Wings hurt by penalty trouble, fall 2-1 in OT to Caps

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(Photo by Andrew Knapik/MiHockey)

By @StefanKubus –

DETROIT – Red Wings head coach Jeff Blashill made one thing abundantly clear following his team’s 2-1 overtime loss to the Washington Capitals Wednesday night: the penalties need to stop.

Evgeny Kuznetsov potted the OT winner, and Braden Holtby was sharp, stopping 25 of 26 for Washington. Dylan Larkin scored the lone Wings goal, and Petr Mrazek stopped 25 of 27 shots in the tilt.

Despite Washington scoring on just one of those man-advantage chances, it was enough for the Caps to kill any flow in the Red Wings’ lineup throughout the game – Andreas Athanasiou played just 33 seconds and Teemu Pulkkinen just 1:31 in the first period.

“We took too many penalties, you can’t take four in the first period,” Red Wings head coach Jeff Blashill said.

“What happened in the first, AA didn’t play at all, Pulkky didn’t play at all, (Drew Miller) didn’t play 5-on-5 because we killed so many penalties and Pav’s and Z’s line, neither one of them killed either, so I have to keep getting those guys back on the ice, as well, so it certainly affects the flow, but I thought as the game went along, I thought in the second period we did lots of really good stuff, not to say we didn’t give up anything, but I thought we pushed and had lots of O-zone time and good chances. I still think we can create better chances out of the O-zone, I think we’ve got to be a little more ready to shoot still, and we’ve got to find a way to get to more seconds.”

The Wings continue to search for their scoring touch, especially when playing in front of Mrazek. Out of Mrazek’s ten starts this season, the Red Wings have scored only one goal in six of them. Players like Darren Helm and Pulkkinen had breakaway opportunities, and a number of other Wings had their chances, but couldn’t bury them, as the struggle for offense continues.

“We’ve got to find a way to finish those for sure, and we’ve got to find a way to score more goals,” Blashill said.

Penalty trouble and the lack of finishing aside, however, the Wings played well against the 12-4-1 Capitals. As the Red Wings captain put it, if the team continues to play like that, it’ll pick up the points.

“Everything, except that we couldn’t really find the back of the net,” Zetterberg said. “I think we created chances, we had a lot of shots on net, I think we were good in front of their net, keep playing like this and we’ll earn our points.”

Larkin opened the scoring early, as he took a feed in the neutral zone from Pavel Datsyuk, used his speed to bolt down the right wing and snapped a low wrister that beat Holtby. It marked Larkin’s sixth of the season and also Datsyuk’s first point of the season.

“He attacks and he shoots the puck a lot and hes one of those guys that he probably – I don’t want to say overshoots it because it’s not that he doesn’t make plays, but he definitely has a chance he’s going to shoot it, and I think that probably needs to be a little more contagious within our team,” Blashill said of Larkin.

But with Larkin in the box, Justin Williams evened things up for Washington at 10:54. From the point, Matt Niskanen sent a gorgeous slap-pass down to Williams, posted up to the left of Mrazek, and he redirected home his fourth goal of the season.

The Larkin penalty was just one of four taken in the opening period by Detroit and six on the night. Danny DeKeyser was called for interference late in the first period after finishing a hip check just a second too late.

“It’s tough to generate offense when you’re constantly killing penalties like that,” DeKeyser said.

With 6:25 to play in the third period, Mrazek was hit in the shoulder up high by Washington defender John Carlson. The shot stunned Mrazek and sent him to the ice. Jimmy Howard had put his mask on, preparing to enter the game, but after taking a few moments to recover, Mrazek proved to be OK.

“I didn’t see the shot, and it just went through the mask and hit my shoulder,” Mrazek said. “I just didn’t see the puck, so I didn’t expect that hard shot to get through the D, it just went through my chest and hit the shoulder there, but I felt pretty good after that.”

Kuznetsov’s overtime winner sealed the victory for the Caps to drop the Wings to 9-8-2 on the season.

Despite recording six shots and now a combined 21 shots in two games against Mrazek at Joe Louis Arena this season, Washington captain Alex Ovechkin is still searching for elusive goal 484 to break Sergei Fedorov’s mark to become the highest-scoring Russian player in NHL history.

“It just helps the confidence, when you have six shots in the first five minutes, it helps you to be ready in the net and just keep going,” Mrazek said.

The Wings host the Los Angeles Kings Friday night at Joe Louis Arena, a tough challenge especially considering the heavy Kings are 12-3-0 after an 0-3 start.

“It never gets any easier in this league, everybody’s so good nowadays that it doesn’t matter who it is coming in here,” DeKeyser said. “L.A. is a great team, they have a lot of skill, they got some big guys that can skate and put the puck in the net, so it’s gonna be good task for us.”