Wings post 5-1 victory over Isles in partially-delayed game
By @StefanKubus –
DETROIT – A near 40-minute delay didn’t faze the Red Wings from finishing the job Saturday afternoon.
Up 4-0 after two periods, the Red Wings came out and added one more en route to a 5-1 victory over the New York Islanders at Joe Louis Arena. Dylan Larkin posted a goal and an assist, while Tomas Jurco, Kyle Quincey, Mike Green and Tomas Tatar also scored. Petr Mrazek made 28 of 29 stops in the win.
“Our process at home has been good,” Detroit head coach Jeff Blashill said. “We haven’t gotten results at home. Tonight, we got results. We didn’t do everything perfect tonight by any stretch, but one thing we did was score goals. We didn’t score lucky goals, we scored real hockey goals. I was certainly pleased by that.”
With 5:35 remaining in the opening period, Jurco delivered his third of the season after taking a nifty drop pass in the slot from Gustav Nyquist cutting toward the net near the bottom of the right circle. The goal came on just Detroit’s second shot at that point, being outshot 9-2.
Just 3:39 later on a 4-on-4 stint, the Wings struck again. Pavel Datsyuk fed a surging Larkin in the neutral zone, who broke in through the Isles defense and slid a pass across to a trailing Quincey. The defenseman made no mistake in burying his second of the season past Jaroslav Halak.
“Larks made a great play, Pav before that and just tried to wrap her up top shelf,” Quincey said with a laugh. “That’s our breakout, so they just made a great play, I was just under the radar getting up there.”
In the second period, it was more of the same, as the Wings tacked on a pair to go up by four.
Already on the man-advantage, New York’s Johnny Boychuk took Green wide and tripped him up, leading to a lengthy 5-on-3 for Detroit. Then, it was Green who made the Isles pay at 7:32, faking a one-timer from the left circle off the feed from Brad Richards, moving toward the middle to change his angle and send a wrister to the back of the net.
That marked goals in back-to-back games for Green, who has six points in his last nine. Datsyuk drew the secondary assist for his second helper of the afternoon.
Tatar then struck with his 15th of the season, batting home the rebound of an Andreas Athanasiou wrister. Halak was pulled in favor of Jean-Francois Berube following the goal. That sent the Red Wings off the ice after 40 minutes with a 4-0 lead.
Athanasiou, in his first game back since being recalled from Grand Rapids, posted the one assist and was a plus-two in 9:48 of ice time.
“I’m a big fan of [Athanasiou’s], I think he’s a great player, he belongs here and he played great tonight,” Quincey said. “I think he did a lot of little things, stuff that doesn’t show up. He was great on the penalty kill tonight, so that was huge for us.”
There was a near 40-minute delay prior to the start of the third period. The Zamboni picked up one of the net moorings making a pass and dragged it from the goal line to the blue line, causing a huge gash in the ice that needed heavy repairs.
Some players stayed loose by riding stationary bikes, while others watched TV. Team captains Henrik Zetterberg and John Tavares were constantly checking on the ice.
Larkin said he was a little nervous going into the period after having a bad past experience playing for Belle Tire.
“I was playing when I was 14, I broke my ankle with a big rut like that, so it was pretty scary seeing a rut like that, but they did a good job covering it over,” Larkin said. “You didn’t notice much, it didn’t affect play, so you don’t want anyone to get hurt, especially with a rut like that. It could take out a knee or an ankle or something pretty bad, so you don’t want to see that. So I think the safety was first, but we wanted to get the game going.”
Due to the gash and repairs, both teams switched ends at the ten-minute mark of the third period.
Larkin made it a 5-0 lead just 2:56 into the third period, as he sniped his 18th of the season short side past Berube. It marked his sixth multi-point game on the season and second in as many games.
Tavares broke the shutout at 4:07, though, beating Mrazek from the right circle on the power play, but that was the only goal Detroit would allow en route to a 5-1 win.
“The leaders set the tone yesterday in practice and it was a quiet confidence today and we took care of business, so it was good to see that,” Larkin said.