Henrik Zetterberg warned that this day was coming but he’d rather not having proven to be so prophetic.
The Detroit Red Wings captain cautioned after the team extended its winning streak to six games with a victory Thursday at St. Louis that if they didn’t clean up some of the sloppiness in their game, a loss would be soon arriving to bring a halt to their run of success.
Saturday turned out to be that day of reckoning for Detroit. A 1-0 loss to the Boston Bruins halted three things – Detroit’s winning streak, the Red Wings’ unbeaten 4-0 start at Joe Louis Arena and goaltender Jimmy Howard’s shutout streak, which came to a conclusion after 156:02 of perfection.
“We couldn’t really get anything going, no momentum at all,… Zetterberg said. “Howie was good, the PK was good.
“Then I thought the longer the game went, the more battles we won, more chances we got. But we’ve got to be better.…
Detroit coach Jeff Blashill was much less flattering in his assessment of his team’s performance.
“They were hungrier than us all over the ice, outside of Zetterberg’s line,… Blashill said. “I thought Zetterberg’s line had lots of compete in them, as a result they were the only ones to have any zone time.
“Maybe a player here and a player there, but as a group they out-competed us. I thought they were hungrier than us. We should have known better than that.
“In the end it wasn’t good enough.…
Faceoff Woes Detroit’s problems started in the same place were the game kept starting, at the faceoff dot. Boston won the faceoff battle 49-28. Zetterberg (7-15), Frans Nielsen (5-11) and Luke Glendening (5-9) were all dominated at the dot.
“In the faceoff circle we got cleaned,… Blashill said, while giving Boston credit. “I think this team does it to a decent amount. Obviously, (Patrice) Bergeron’s one of the best in the business.…
Starting without the puck meant the Wings were on their heels and pursuing the Bruins instead of setting the tone for the way the game would be played.
“It makes it real hard,… Blashill said. “You’re chasing the puck the whole night, and it makes it real hard on specialty teams.
“I still think we can execute better on our specialty teams, and certainly our power play but it makes it hard if they’re clearing the puck down the ice.…
Powerless To Help Detroit’s power play is in a 0-for-17 skid and it’s interesting also to note that the Wings have scored once in two games without the injured Thomas Vanek, day-to-day with a hip flexor issue.
“Everything,… Zetterberg when asked to explain what went wrong with the power play. “We couldn’t get in, all the breakouts didn’t work, we didn’t win face-offs, we didn’t get enough pucks on net, we didn’t execute on passes.
“I could go on.…
A familiar refrain was also heard regarding Detroit with the man advantage – shoot the puck.
“We passed up too many shots,… Blashill said. “I was a goalie, albeit a bad one but the nights you liked were the ones where they didn’t shoot the puck when they had opportunities to shoot it, or they missed the net. And you really liked it if they didn’t shoot it and there was no traffic.
“We probably, I thought, were guilty of that. We didn’t have enough bodies to the net and we didn’t have enough shoot-first mentality.…
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