Red Wings 2, Senators 3 (OT): Flat Effort Dooms Detroit in Final Game Before Break
Detroit's stellar month of January ends with a loss, but a point in the standings earned through defensive effort provides a reminder of the path forward after the bye week
Mandatory Credit: Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports - Red Wings 2, Senators 3 (OT): Flat Effort Dooms Detroit in Final Game Before BreakDetroit, MI—The fans at Little Caesars Arena were ready for fireworks before the game began. As Monica Notaro sang "O Canada," the arena's denizens—with thoughts of Dylan Larkin's injury (and its perpetrator Mathieu Joseph) the last time the Ottawa Senators were in town still lingering—directed a litany of four-letter words at Joseph, plainly audible in an otherwise muted arena for the anthems.
What followed lived up neither to the fans' bloodlust nor to Larkin's pre-game expectation of a "good hockey game". A close hockey game, sure, and a competitive one, but hardly an exciting one. And at the end, the Detroit Red Wings fell 3-2 in an overtime in which they never touched the puck, an ill-fitting conclusion to a month in which Detroit reaffirmed the seriousness of its playoff aspirations.
"It was a tight-checking game, and we didn't make many mistakes," said Larkin after the game. "They get a goal coming out of the penalty box and make it 2-1, and we tie it up 2-2, so it was a pretty low event night. We kept them to the outside, and there was a lot of play on the outside tonight by both teams."
As the Red Wing captain outlined, the visiting Senators took the lead in the second period when Brady Tkachuk emerged straight from the penalty box and into a breakaway, which he converted, going to the roof of the net past Alex Lyon's glove.
Detroit had just 14 shots through two periods, and, still trailing 2-1 and heading to the box after Christian Fischer was whistled for tripping Tim Stutzle. From the bench, Derek Lalonde made his belief that Stutzle had sold the call clear, miming a diving motion (and throwing in some four-letter words of his own for added color).
However, instead of sinking the Red Wings, a successful penalty kill segued Detroit straight into an equalizer, with Larkin burying a shot from high ice as Fischer took away Jonas Korpisalo's eyes. The goal brought Larkin's present point streak to 12 games.
With both teams appearing content to take a sole point from regulation and dispute the extra one in overtime, the third period concluded without incident. After Claude Giroux took the opening face-off of OT from Larkin, Ottawa never relinquished the puck—retrieving rebounds to maintain possession and more than content to double back to its own end with the puck.
After two minutes and five seconds of owning the puck (if not quite creating dangerous chances on Lyon's net), Shane Pinto slid into a Thomas Chabot centering pass to re-direct it home for the game-winning goal.
Despite the loss, it was hardly a devastating night for the Red Wings. Instead, it brought the team to the conclusion of a 9-2-2 month of January, good for 20 points in the standings, a franchise best since January 2012. As Larkin explained from the post-game podium, the Detroit locker room was more focused on continuing the month's success than on the evening's outcome.
"That's the message in there right now—we got a point tonight and a pretty solid month for our team," he said. "We've got a little bit of break, and throughout the season, you get bumps and bruises and illness, whatever it may be, so it's a good break for a lot of guys, and we'll come back refreshed in February. It's another tough month, so gotta be ready to go."
Lalonde offered a similar message, stressing that it was his team's defending that provided the foundation for the Red Wings' January success and that the team's focus will have to be on maintaining that defensive intensity when play resumes in February.
"Two goals in 60 minutes got us the point," Lalonde said. "It's a committed group to playing the right way. We'll have to get that back. The one negative about the break is where sometimes when you're away for that long, you forget or you don't maybe have the muscle memory of how hard you were actually competing, so we'll have to get that back in a couple practices."
So, in the end, while Wednesday night's game was neither a thriller nor a victory, a successful month of January softens that blow, and the one standings point gleaned from a tight-checking defensive performance (and 22 more stops from Lyon) provides a reminder of the path forward.
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