Red Wings fall to Hurricanes in regular-season home finale
By Stefan Kubus –
DETROIT – The last time Carolina won a regular-season game at Joe Louis Arena, the team was not only named the Hartford Whalers, but the victory also came in the last season Detroit didn’t make a playoff appearance: 1989-90.
But in Detroit’s home finale of the 2013-14 campaign, Carolina ended the Red Wings’ 16-game home winning streak against the Hurricanes by a 2-1 score. Elias Lindholm and Jiri Tlusty lit the lamp for Carolina, while goaltender Cam Ward made 28 saves in the win.
Riley Sheahan scored his eighth of the season and Jimmy Howard stopped 17 of 19 shots in the loss.
“I thought we turned the puck over way too many times, didn’t take care of the puck enough, didn’t get it deep,” Gustav Nyquist said after the game. “We had some chances, but we could’ve created more if we took care of the puck better.”
Head coach Mike Babcock said the team easily could’ve overlooked this game given the team clinched a playoff spot last game against Pittsburgh, but it’s still not a valid excuse not to perform.
“The reality is, we weren’t good enough,” Red Wings head coach Mike Babcock said. “We had tons of chances, our goaltender was good, but we didn’t play right and when you don’t play right, you don’t win. As a group, we weren’t good enough, plain and simple.”
Lindholm got the scoring started at 8:15 of the opening period, as he banged home a feed in front of Howard from Andrei Loktionov in the corner on the power play. Tlusty extended that lead to two with just 1:36 left in the period, slapping home the rebound off an Eric Staal shot. Despite the 2-0 deficit, Detroit held an 11-8 shot advantage.
Just minutes into the third period, Sheahan banged a loose puck home on the power play to bring Detroit within one. The assists on Sheahan’s eighth of the season went to Tomas Jurco and Tomas Tatar.
But that goal was all Detroit produced, as Ward held firm in goal for Carolina and Detroit missed out on a valuable two points in terms of the wild card race with Columbus and Philadelphia. However, Columbus also lost to Tampa Bay Friday night, which helped as it kept them even in points with Detroit.
The recently-returned Pavel Datsyuk said it was tough missing out on a chance to take another step in claiming the first wild card spot in the Eastern Conference.
“It looked like we played well today and had lots of chances, but of course we need to score, we need work,” Datsyuk said.
The Red Wings face off against the Blues in St. Louis Sunday afternoon to close out the regular season.
“We’ll forget about this one and move on to Sunday,” Nyquist said.