Take the Detroit Red Wings away from home and they are a different hockey team.
The Wings won for the seventh time in eight road games Monday at the Barclays Center, doubling the New York Islanders 4-2.
“We never were behind in the game,… Detroit forward Brad Richards said. “They tied it (1-1) but it just seemed it got us in the game and got us going.
Richards admitted that the team’s strong roadwork is what’s keeping the Wings afloat in the playoff race.
“If we weren’t 7-1 who knows where we’d be?… Richards said. “There was a lot of urgency, a lot of realization we had that good (home) schedule going into Christmas, so we’re going to have come out of it on the other side and put together a good effort on the road and we’ve done that.
“We’ve gotten great goaltending and key goals at certain times, key special teams and just overall good solid efforts.…
Early Power The Wings opened the scoring on a first-period power-play goal by Richards, just their second power-play tally in five games.
“Obviously we’ve been trying to get this thing going,… Richards said of the power-play unit. “It’s scored some big goals for us of late and got us some games but there’s some games where we’re not scoring and it could change the momentum. “Overall, it’s a good sign.…
Blashill was happy to see the Wings use the man advantage to gain early control of the game.
“Overall I liked the process better,… Blashill said. “Obviously to score the PP goal early is big. That's something we haven't done enough of is probably score the early PP goals.
“I thought the first half of the first period we were really good. I didn't like us the second half of the first period, I thought we were loose, I thought we gave up chances we didn't need to give up, kind of similar to how we played against Anaheim. But I thought we regrouped overall, did a good job.
“Not to say we didn't give up chances, we did, but that's a real good hockey team. They're real dangerous offensively. We got the 3-1 lead. Obviously they're going to push in the third. I thought we did a good job making enough defensive plays and when we didn't, (goalie) Petr (Mrazek) came up big.…
DK Delivers Detroit defenseman Danny DeKeyser scored for the second straight game, third time in six games and fourth time in nine games.
“I was kind of gapped up through the neutral zone and I could see that the D was trying to hit the guy coming through the middle and I just had the chance to step up there and intercept it,… DeKeyser explained of his goal. “Then I did that and I had a chance going the other way and fortunately for me, pucks have been going in for me lately.…
Delays, Delays It took the Wings’ bus two hours to get from the airport to the rink due to the snowstorms that have pounded the Eastern seaboard.
“We had some issues here; you all did with the snow and that,… Blashill said. “Those are all things that happen.
“We try to worry about the things we can control. Given it took us a little longer to get here, that’s life. We were here this morning, we were here tonight, let’s go play the game.…
Russian Record Center Pavel Datsyuk played his 971st NHL game Monday, all of them as a Red Wing.
That total leaves Datsyuk deadlocked with former Wing Igor Larionov for seventh all-time in NHL games played by a Russian-born player.
In Datsyuk’s rookie season, he and Larionov were teammates on Detroit’s 2001-02 Stanley Cup championship club.
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