Red Wings 7, Flyers 6: Patrick Kane Carries Detroit Through Chaos and Out of Losing Streak
Patrick Kane guides Detroit to a 5-1 lead, then ensures the Red Wings recover from a 6-5 deficit with a shootout goal to end the team's losing skid
Detroit, MI—The game rested on his stick, but he was in no hurry. He'd scored two goals in the game's opening 10 minutes, sparking what would become a five-goal first period, but not even that was enough to see the slumping Red Wings to a regulation victory.
So there he was in the shootout with a chance to clinch a win his team had to have—not just for the two points in the standings, not just to break a four-game losing streak, but to stave off the existential dread that would've have risen from four stretching to five on home ice with a 5-1 lead blown along the way.
Patrick Kane—upon whom the nickname "Showtime" has been bestowed for the flair he's shown in decisive moments—didn't skate toward Carter Hart in the Flyers' crease. Instead, he routed himself toward the corner. He kept the puck out in front of his blade with no need for stick-handling until he reached the face-off dot, where he snapped into action—a flurry of dekes then a tantalizing drift across the slot with the puck primed and exposed in shooting position.
The moment Hart leaned at Kane's offering, the newest Detroit Red Wing fired with a flick of his wrists, picking out a sliver of net just below and beyond Hart's glove and clinching a 7-6 shootout win.
For Kane and for the Red Wings, it was a moment of personal and collective relief. Detroit was 1-7 in the three-time Cup champion's first eight games with the Red Wings, and there were those who—struggling to distinguish correlation from causation—placed the skid at his feet, whether from willful ignorance or lingering grudges from his days in Chicago.
It was Kane's fault Detroit's defensive zone coverage had collapsed, Kane's fault the Red Wings' goaltending ran dry, Kane's fault that injuries ravaged the lineup. On Friday night, there could be no doubt: It was Kane who carried Detroit through chaos and back to the win column.
"Obviously the record hasn't been great since I was inserted into the lineup, so nice to be part of a win here," he said from the post-game podium. "I just try to go into every game and try to figure out ways to get the puck as much as possible and make plays and be responsible defensively, and that's pretty much all you can control."
The end of any prolonged losing streak is bound to evoke more relief than triumph, but that is especially so when it comes in a game in which the streak-breakers in question turn a 5-1 advantage in the first period into a 6-5 third-period deficit.
That sixth Philadelphia goal threatened to be a moment of profound despair for the home fans.
It came a minute and 23 seconds after Scott Laughton tied the game when James Reimer failed to squeeze an innocuous point shot and Laughton cleaned up the loose change from the crease. The go-ahead goal was a reprisal of Reimer's blunder; this time, Owen Tippett sent a wrister at Reimer, which the goaltender thought he'd smothered but had in fact leaked out between his pads where Tippett banged it home himself.
However, thanks to a bad angle Dylan Larkin equalizer (just 37 seconds after Tippett gave the Flyers their first lead of the night) and Kane's shootout heroics Red Wing fans needn't contemplate the depths to which they'd have sunk had Tippett's goal proved the winner.
Instead, as they filed out of the building, the denizens of Little Caesars Arena could revel in a long-time rival who'd joined their ranks and jump-started then clinched the slump-busting win.
Over a span of three minutes and 46 seconds in the first period, Kane scored twice—both of them clean-up jobs around the net, neither spectacular enough to crack his illustrious highlight reel.
Just 44 seconds after the second of those goals, the Flyers clawed back a goal of their own—perhaps the first indication that the evening wouldn't prove as easy as it seemed momentarily.
However, if nothing else, Kane's decisiveness around the net was enough to instill his reeling team with a modicum of confidence, even if that confidence would waver before the night was done.
"I think sometimes when you're in a slump, you just need something to go your way," Kane said. "Obviously, we had a great start, but it starts becoming maybe 5-3, 5-4, maybe a little doubt creeps in, but I thought we did a great job of hanging in there. Big goal by Larks to make it 6-6, and then get another point in the shootout, so nice to get a win and feel good about ourselves."
Now with seven points in his last three games, Kane looks a lot closer to the scorer who was instrumental to those three Cups in Chicago than anyone could reasonably expected of a player returning from hip resurfacing surgery. And despite the early results breaking in the wrong direction, Kane only feels more confident in the team he selected for his comeback with increased exposure.
"Just watching the team even when I wasn't playing, and then when I was here, it's a winning group," he asserted. "I feel like there's a good culture here and a lot of positives. I think sometimes you go down with some injures and you need to find a way to make it a little bit of a simpler game when you're missing some key guys, and that was probably a test we failed, but I think we got everyone back now. Even [David Perron] coming back in the lineup and playing a really unselfish game—changing in the offensive zone and trying to keep momentum that way. That's big for our team. Sometimes the little things go a long way."
In the end, the chaotic, exhilarating, maddening 7-6 win feels like the moment at which Kane became a Red Wing. On Friday, he was not just a novelty, an oddity, or a side show but rather a central figure in the push to snap Detroit's losing streak.
Patrick Kane—once a loathsome figure in these parts—will help lead the NHL's proudest American franchise in its push to return to the postseason.
"Even when we were down 6-5, you could hear some chants from the crowd trying to pump us up, so it's a great crowd," he said of the crowd he made his own. "I thought it was awesome tonight, really special to be a part of."
Those ovations will only grow louder if Kane can keep scoring and the Red Wings can keep winning.
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