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A Power Outage In Pittsburgh |
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Someone forgot to inform the Detroit Red Wings power play that their bye week had concluded.
Dumped 4-1 by the Pittsburgh Penguins Saturday in their return from a five-day break, the culprit for this setback was not difficult to identify. The Wings went one-for-seven on the power play, scoring just once in four first-period man-advantage situations.
“I thought our entries on the power play didn’t work,” was captain Henrik Zetterberg’s explanation of their woes to Detroitredwings.com. “We didn’t really get in and get set up.
“Once we were set up in their end, I thought we created stuff, but there were too many seconds during part of the power play where we couldn’t even get it in the zone.”
Detroit coach Jeff Blashill was even more pointed in his criticism of their work with the man advantage, which saw the Wings produce a paltry seven shots on goal.
“Our shooting mentality and power play, that was the difference in the game,” Blashill said. “We’ve got to shoot the puck. We had tons of opportunities to shoot the puck and we didn’t. Usually when you shoot it, you get it back. Second of all, you don’t create any chaos, and I thought in the whole game, but certainly in the first, we had tons of chances to shoot it.
“In the second, we had an unreal four-on-two rush and we decided to go behind the back.”
Zetterberg saw similar tendencies at work even when the number of players on the ice was equal on both sides.
“Even five on five, I thought we really had some Grade A chances that we turned into Grade D chances ourselves,” Zetterberg assessed. “Instead of putting the puck towards the goalie, shooting the puck when we have a chance to score, we tried to make another play.”
This seems to be a common thread with this team, going back for some time. Blashill pounds away at them about simplifying their game to putting pucks at the net and getting traffic there in search of second-chance opportunities, but too many Wings seem intent of making that extra pass in search of a tap-in play that is almost never there.
“We’ve got to be a shoot-first mentality type team and we weren’t tonight,” Blashill said.
The fact of the matter is that more often than not, the Wings aren’t that type of team, which leads to another question that needs to be addressed - do they suit up enough of the personnel required to play the sort of game their coach desires?
Ouch! That Hurts
If losing to a team ahead of them in the standings wasn’t enough of a gut punch to the Wings’ psyche, they also lost two key forwards to injury during the game when Justin Abdelkader, their lone goal scorer, and Darren Helm went down and did not return.
Helm’s right leg bent awkwardly when he got tangled up in the corner with Pittsburgh forward Daniel Sprong. Neither Abdelkader, listed with a lower-body injury, or Helm played in the third period and both aren’t expected to be available for Sunday afternoon’s game in Chicago.
Center Dominic Turgeon, son of former NHLer Pierre Turgeon, was recalled from AHL Grand Rapids.
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