A 29-save shutout from Alex Lyon along with Andrew Copp's 100th career goal helps lift the Red Wings to a 3-0 victory over the visiting Flyers
A 29-save shutout from Alex Lyon along with Andrew Copp's 100th career goal helps lift the Red Wings to a 3-0 victory over the visiting Flyers
Detroit, MI—From start to finish, Thursday night's game between the Detroit Red Wings and Philadelphia Flyers was a celebration of sporting excellence in the state of Michigan.
A delegation of newly crowned national champions—Donovan Edwards, Rod Moore, Colston Loveland, and Will Johnson—from the University of Michigan football team began the festivities, sounding the horn to set the stage for the opening puck drop. Then, in the game's final minutes, with the night's work all but done, chants rang out around Little Caesars Arena of "Let's Go Lions" and then more pointedly "Jared Goff."
In between, the Red Wings—led by 29 saves from Alex Lyon and Andrew Copp's 100th career goal—shut out a direct rival in the Eastern Conference playoff race to improve to 25-18-5 on the season with a 3-0 victory. It's still just January, but it was a performance that evoked the high-stakes environments in which the Wolverines and Lions have thrived of late.
"A couple of Lions are back in the room, the Michigan guys are back in the room, it's the energy, the excitement...of course you can feel the energy, and it's awesome," said coach Derek Lalonde at his post-game press conference. "This is an unbelievable time in Detroit, and I'm glad we're pitching in a little bit, playing at a really high level. How can you not be energized?"
It was a tight-checking, physical evening of hockey, with the hostilities not confined to within the whistles. And in that environment, Detroit found a way through a conservative first period to an offensive outburst in the second, before managing its advantage in the third to see out the shutout.
"These are the kind of meaningful games we want to play, we want to be in, and we want to battle hard," explained Moritz Seider. "I think today was a great example of it...We played a really solid team, and we shut them down defensively, and I think we could hopefully remember that in the long run."
The Red Wings' offense came in an eight-minute and 31 second span to start the period.
The first came from the persistence of Detroit's newly reunited first line: Alex DeBrincat, Dylan Larkin, and Lucas Raymond. Upon gaining the zone off the rush, DeBrincat took the puck from Raymond and fired a shot that was deadened by Philadelphia before it made it to the net. Raymond got to the rebound and patiently found a lane to get a shot of his own off, but Flyers goaltender Samuel Errson turned that aside. However, Larkin was there to finish the play, burying the rebound.
The second was a second surprise even to its scorer, with Moritz Seider—who spent much of the night in the thick of various post-whistle skirmishes—sending a pass toward DeBrincat at the back post, which was deflected up off a Philadelphia stick and past Ersson.
The third was the product of hard work. With Detroit short-handed, Michael Rasmussen made the effort to kill off extra clock on a Seider boarding minor below the Philadelphia goal line. After holding off then spinning away from a pair of Flyers, Rasmussen teed up Andrew Copp, who buried a one-timer past Erssson.
That was all the offense the Red Wings would need and then some. While in between the first and second goals, Klim Kostin fought Nicolas Deslauriers, proving Detroit's willingness to pay a different sort of price for its eventual victory.
"He told us we shouldn't be scared of anyone out there, and I think that's a great message we should take forward," said Seider of Kostin's scrap.
In the third, the Red Wings protected their lead with a combination of clean exits, sound defending, and reliable goaltending from Lyon when Philadelphia did get a look at his net. Though Detroit mustered just five shots of its own in the third, it's work in its own end was sound enough to preclude the Flyers from even bothering to chase a miraculous comeback by pulling their goalie late.
"The mentality [can be] that you think the fourth goal is gonna ice it, when in reality not giving them the first goal is gonna ice it," said Lalonde, adding that he considered the team's first five to seven minutes of the frame one of its best starts to a third period it has had all season.
"The message into the Tampa game [was] this push we've had of late has earned you guys important games towards the second half of the season," added Lalonde. "And we're gonna have to learn to get comfortable in them. We're in the midst of it now, and we handled it fairly well tonight."
If as Seider said, the Red Wings want to play in games like tonight's, then their reward for winning them will be as Lalonde described: more of just such games. If tonight's result is any indicator, it is a challenge the team is ready to embrace. And after all, this is Detroit. Look around, and you can't help but see an outward expression of good feelings born of recent playoff success.
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