It was far from a perfect performance, but Detroit traded punches with an Atlantic giant in the Lightning and emerged triumphant in an exhilarating home opener victory
It was far from a perfect performance, but Detroit traded punches with an Atlantic giant in the Lightning and emerged triumphant in an exhilarating home opener victory
Just before the midpoint of the first period, Jake Walman and Joe Veleno found themselves on a 2-on-0 behind the Tampa Bay Lightning's defense. Veleno fed Walman for a one-timer at the back post, but Jonas Johansson turned the shot aside. Within 15 seconds, Tampa connected on a counter-attack, and Victor Hedman fed Steven Stamkos for a one-timer that found its mark. It was the kind of opportunity that doesn't come around often, and instead of producing a Red Wing goal, the chance wound up in the Detroit net.
Except some forty-five minutes of game time later, the Red Wings had another 2-on-0.
This time, it was captain Dylan Larkin barreling down the wing, having stripped Brandon Hagel in the defensive zone and charged past a flat-footed Mikhail Sergachev into the neutral zone.
To his left raced Alex DeBrincat. Behind him, Hagel raced to atone for his turnover on the back-check. Larkin dished left for DeBrincat, and the winger—playing in his first home game back in his home state for the team he grew up cheering on—left no doubt with his one-timed shot, depositing his second goal of the evening.
The goal lifted Detroit to a 5-3 lead, and the clock showed 15:16 to play in the third.
Tampa would keep pressing and cut the lead to one with a Hedman goal with 10:21 to play, but the lead held. As time expired, Mortiz Seider struck the empty net from his own zone. Red Wings 6, Lightning 4. Final.
"Things just went right today," said DeBrincat with a grin at the Red Wings' post-game presser. "Backdoor passes are pretty easy to put in."
It wasn't the home opener head coach Derek Lalonde might have wanted—too many turnovers, too much chaos, too many rush chances heading Ville Husso's way. But for the sold out crowd of 19, 515 at Little Caesars Arena, you couldn't have scripted a better opening night.
"It's the best building in the NHL, and when the fans are going like that—It's gonna be really special when there's big hockey games, and tonight was a little sneak peek of that," said Larkin after the game.
"I loved our offense tonight," said Lalonde. "We just had six or seven really uncharacteristic plays that led to easy offense for them, which was unfortunate. We'll hopefully grow from that."
For much of the opening forty minutes, it was a game of traded chances and end-to-end offense. Detroit carried a significant advantage in shots throughout the evening (the final tally was 42-26), but the Lightning seemed capable of finding joy at their leisure in transition.
Daniel Sprong nabbed the game's opener at the 5:11 mark of the first. DeBrincat pulled a loose puck off the wall and fired it on net. Johansson kept it out by the thinnest of margins, leaving the puck resting behind him on the goal line. Sprong pounced, and, for the second time in as many games, the Dutch-born sniper found himself a greasy goal.
Stamkos' equalizer off Walman and Veleno's failed 2-on-0 bid came three minutes later, and Hagel lifted the Lightning to a 2-1 lead 12:52 into the period—slipping behind the Red Wing defense after Olli Maatta fired a shot into his shin pads.
Tampa's lead—its only lead of the evening—proved short-lived. Within two minutes, DeBrincat had Detroit back to level terms via a high-ice wrist shot that deflected off a Bolt on the way to Johansson before finding twine.
It was a fortunate bounce, but it came at the end of an imperious shift from Larkin, DeBrincat, and their new running mate Lucas Raymond. Larkin and DeBrincat have played together since the first day of training camp, and they have yet to look half as convincing as they did Saturday night at even strength.
"We probably stopped thinking, and we played," said Larkin on what changed, before deferring credit for the work Raymond did hunting down pucks on the forecheck. "[Raymond] hung onto a lot of pucks, and we all did. We weren't really throwing it away and the having to forecheck and back-check. We used our speed and skill, and we had a lot of looks tonight."
The 2-2 score would last until the first intermission. Then, with barely two minutes played in the second, Raymond found a goal of his own.
As Larkin hounded him on the forecheck, Hedman tried to clear up the wall, only for Raymond to intervene. The Swedish winger one-timed a shot powerful enough to beat Johansson from a low danger location.
Of course, it wasn't the best display of pure power from Raymond for the game. That had come in the game's opening five minutes, when he sent Michael Eyssimont flying head over skates into the Red Wing bench to the delight of the home crowd.
After Raymond's goal, the game returned to the pattern of call-and-response chances at either end of the rink—a state that suited Stamkos and Tampa just fine. On another rush opportunity that blossomed from a Detroit turnover, the Lightning captain wired a wrist shot off the bar and in to tie the score at three just passed the game's midpoint.
Within five minutes, though, the Red Wings found another answer, this time from J.T. Compher. The University of Michigan product deflected a Seider point shot past Johansson from point blank range, and the Red Wings had a 4-3 lead.
That scoreline would hold until DeBrincat's breakthrough early in the third. The goalscorer was quick to dismiss the finish as the easy byproduct of a back-door feed, but he'd had precious little net to shoot at, and he'd had to find his mark having entered the offensive zone at top speed an instant prior.
Through 40 minutes, the Red Wings had given the capacity crowd cause for excitement—back-and-forth, physical, entertaining hockey against the team and franchise that has been NHL's gold standard for nearly a decade.
DeBrincat's second brought something else, something more, something new. As the new and old goal horn (lifted from Joe Louis Arena and deployed at LCA for the first time Saturday) sounded, it was impossible not to think that many more goals shared by the Michigander duo would soon follow. This wouldn't just be a fun evening; it would be a winning evening.
In practical terms, the two-goal margin empowered Detroit to force Tampa to beat them in-zone, with the Red Wings dropping often into a 1-2-2 shell as the third ticked away. The rush chances that abounded for the Lightning for the opening two periods seemed to dry up.
Still, Tampa wouldn't let Detroit walk away with two points and a stress-free third period. With the Lightning a man to the good after Jake Walman was assessed a double minor for roughing following a fracas in Husso's crease, Hedman slipped a wrist shot through heavy traffic and past Husso on the power play.
The goal came with a shade over ten minutes to play in regulation, and the good feelings brought about by DeBrincat's second were in jeopardy of turning back into frustration.
However, Husso and the Detroit defense held firm, and Seider's empty netter—scored with no time left on the clock—provided the end punctuation on an exhilarating evening on hockey at Little Caesars Arena.
It was an imperfect performance to be sure, with Tampa offering the Red Wings with an unwelcome reminder of the perils of poor management against the NHL's elite. As Lalonde said, it was a "tough game to read because it was so chaotic."
Yet through that chaos and through those imperfections, it was—beyond any shadow of doubt—a night for Red Wings fans to savor.
The top line looked every bit as dynamic as they might have fantasized. Four of the Red Wings' six goals came from the sticks of newcomers. And, most of all, Detroit traded punches with the Atlantic Division's bully-in-chief and came out of the brawl triumphant.
It's too soon for talk of playoff races, but there is also no need to speak about moral victories. Instead, the revamped Red Wings delivered a statement victory in their first opportunity to play before their home fans of the 2023-24 season.
After the game, Lalonde reflected on the way his team's off-season acquisitions helped spark the rest of the line-up—"a little more skill, it's amazing what it can add to your group."
It's far too early to determine the ceiling of what that newfound skill has brought, but, for now, it has provided Red Wing fans with genuine delight at the possibility of what may come next. And in a market that hasn't seen a playoff game since 2016, there's not much more you could ask for out of a home opener—odd man rushes against be damned.