Lucky Goals Come Late, Wings Get Second Shootout Win

Niklas Kronwall perhaps got the luckiest goal of his NHL career on Saturday against the Los Angeles Kings.

The Red Wings were on a power play with just under 30 seconds to go in the third period, when the defenseman slapped a shot that deflected up and into the netting behind goaltender, Jonathan Quick.

The referees did not see the puck launch off a stick and up into the netting until the puck traveled from the netting down towards the goal, where it went off of the back of Quick and into the Kings’ net with 27 seconds left to go in regulation.

“It shouldn’t have counted, but at this stage of the game, where we are in the standings, we’ll take it,” Kronwall said.

“I don’t think anybody knew where the puck was. You look at the guys and everybody was waiting, (saying) ‘where is it?’ Then it bounced off the goalie’s back and in.”

Going into the third period, the game was tied 1-1 with a goal from Mike Richards of L.A. and one from Red Wings’ team captain Henrik Zetterberg. After a late power play goal with 2:30 left in the third period from Kings forward, Jeff Carter, the game seemed lost, but well fought until the fluky goal from Kronwall tied the game back up.

“We played hard enough to put ourselves in position where it was our turn to win,” Kronwall said.

Tomas Tatar had the lone goal in the first round of the shootout as Zetterberg and Tomas Jurco missed both of their shots alongside all three shooters for Los Angeles.

Anze Kopitar and Carter shot in rounds one and two. Wings goaltender Jimmy Howard fended both off.

Mike Richards shot in the third round of the shootout and was handed an overtime loss once Howard came out for a blocker save to earn the Red Wings two points.

“It’s disappointing. We had a back-and-forth game. We played pretty good,” Richards said.

“We made some mistakes. You’ve got to score in the shootout, especially if you’re going to win a game in the shootout. So that’s disappointing too. We had some chances, especially at the end and in overtime and we didn’t bury either.”

The Wings will face off against the St. Louis Blues on Monday, January 20 at the Joe Louis Arena.

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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 a multimedia journalist for Impact Sports.


Scoring Summary:

1st Period:

No goals recorded.

2nd Period:

LAK – 9:06 PPG – M. Richards (Wrist) S. Voynov

DET – 9:47 – H. Zetterberg (Wrist) G. Nyquist, B. Smith

3rd Period:

LAK – 17:45 PPG – J. Carter (Wrist) M. Richards, D. Doughty

DET – 19:33 PPG – N. Kronwall (Slap) H. Zetterberg, P. Eaves

Overtime:

No goals recorded.

Shootout:

RD 1) DET – T. Tatar/LAK – A. Kopitar

RD 2) DET – H. Zetterberg/LAK – J. Carter

RD 3) DET – T. Jurco/LAK – M. Richards


Three Stars:

First: Henrik Zetterberg

(1G, 1A, +1, 6 shots, 1 hit, 23:44 TOI)

Second: Slava Voynov

(1A, 2 shots, 4 hits, 25:53 TOI)

Third: Jimmy Howard

(32SA, 2GA, 2PIM, .938 SV%, 25-25EV, 5-7PP, 0-0SH)