What started as a promising competition turned into a boring bloodbath at Little Caesars Arena Thursday night. A 7-1 loss at the hands of the Nashville Predators only has fans looking forward to one thing: Monday’s trade deadline.
Kind of an awkward start to the game — both teams found themselves four-a-side, which you think would be exciting, but unfortunately when it happens between Nashville and Detroit, you get what you deserve for watching. There was a slight moment of panic for me, when Jonathan Bernier got caught in a weird situation where the puck nearly deflected off of his back and into the net. The Wings escaped unscathed, but the broadcast made it sound like he may have been cut/injured. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. The power-play sputtered on its only chance in the 1st period, but you do have to like the one good scoring chance that they had — Michael Rasmussen had a perfect 2-on-1 setup to Adam Erne, but Erne shot it directly at Juuse Saros. The best part of the play was Filip Hronek’s stretch-pass to Rasmussen.
The teams exchanged rushes near the end of the period, but no scoring. Kind of an underwhelming 1st period, and that’s probably a good thing.
The game got a violent shove into action when the 2nd period started. An early face-off turned into a redirect goal for Darren Helm via Troy Stecher and Adam Erne.
Darren Helm gets a piece of it. #LGRW pic.twitter.com/9WIlbb73wZ
— Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings) April 9, 2021
Detroit couldn’t seem to build off that goal, opening the floodgates for Nashville to take control of the game. Victor Arvidsson tied the game up shortly after, and that’s when things really got ugly for Detroit. Adam Erne got caught with an ugly hit that ended up in an instigator for Nashville. Mathieu Olivier was tossed from the game for that offense, but Erne served a 5 minute major for fighting in a fight that he never threw a punch in. Overall a strange call from the officials.
Nashville responded with two unanswered goals, and Detroit quickly found themselves in a real shit situation that would upgrade to a shit sandwich and then into a shit explosion.
Nashville showed no mercy to the Red Wings in the final stage of this game. I think the Red Wings moved the puck relatively well when they had possession, but they couldn’t make anything happen. That was not the case for Nashville — who scored five unanswered goals to put a bow on this game. Victor Arvidsson was particularly excellent. His penalty shot hat-trick goal was about as pretty as they come.
PURE F I L T H pic.twitter.com/f24YqJMvQx
— Nashville Predators (@PredsNHL) April 9, 2021
There’s really nothing more to talk about after that moment. The Red Wings were contempt with shriveling up and letting Nashville cruise to a win, and they dropped seven goals on their way to doing that.
The Red Wings came out early in the game and looked like they were going to compete. In fact, after the 1st goal, I was convinced that was the dagger for Nashville. Boy, I am a true dumbass. Detroit opened the scoring and then immediately got pummeled by the Predators. No pushback. No changes. The Red Wings just literally cruised on by as the other team dropped a touchdown on them.
Key Players: Troy Stecher
Duds: Everyone else
I have no pleasure in saying that the nightmare doesn’t stop here. Detroit has Carolina the next two games, and you know how those games always go. The interesting thing that we will be keeping an eye on is the trade deadline. The deadline is 3pm this Monday, and the Red Wings are open for business. We’ll see what kind of team is on the ice on Monday night.
