Mrazek shuts out Maple Leafs in penalty-filled preseason affair
By Stefan Kubus –
DETROIT – A pair of power-play goals, courtesy of Nick Jensen and Riley Sheahan, and a 27-save shutout from Petr Mrazek propelled Detroit to a 3-0 victory Monday night at The Joe in a penalty-infested tilt with the Maple Leafs.
Tomas Jurco added an empty-netter late for the Red Wings.
Detroit improves to 3-1-1 in the preseason with the win over Original Six and division rival Toronto. With 49 total penalty minutes between the two clubs, there wasn’t much ‘flow’ to the game, but it did allow for special teams’ practice.
“There was no flow, zero flow,” Babcock said. “That’s the problem with it; you want to play all your guys and you can’t play them, but we got good work from our guys.”
Just minutes into the game, the Red Wings lost defenseman Aaron Rome to injury and he did not return, setting up a heavy workload for the young defensive corps. A scoreless opening period that saw Toronto outshoot Detroit, 6-5, set up a more lively middle frame.
An early second-period, five-minute major and game misconduct to Detroit’s Tomas Nosek followed just a minute after Toronto’s Brandon Kozun hit Stephen Weiss from behind in a very similar hit that resulted in a two-minute minor. A poor delay-of-game call against Mitch Callahan – the puck visibly deflected off Joffrey Lupul’s pants and out of play – shortly thereafter gave Toronto a full, two-minute, 5-on-3 advantage.
That is, until Lupul took a roughing minor in front of the net just 40 seconds later. But the Red Wings’ penalty kill, including the team’s most important penalty killer, held strong – as they did all night – and it paid off not too long after.
“Obviously, your best penalty killer is your goaltender, and I thought he was really good, solid, good plays with the puck, gave us an opportunity,” head coach Mike Babcock said of Mrazek and the team’s penalty kill.
Near the halfway point of the game, the Red Wings found the back of the net to take the tilt’s first lead. Andrej Nestrasil continued his strong preseason showing, as he dished a pass over a Toronto stick and right into Jensen’s wheelhouse. Jensen’s one-timer from the point blew past Reimer with 11 minutes to play in the second stanza. Northville native Kevin Porter drew the second assist on the tally.
“It was more on Nestrasil; he made a great play,” Jensen said. “He’s been working on that over there. He’s always getting the puck through to me and he made a great pass to me, and one of our plans today was to just shoot the puck and crash guys to the net. We had three guys at the net, did a great job screening – (Justin) Abdelkader, I saw him in front.”
Jensen said he’s feeling much more comfortable, but admitted to having pre-game nerves given what a big moment it was for him.
“I’ve never played a game here in Joe Louis Arena. It was pretty exciting that I got to do that. Coming in, a little nervous, a lot of excitement, though, and I just tried to go out there, play my game and have fun while doing it.”
In the opening minute of the third period, Jurco busted down the middle and made a nifty spin move that produced a quality scoring chance, but Reimer stymied the opportunity, one of his 14 saves.
Then, 5:45 into the final frame and with the man-advantage, Ryan Sproul’s pass-shot from the top of the right circle was tipped on target by Sheahan, who was on the spot to bury his own rebound and extend the lead to 2-0.
Detroit will close its home preseason action Wednesday against Pittsburgh before heading on the road to Toronto and Boston for the final two games. Head coach Mike Babcock said that now his team is halfway through the preseason, there’s a lot of questions he still needs to address.
“They create more (questions) for me each and every night,” Babcock said. “We were going to go to an NHL practice, but I can’t decide who should be on the NHL practice, so we’re just going to keep going the way we’re going.”