Desperately trying to salvage their season, this may have been the unkindest cut of all for the Detroit Red Wings.
It wasn’t so much Tuesday’s 3-2 overtime loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets that hurt. It was the non-call at the other end of the rink seconds earlier when Blue Jackets forward Brandon Dubinsky chopped the stick of Wings captain Henrik Zetterberg as he was making a move to the net, shattering Zetterberg’s stick.
The Wings rightly felt that there should have been a slashing call on the play.
“There was no penalty, I can’t figure that out,” Zetterberg said. “It’s frustrating. In my eyes that is a penalty, but they decided not to call it.”
Wings coach Jeff Blashill was equally non-plussed by the non-call.
“I just looked at it again,” Blashill said. “The guy was beat, he gets turned around, he swings his stick because he’s beat a little bit, he breaks our guy’s stick, our guy can’t play hockey, they go down on a 3-on-2.
“I think if he doesn’t make that move then he’s beat. That’s what I’m saying. He wasn’t poking the puck. I know it was one hand. I don’t think a slash is determined by the number of hands on your stick. I think it’s the force of the action would be my take on it. And certainly the force of the action, he had just gotten a brand new stick so it wasn’t like the stick was already broke so it was disappointing.”
Keselowski At The Joe
Long before he was the driver of the No. 2 Ford for Team Penske on the NASCAR circuit, the Red Wings were No. 1 in the heart of Brad Keselowski.
Keselowski was at Tuesday’s game and the guy who’s used to going around in circles at 200 mph even took a turn riding around on the Zamboni.
“It’s an honor to be here,” Keselowski said of what will be his final trip to the JLA. “I’m not going to get to come back here with the way the season sets up, so it’s a pleasure to be here. It will be my last opportunity to see it and I will cherish it.
“I come here to Detroit and I still have the lens of being a 14 year old kid and the nostalgia of getting to do these things really sets in. When I got other places it’s just another team, another athlete. But here it’s what I grew up with.
“The Red Wings are a big deal to me and they’re a big deal to this town. It was hard to grow up in Detroit, especially in the 1990s and not be a Red Wings fan, I can promise you that. I can still remember in school, they had the parade when they won the Stanley Cup (in 1997) and we got that whole hour off of science class to watch the parade. I thought that was the best thing ever. There was a lot of kids rooting for another Stanley Cup.
“I’m a big University of Michigan fan and I big Red Wings fan. Those are my two primary teams.
Howard Update
Detroit goalie Jimmy Howard, out with a knee injury, will make his second rehab assignment start Wednesday for the AHL Grand Rapids Griffins against the Manitoba Moose.
In his first action Saturday, Howard allowed five goals on 21 shots in a 5-4 Grand Rapids loss to the Milwaukee Admirals.
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