Detroit got back in the win column after a loss to Dallas and an overtime loss to Florida as they beat the Montreal Canadiens 3-2 in a shoot-out.
Brad Stuart started the scoring for both teams on a power-play goal at 12:41 of the first period. Stuart put what seemed to be a rather innocent shot past Montreal netminder Carey Price for a 1-0 Detroit lead. Price was screened by Todd Bertuzzi and his own defender, leaving little chance to find the puck until it was already in the net. Dan Cleary and Brett Lebda assisted on Stuart’s second goal of the season. The powerplay resulted after Montreal’s George Laraque took six penalty minutes on one shift, including a tripping call that put Niklas Kronwall for the remainder of the game and possibly a long stretch afterwards.
“You know it’s something that shouldn’t happen in hockey,” Red Wings coach Mike Babcock said. “A guy shouldn’t hang his leg out there and hurt another guy. It’s unacceptable and it’s disappointing, obviously. We just lost a good player for a period of time. Our doctors will look at him, but he’s out for a chunk for sure.”
Pavel Datsyuk would add another Red Wings power-play goal as he tipped a Brian Rafalski shot past Price for a 2-0 Detroit lead, only 2 minutes after the first goal by Stuart. Datsyuk scored his sixth goal of the season as he was camped out to Price’s right before Rafalski’s shot from the blue line. Datsyuk’s goal came on a five-on-three as Laraque was still in the box, now joined by Paul Mara.
Jimmy Howard, starting his 5th game in the past 6 stopped numerous quality chances from Montreal during the second period en route to his 4th win of the year. Howard stopped 16 shots in all as Detroit out-shot Montreal 35-18, making Price work all night and leaving Howard with a much more manageable work load.
Mike Cammalleri scored his tenth and eleventh goals of the season as he lead the Canadiens back to a tie in the third period. Cammalleri’s first goal came just nine seconds into the 3rd period as he fired a drop pass from Andrei Kostitsyn into the net behind Jimmy Howard. Cammelleri’s second goal was the result of a beautiful pass from Kostitsyn, who blazed the puck across the goal mouth from the sideboards to the tape of Cammelleri’s stick; tying the game at 2 with under 9 minutes gone in the 3rd period. Howard has little hope of stopping the shot and the pass was near perfect as the Canadiens capitalized on a rare miscue from Nicklas Lidstrom.
Overtime ended with out any goals being scored so the teams prepared for the shoot-out. Cammelleri was stopped by Howard on the first attempt of the shoot-out. Pavel Datsyuk did one of his patented “Datsyukian dekes” to beat Price and ultimately win the game. Henrik Zetterberg sealed the win with a pretty special move of his own as the team departs Montreal with a 3-2 win and 2 more points in the standings.
Detroit’s next game is on Monday against Nashville, a game that will be seen on Versus.
MrNorrisTrophy’s Wing of the Game: Pavel Datsyuk. Pavel scored the second goal of the game and had an incredible move to beat Carey Price and win the game. He added 6 shots to his 20:35 of ice time and 81% success rate in the faceoff dot.
