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Coming off a disappointing home loss on Wednesday, the Pittsburgh Penguins looked to be in tough against the rested Detroit Red Wings heading into last night’s encounter at the Joe Louis Arena.
However, the Pens jumped out to a 3-1 lead midway through the hockey game and everything appeared to be under control. The Red Wings certainly were not coming forward with their best effort on this night and a disappointing goal by
Pascal Dupuis thanks to a poor defensive play by
Jonathan Ericsson and weak goaltending from
Jimmy Howard , the writing appeared to be on the wall that the Red Wings would incur their second regulation loss of the season.
Despite a better “push” in the 3rd period, the Red Wings still found themselves down a pair with just under 3 minutes remaining when Coach
Mike Babcock decided to pull the goaltender for an extra attacker. With Howard relegated to the bench, the Red Wings scored twice in a span of two minutes to knot up the affair at three and secure at least one point.
That led to
Justin Abdelkader’s heroics, as he fired home a loose puck in the slot for his third goal of the season with under 45 seconds remaining in the overtime session to give the Wings an improbable comeback victory.
Some more observations from this exciting win that moved the Wings to 4-1-2 on the young season:
**Despite the Dupuis goal, which I’m sure Howard would like to have back, he continues to play well for this hockey club. Of note, a pair of excellent stops on a
Sidney Crosby breakaway and subsequent rebound midway through the third period that kept the Red Wings within shouting distance of getting back into the game, which they ultimately were able to do.
**Yes, the Red Wings had struggled to score the past two games, but it did not seem to be an alarming situation as the team was getting quality scoring chances....just not able to put it in the back of the net. That changed at just the right time late on Thursday night.
**The Red Wing penalty killing unit once again stood tall for this hockey club, killing off three Penguin power-play chances against the league’s top team with the man advantage. The Wings group remains perfect, having killed off all 21 shorthanded events thus far through the opening 7 games.
**Still early in the season, but would definitely like to see the trio of
Riley Sheahan,
Tomas Tatar and
Tomas Jurco get going. Babcock resorted to juggling the lines a bit last night in an effort to get something out of them and it would not surprise to see more changes given the trio combining for three points thus far on the season.
**
Niklas Kronwall had an excellent game offensively (two goals, one assist) and continues to receive very little respect from various TV personalities. On the Rogers Sportsnet telecast, analyst
Nick Kypreos suggested Kronwall wasn’t a
"#1 defensemen" on a championship winning team given the fact he does not specialize in quarterbacking a team’s power-play. In particular, he offered names like
Drew Doughty and
Duncan Keith as #1’s who “do it all”.
To his credit, colleague
Mike Johnson countered there are legitimately only 10-12 guys that fall under that category and Kronwall is still very effective in that next group of blueliners that form the top rearguards in the league.
Interestingly enough, the numbers suggest he
is one of those top guys though. Over the past 2+ seasons, since his promotion to the #1 spot on the blueline in Detroit following the retirement of
Nicklas Lidstrom, here are his regular season totals in comparison to Keith and Doughty:
Kronwall: 134 GP, 84 points, 42 power-play points
Keith: 132 GP, 92 points, 33 power-play points
Doughty: 133 GP, 62 points, 27 power-play points
He finished 5th and 6th in power-play points for defensemen over the past two seasons. I am not attempting to suggest Kronwall is better than those two rearguards Kypreos listed. What I am trying to suggest is that it is asinine for him to state Kronwall cannot “quarterback” a power-play like Keith and Doughty, yet Kronwall has more power-play points than both of them over the timeframe has been a #1 rearguard for his hockey team.
It remains to be seen if Kronwall can win a title as a team’s #1 blueliner, but the numbers certainly appear to suggest he is more than capable of being that guy.
** Next up for the Red Wings: The Flyers in the City of Brotherly Love. They'll need to get off to a much better start in that one....and the Flyers have rebounded from a slow start and will be riding high coming off their impressive road victory against their hated rivals from Pittsburgh.
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