Lightning Strike Wings with Shutout

The Detroit Red Wings were shut out against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Sunday, continuing a five game losing streak as of late. There was no goal scoring recorded in the first or second period, but in the third, the Lightning struck on three different occasions to bring the game to a close in a 20-minute period.The team is currently 15-11-9 on the season, continuing to make their regulation loss number larger and larger as time goes on.

Defenseman Niklas Kronwall is was one of the only veteran leaders left on the Red Wings team as Johan Franzen left the game early in the second period, after getting a glove to the face from Tampa Bay’s Radko Gudas. Kronwall spoke to the media about his concerns from Sunday’s performance.

“Again, we’re making too many mistakes, too many easy mistakes,” Kronwall said. “I thought after two periods we didn’t play great, but we had a few shifts there at the end of the second, I thought we were coming, we were playing some good hockey. We got the puck deep, had some really good cycles and chances off the cycles. The third period, we were giving them way too easy goals.”

Although Kronwall is showing concern, Red Wings opponents had many opportunities and have produced much goal scoring from late in the third period throughout the season. The Tampa Bay Lightning and their head coach Jon Cooper knew this going into Sunday’s afternoon matchup.

“It’s a 0-0 game. Let’s just make this a 20-minute game,” Cooper told his players.

The team capitalized on the short, but true words from their head coach and notched three goals past Wings goaltender Petr Mrazek, who has been recently called up from the AHL Calder Cup defending champions, the Grand Rapids Griffins. A sidelined Jimmy Howard who is currently dealing with a Grade 1 MCL Sprain and has been recently put on the Injured Reserve, List has influenced this call up.

The Red Wings now have seven players on their IR List that includes Henrik Zetterberg, Danny DeKeyser, Darren Helm, Stephen Weiss, Justin Abdelkader, Jimmy Howard and now a new name, Johan Franzen.

The team is missing five of their starting forwards, a defenseman and their starting goaltender are falling apart earlier than usual. They still have 47 games to play this season and need to start rehabilitating their injured team quickly.

Given the circumstances and the amount of injured players, it gives new opportunity for youthful, ‘ready-to-play’ players to get a chance to prove themselves worthy of a permanent spot on the Red Wings roster.

Tomas Jurco, Luke Glendening and a returning Patrick Eaves are all players that have been given spots to shine in while their counterparts are in rehab.

The Detroit Red Wings will try to snap their losing streak on Tuesday, December 17 against the Anaheim Ducks at the Joe Louis Arena.

* * *

Information from the Detroit Red Wings was used in this report.

For more information on the Detroit Red Wings and NHL hockey from analysts and journalists at Michigan State University – tune into Octopi Hockeytown podcasts and embrace the Spartan debate at www.impact89fm.org/sports

—————————————————————————————————————————————–

Austin Goodman is the host of Octopi Hockeytown for Impact Sports

——————————————————————————————————————————————

Scoring Summary:

1st Period:

No scoring recorded.

2nd Period:

No scoring recorded.

3rd Period:

TBL – 3:13 – T. Johnson (Deflected shot) M. St. Louis, O. Palat

TBL – 9:16 – J.T. Brown (Tip-in) N. Thompson

TBL – A. Killorn (Empty Net) V. Filpulla, E. Brewer

——————————————————————————————————————————————

Three Stars:

First: Ben Bishop

(28 SA, 0GA, 1.0 SV%, 22-22EV, 5-5PP, 1-1SH)

Second: Tyler Johnson

(1G, +1, 3 shots, 4PIM, 19:36 TOI)

Third: Petr Mrazek

(26 SA, 2GA, .923 SV%, 23-25EV, 1-1PP, 0-0SH)

——————————————————————————————————————————————