Wings 2, Blues 3 (SO)
Over the past four games, the Wings have lost to a Western Canadian team twice and then lost to two non-playoff Central Division teams in the shootout. This isn’t good. It’d be one thing if they just played down against the two poor teams, but they couldn’t even play against the Flames and Canucks. We seem to like the penalty box (although some poor calls never help either) and giving the opponent a quick goal in the first.
I could only watch the first two periods before leaving for work, but I wasn’t too impressed with the Wings’ play.
As I mentioned in my last post, Brett Lebda was checked from behind by the Blues’ Ville Niemenen resulting in a concussion for Lebda and a game misconduct and five minute penalty for Niemenen.
Lebda was awake and doing fine, according to the Red Wings, and was taken to Detroit Medical Center for precautionary tests.
He was knocked into the metal support by a forearm from St. Louis’ Ville Nieminen and waved to the crowd as he was being taken off.
Lebda is the third Detroit player to suffer a concussion because of a hit to the head this season. The other two were Jason Williams, now with Chicago, and Johan Franzen.
I definitely have liked what I’ve seen from Bertuzzi thus far and eagerly await his first goal with the Wings. He is a much more noticeable physical force that I certainly welcome and the crowd at the Joe seems to agree.
Rookies Jiri Hudler and Valtteri Filppula scored the two goals for the Wings with Hudler’s goal coming on the power play. Hasek stopped all but two of the 19 shots.
Amazingly, the Wings outshot the Blues, 42-19. Yet, we couldn’t get the win.
The Blues’ Doug Weight scored the game winning goal during the shootout. It actually had to be reviewed before awarding the goal and victory to St. Louis. The Blues actually won the season series with Detroit (4-3-1) for the first time since the 1997-1998 season.
Dave at Gorilla Crouch has a great recap up on the game:
The one good sign is that Todd Bertuzzi showed some flashes of the rust coming off and being ready to be a big contributor. He really got into a groove in the third period - see, he fits in on the Wings already. All kidding aside, he was impossible to take off the puck behind the net and made several good passes for quality scoring chances. He found Datsyuk with a great pass from behind the net that was a good quality scoring chance. Blues netminder Jason Bacashihua was in good position to make the stop with his glove hand.
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