Fashionably Late: Penguins 2, Red Wings 1 (SO)

Postgame Thoughts

Let’s start today with a quick history lesson:

Did you know that almost 100 years ago, the National Hockey Association decided that hockey games should be split into three 20 minute periods?

Would it surprise anyone that an informal poll of the Red Wings (and by informal poll we mean watching the first two periods of today’s game) shows that almost 100% of the team are not familiar with this concept?

As Babbles would say, the team didn’t “get started on time” yet again, and it led to a perfectly painful 40 minutes of hockey before the pendulum started to swing back in the direction of the Wings. The only reason the game was in reach by the time the Wings decided they were ready to crank up the intensity was because Jimmah put the team on his back (yet again) and steered away 28 shots through the first two periods. It was painful to watch the Wings only muster 11 shots through 40 minutes, while the Pens peppered Jimmah at will at Crysob netted the first goal of the game.

Throw out the first 40, and the Wings played an excellent game. The third period was uptempo and intense, with the Wings roaring out of the gate and putting the Pens on their heels with a flurry of activity and scoring chances. The intensity would finally payoff just over halfway through the period as Brad Stuart lasered a shot on net that was deflected in by Danny Cleary. Once tied up, the game quickly took on the feel of a Stanley Cup Final game from the past two years, with  chances at each end of the ice and an overtime that was just as entertaining. Sad to see this one go to the shootout, but at least the Wings salvaged a point from the carnage of the first two periods.

All that said, I’m still not feeling great about the road trip. San Jose, Anaheim, Los Angeles and St. Louis are all solid teams and can bury the Wings very quickly if they show the least bit of hesitation. It’s an incredibly important week ahead and the Wings need to bring it for every one of the 240 minutes of road hockey ahead of them. The margin for error is incredibly slim and everybody is looking for the chance to be the team to knock out the defending Western champ. The excuses are running out too. Tomas Holmstrom returns to the lineup on Tuesday. Johan Franzen is back on the 9th.

It’s all hands on deck. Time to put up or shut up.

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Production Charts

*The season totals are updated here and here.

Line Production

Tags: Brad Stuart, Dan Cleary, Johan Franzen, Pittsburgh Penguins, The Jimmah Howard Experiment, Tomas Holmstrom