it.

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