Detroit Red Wings Roundtable
Red Wings 5, Canadiens 4 (OT): "I love the fact that we found a way to get two full points"
The Detroit Red Wings endure a third period rally but beat the Montreal Canadiens 5-4 in overtime.
On Saturday night, the Detroit Red Wings knocked off the Montreal Canadiens in overtime from Bell Centre in Montreal by a 5-4 final score.
The Red Wings jumped out to a 3-0 lead on the strength of first-period goals from Joe Veleno, Christian Fischer, and Daniel Sprong.
However, Justin Barron scored a goal with just seven seconds left in the opening frame to cut into Detroit's lead, then Joel Armia made it 3-2 four minutes and seven seconds into the second while short-handed.
On the same power play, Alex DeBrincat answered with his 200th career goal, bringing the score to 4-2. It was an inversion of a first-period sequence against the Blackhawks on Thursday night, when Detroit scored a short-handed goal then yielded a power play goal on the same minor penalty.
In the third period, Nick Suzuki and Gustav Lindstrom scored to bring Montreal back to level terms and send the game to overtime tied at four.
It took just 54 seconds of overtime for Jake Walman to find the winner for the Red Wings.
"I love the fact that we found a way to get two full points," said coach Derek Lalonde after the game. "Gonna watch the third period back. I didn't hate it. We had chances fairly even. Too many to give up, but we had a lot of looks too. We could've easily got our fifth goal and iced the game. Probably a little fatigue crept into our game...probably a little bit self-inflicted with some mistakes in that third period. Probably a little credit to them. They were pushing, and they were pushing hard."
"Maybe we could've easily got down on ourselves, but it was a good team effort," said Walman of the performance. Those are two good points."
Walman acknowledged that it wasn't a perfect effort from Detroit but that he was nonetheless encouraged by the way his team finished the game, "Definitely got away from our game a little bit. We like to compete for a full 60, but we let it slip a little bit. It was good on the guys for digging deep and getting that point and then the extra point."