Red Wings record first regulation win over Chicago since 2011
By Stefan Kubus –
DETROIT – The Red Wings did something Friday night they haven’t done in the regular season since April 10, 2011 – defeat Original Six rival Chicago in regulation.
Led by Grand Rapids native Luke Glendening’s first career multi-point outing, Detroit beat the Blackhawks, 4-1, to improve to 8-3-5 on the season and 6-1-2 at home. Tomas Tatar, Johan Franzen and Brendan Smith also scored for Detroit, while Jimmy Howard stopped 25 of 26 in the victory.
“This is the first time in four or five games I thought that we looked fast, so that was positive, and it’s nice to look fast against a good opponent,” Detroit head coach Mike Babcock said. “Obviously, they’re a skilled group and they can really play, but I thought we did a real good job in the second period to tilt the momentum a little bit.”
The Red Wings’ fourth line of Glendening, Joakim Andersson and Drew Miller combined for four points against the Hawks, a rewarding night for the blue-collared line; Miller recorded an assist on Glendening’s goal and Andersson tallied the primary helper on Tatar’s goal.
“It’s nice to be able to chip in that way, for sure,” Glendening said. “You play hockey because you want to score goals. That hasn’t happened a lot for us, but it’s nice to have a night like tonight every once in a while.”
Just six minutes into the opening period, Glendening’s hard forecheck forced a downed Johnny Oduya to move the puck with his hand to winger Kris Versteeg along the boards. An errant Versteeg pass landed right on the stick of Drew Miller, whose low shot forced Blackhawks netminder Corey Crawford to kick out a juicy rebound. Glendening corralled the puck and roofed it on the rebound for his second of the year to put the Red Wings up 1-0.
With Glendening in the box later in the frame, Chicago captain Jonathan Toews set up Honeybaked alumnus Patrick Kane for a gorgeous power play goal at 11:16 to tie the game at one aside.
Detroit turned up the pressure in the middle frame, though, peppering Crawford with 20 shots on net. And where there was sustained pressure, there were opportunities.
Early in the second stanza, a bad pass by Kane landed on Red Wings captain Henrik Zetterberg’s stick in the high slot. With a defender on him, the Red Wings captain quickly moved it up to Franzen, who took the puck off his stick and, in one motion, flipped a backhand shot upstairs past Crawford for his fifth of the season to make it 2-1 at 4:49. That eventual game-winner from Franzen extended his point streak to five games, on which he has accumulated three goals and three assists.
“If you look at his season so far, he was out for a bit, but when he’s playing, he’s showing up,” Zetterberg said of Franzen. “He’s putting points on the board, he works hard, he’s good defensively, so real happy the way we won.”
Then, just 1:10 later, Tatar scored his own fifth of the year on a rebound off a hard Andersson shot to extend the lead to 3-1 through 40 minutes. Smith went on to add an empty netter with 2:09 remaining in the third period to cap things off at 4-1.
“I thought, all-around, that was probably our best game we played this season,” Howard said.
Detroit plays host to another Original Six team for the second straight game, as Atlantic Division rival Montreal comes to town Sunday evening.