Red Wings Fall in Another Shootout

November 16, 2013

The Detroit Red Wings continue their skid at home, adding another shootout loss to their record. The Washington Capitals came from behind with help from Nicklas Backstrom, beating Wings’ goaltender Jimmy Howard, through the five-hole late in the shootout.The Wings experienced a little déjà vu throughout the third period, as they broke down once again, giving up two goals. One of those goals belonged to NHL All-star, Alex Ovechkin, who has eight goals and five assists in nine career games against the Wings.

Ovechkin has twenty-four points and 17 goals in as many games played. With the rest of the Capitals squad, the team sits at fifth in the Eastern Conference with an 11-8-1 record, including 7-2-1 in their last ten games.

“It’s a huge win,” Ovechkin said. “Everybody knows what they have over there, how good they are. When they get a 3-1 lead, it just makes us [work] harder. It’s a good sign for us. We [played] against a pretty good team, huge-skill team, and (is a) pretty good test for us. We set the tone right away in the third with a couple of good chances and we just kept going.”

On the contrary, the Red Wing captain is not having the same fortune as “Ovie.” The problem does not point to Henrik Zetterberg though, who has ten goals and thirteen assists with a plus nine rating in twenty-one games this season.

“Obviously we’re letting in goals that we shouldn’t let in and we’re not scoring on the chances that we’re creating,” Henrik Zetterberg said. “It’s hard. Again, we think we’re doing a lot of good things, but I feel like I’m standing here and repeating myself. I don’t know, there’s nothing else we can do. We have to keep trying to play for 60 minutes and we should win this game.”

The Red Wings this season have not been a team of major secondary scoring. Usually when the Wings get secondary scoring, they come out on top. But this season is panning out a bit differently. Detroit has been relying solely upon their first line for productivity from superstars, Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk, along with Niklas Kronwall and Todd Bertuzzi. In seasons past, they have been known to put up major goal scoring from third and fourth liners, grinding and maneuvering to create scoring opportunities.

Our The Wings’ back-end lines have recently been encroaching the light of success. Friday’s game was ‘lit up’ by the likes of Danny DeKeyser and Johan Franzen, with assists from Tomas Tatar and Darren Helm.

“We got two out of [Franzen] … that’s good secondary scoring,” Red Wings coach Mike Babcock said. “Normally when we’ve gotten any secondary scoring we’ve been able to win the game. I thought that was a positive thing for us. I thought our power play was good too. But we need to find a way to get one more to win the game. That’s the bottom line.”

The Red Wings’ next battle with take place in New York, against the Islanders at 7 p.m. EST.

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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:

WSH – 5:50 – B. Laich (Backhand) (S. Oleksy)

DET – 15:52 PPG – J. Franzen (Wrist) (J. Kindl, D. DeKeyser)

DET – 18:10 – J. Franzen (Wrist) (T. Tatar, D. Helm)

2nd Period:

DET – 19:42 – D. DeKeyser (Snap) (J. Franzen, J. Kindl)

3rd Period:

WSH – 3:19 – A. Ovechkin (Wrist) (M. Johansson, N. Backstrom)