Detroit came into a Saturday night matchup against the Minnesota Wild in a tale of two teams heading opposite directions right now. The Wild started awful and then got good goaltending and things settled. The Wings started very well with good goaltending and then things fell apart. STUFFSTUFFSTUFF
1st Period
Things come out pretty ok to start. The Wings don’t look bad, but Howard’s very first stop of the game comes off a shot from an area you don’t want to allow shots from. Kronwall takes a half-second too long deciding to Kronwall a guy in the offensive zone and ends up taking his legs out instead, putting the Wings shorthanded. Nothing doing for the Wild PP, as the best scoring chances during that two minutes belong to Helm and Glendening.
Just about 14 minutes in, the Wings are still trying to put together anything that looks like an attack when Tatar hands the puck to the Wild inside his own blue line and Parise gets all alone in front on the short transition for the poke through Howard.
Less than two minutes later, the Wings pull even as DeKeyser mishandles at the Minnesota blue line and is forced to try and dump it deep. Weiss picks it off the half-wall and walks to the circle for a shot. Dubnyk stops it, but nobody is on Riley Sheahan at the doorstep and the youngster pops it home.
Datsyuk gets another good chance a little later but Dubnyk gets the pad over.
1-1 Tie after one period
2nd Period
I’ll let the Twitter feed describe the start of the 2nd.
Tentative doesn’t accurately describe the Wings right now. They’re eleventative. Need more elevenacity.
— Winging It In Motown (@wingingitmotown) April 5, 2015
Kronwall takes the second penalty of the game, both for him and overall as he’s near a guy who is trying to reach out and stop an icing and falls down. This super-soft call puts the Wings at a disadvantage. 1:14 later, Quincey blasts Pominville into the boards away from the puck and gives the wild a 5-on-3 power play. The Wings come up big and the Wild miss some one-timers and nothing comes of the man advantages.
15 minutes into the 2nd period, Detroit finally gets their first power play as Sheahan okey-dokes Haula in the corner of the Wild zone and the guy is so impressed by it he tries to give Sheahan a hug. The Wings’ power play is almost two full minutes of fist-clenching frustration before Nyquist catches a bit of space down low with Dubnyk hugging low. Goose takes the tiny window to the top shelf and makes it 2-1.
The rest of the 2nd expires with the Wings getting better chances. Detroit is ahead in the shot count 14-12, but it still feels like they need to turn it up a notch.
2-1 Wings after two periods.
3rd Period
90 seconds of panic to start the third is not what I wanted to see, but the Wings settled after that and started getting some chances with their aggression. Things go back-and-forth for a little while longer until DeKeyser gets knocked on top of a loose puck and goes to the box for concealing it, despite a bunch of stuff being let go to this point.
Of course the Wild score to tie it on this power play. At least it gets the refs to stop trying to help them do that. Zach Parise is now scoring all the goals he couldn’t score as Team USA’s captain in the Olympics.
Detroit gets the next power play chance as Tatar drives to the net and gets held. You knew it was coming. I’m glad to see this one happen on an actual good call. Would have been nice if it had happened earlier. Detroit fails to score despite good zone time and then ends their own power play with seven seconds left thanks to putting too many men out for the second straight game.
Detroit kills off that penalty plus the next eight minutes until Weiss puts his stick near Suter’s feet and gets to sit after Suter helps the refs make a call The PK comes up huge again and the Wings kill off the rest of the period. Power play opportunities at the end of regulation are 6-2 in favor of Minnesota.
2-2 tie after the third period
Overtime
Nothing to see here.
Shootout
Brutal stuff, then Helm forces a review.
