Howard, Wings Fall, Winnipeg Sweeps

November 13, 2013

A disappointing performance from the Detroit Red Wings turned into a loss, in a shootout against the Winnipeg Jets Tuesday. Pavel Datsyuk, commonly known by the Red Wings color commentator Mickey Redmond as the ‘magic man’, put two goals past Winnipeg’s goaltender. But it was not enough to put the Wings on top at the end. Devin Setoguchi and Andrew Ladd both lit the lamp over the blocker hand of Jimmy Howard to give the Jets two points, compared to the Wings who only earned one by sending the game into overtime.

“It’s tough when we don’t get two points,” Zetterberg said. “We did a lot of good things and today I think we played solid defense, created enough chances to win and Howie (Howard) played good enough to win the game, but we can’t find a way to go all the way. It’s frustrating. It’s tough. We want to win, but right now we can’t find a way.”

The Red Wings have lost their past six games at home and lost their last five consecutive games overall.

Although the Red Wings are currently on a loosing skid, they are having bursts of greatness, which increases in consistency each game.

“We didn’t win, but I thought we played good. I liked our game today, start to finish. We made some mistakes,” said Red Wings coach Mike Babcock said.

“But I liked our penalty kill, I liked our power play, I liked our game. I feel real good. I know we’d like to get the second point, but I liked the way we played. To me it’s going in the right direction. It’s real positive game for us,” Babcock said.

The Wings productivity in the second period this season has come far and thin. They’re not putting up enough points and clearly are not making the effort that fans know they can with the threats that the Wings have in depth.

Looking to the Grand Rapids Griffins and back to the Wings’ lineup, there are bound to be some changes. With a productive Gustav Nyquist, who helped the Wings to a second round thriller against the Chicago Blackhawks during last year’s Stanley Cup Finals, the Wings should be strongly considering pulling him up to the big leagues.

The goal scoring of the Red Wings has been strict to the first line. Finding a way to get more diverse goal scoring, and at the same time keeping control of the puck, is very difficult.

The Red Wings’ next match up will be at home on Friday vs. the Washington Capitals at 7:30pm, where the Wings will try to snap their 0-1-5 stretch at home.

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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

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Austin Goodman is the host of Octopi Hockeytown for Impact Sports

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Scoring Summary:

1st Period:

WPG – 7:10 – B. Little (Snap) – (B. Wheeler, A. Ladd)

DET – 14:44 (PPG) – P. Datsyuk – (H. Zetterberg, N. Kronwall)

2nd Period:

No scoring.

3rd Period:

WPG – 10:47 – Z. Bogosian (Wrist) – (O. Jokinen, E. Kane)

DET – 13:11 (PPG) – P. Datsyuk (Backhand) – (J. Franzen, D. Alfredsson)