When brushing through the fine-toothed comb that is the NHL schedule, not a hair can be left out of place if victory is the desired outcome.
The Detroit Red Wings again learned that lesson on Monday.
“I thought we did an excellent job of gapping, of ending plays early,” Detroit coach Jeff Blashill assessed of their 3-2 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning. “We didn’t give them much ice at all and then we transitioned fast out of it. I thought we did a good job in the O-zone.
“I can’t think of a whole bunch of time where we were really hemmed in our zone. I can’t think of a whole bunch of big-time chances that we gave up.”
Blashill could think of a couple of things that went south and took the good ship Red Wing to the bottom with it. There was Red Wings killer Tyler Johnson’s shorthanded goal to open the scoring, followed shortly thereafter by a Nikita Kucherov power-play tally that made it 2-0 Tampa Bay.
“I thought we were the better team five on five,” Blashill said. “I thought we had more quality chances. In the end the difference would be special teams. They scored two on specialty teams, we scored zero. That’s the difference.
“I would say I thought our power play had looks but we didn’t score and we gave up a shorty. That’s a hard combination. It’s hard to win when you give up shorties and you don’t rebound and score.
“I think there’s a lot of things there that are a recipe for success but again in this league, we’ve won four games with specialty teams and goaltending, and tonight we lost.
“Our specialty teams wasn’t good enough.”
Penalty Phase
Justin Abdelkader opened the scoring for the Wings on a penalty shot, and if you were thinking you hadn’t seen that in some time from a Detroit player, then you’ve been paying attention.
The Wings had failed on nine consecutive penalty shot attempts prior to Abdelkader’s tally. The previous Detroit goal on a free shot was recorded Dec. 15, 2007 by Valtteri Filppula against the Florida Panthers.
The penalty came at the end of a bizarro scenario. Darren Helm scored but the goal was disallowed because Abdelkader was called for interfering with Tampa Bay goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy. But Lightning defenseman was called for hooking Abdelkader when he broke into the clear in the original sequence on the play, and Abdelkader was awarded the penalty shot.
“A lot of times I’m nervous for those but actually I was excited, I was ready,” Abdelkader said. “I had some time to prepare and think about it on the bench while they were sorting out the call.
“Those are always fun if you can convert.”
Stevie’s Guy
When he made it 2-0 for the Lightning, Tampa Bay forward Nikita Kucherov became the first NHLer to score in the first six games of the season since Keith Tkachuk of the St. Louis Blues in 2008-09 and only the fourth player to do so in the last 30 years.
One of the others on the list is well known to fans in Tampa Bay and Detroit. That would be Lightning general manager Steve Yzerman, who scored in the first six games of the season for the Red Wings in 1988-89.
Mario Lemieux also did so for the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1992-93.
Probably not a good time to mention that the Lightning selected Kucherov 58th overall in the second round of the 2011 NHL entry draft - three picks after the Wings selected Ryan Sproul, 10 spots after when Detroit selected Xavier Ouellet and 23 picks following Detroit’s initial pick of the second round that spring, Tomas Jurco.
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