Detroit went into Saturday night’s game against Carolina with a plan to rest some starters against a lottery team and with the knowledge that the failure to earn a point would bump them to a wild card spot. The game was one of the more boring ones the Wings have played, but hey a 2-0 win rules.
1st Period
Just 48 seconds in, Landon Ferraro scores his first career goal off a faceoff win where he gets a shot off, gets his own rebound, and then gets to the far post quicker than Ward on a wraparound. Congrats to the kid on the first real milestone.
Bizarro strong-start Red Wings continued for about the next five minutes as Stephen Weiss looked like a real top line guy and Ericsson blasted a guy and then set up Glendening for a near-break.
I’ll be honest, the rest of the first was kind of boring. The fourth line looked pretty good but the Wings got outshot overall and the refs were watching this game with an eye on getting things over with quickly.
1-0 Wings after 1 Period
2nd Period
The first half of this period has the Canes put a good number of shots on Mrazek and has Mrazek acting like he’s Dominik Hasek with trying to play every puck and coming out of his net to create insane angles for the opposition. In a meaningful game, this stuff is terrifying but I’m having a lot of fun watching it here.
The second half of the 2nd is more Wings-heavy, but there really aren’t any exciting chances until Tomas Tatar finally commits an act obvious enough for the refs to call a penalty on in the 39th minute. The Canes’ power play takes a couple shots from the outside, but don’t really get a dangerous chance. They’ll have 1:02 carryover into the third.
1-0 Wings after 2 Periods
3rd Period
Right after the penalty ends to start the third, the Canes get a fantastic chance on a cross-ice pass to Lindbolm that Mrazek tracks side-to-side amazingly well to get square to the shooter and stop. Things even out for another several minutes until the Wings finally get a power play 6:48 into the period on a Justin Faulk slash to the leg of Kyle Quincey.
… the Wings’ power play without Datsyuk, Zetterberg, or Kronwall but with Cleary went about as expected.
14:37 in, Jakub Kindl turns the puck over by bouncing a pass off Sheahan’s foot and then corkscrews Skinner to the ice to stop a scoring chance, giving the Canes a second power play opportunity. Fortunately, the PK is up to the task and Jordan Staal hilariously misses a shot at a bouncing puck for an open net, so nothing doing on the Canes’ PP.
A bit after the wasted PP, Carolina pulls Ward. Detroit gets the puck down ice. Tatar chases it down and I have no idea why icing isn’t called, but Andersson is the second man on the scene and has the puck come out to him for the easy empty-netter. Not even Joker misses from there.
Tatar and Miller both miss the empty net from center ice in the last two minutes and the Wings win 2-0 to wrap up third in the Atlantic.
