Costumed hockey players pose outside Joe Louis Arena in honor of the Detroit Red Wings before Game 3 in a first-round NHL hockey Stanley Cup playoff series against the Tampa Lightning, Sunday, April 17, 2016, in Detroit.
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All the action went down at the end of the third quarter, when Brad Richards of the Wings took his frustrations out on Andrej Sustr with his team 5-2 down by slashing at him.
“We’ve got to stop making some mistakes in our defensive end”, defenseman Niklas Kronwall said. “On the bench, it was ‘Keep going!’ And we did”.
The Wings will start Petr Mrazek in goal for the pivotal Game 3 against the Lightning in Detroit. The Wings could very well be on the outs after this home stand and while we should give them the benefit of the doubt to get at least one win at home I am not happy supporting them and I think the Lightning get it done on the road at a great price.
Tyler Johnson picked up a loose puck along the boards and fed Killorn, who slipped the puck past Jimmy Howard at 8:52 of the third.
Corey Crawford had a strong game in net and Duncan Keith also scored for Chicago in his first game back from a six-game suspension for a unsafe high stick. “They shut us down in the neutral zone”, Tampa Bay forward Ryan Callahan said. This is not the kind of play that is going to help his team. It isn’t working. And drop Joakim Andersson, who hardly saw the ice in Game 2 and bring in either Tomas Jurco, or for a real roll of the dice, how about the offensive potential of a Teemu Pulkkinen, whose one-timer might ignite Detroit’s pathetic power play, now one-for-10 for the series. Blunden, who skated in his third career NHL Playoff game Friday night, said the scuffles were nothing personal but rather an element of the postseason.
The Lightning will have to play much more disciplined in Tuesday’s Game 4 to wrestle back control of this series.
This is the second straight season Detroit and Tampa Bay have met in the opening round. The last two nights, when the game’s got a little dicey, hung in the balance, we’ve found a way. He scored eight goals in the regular season.
Rookie Andreas Athanasiou scored his first National Hockey League playoff goal and captain Henrik Zetterberg scored a goal that withstood two reviews.
They’ll get another crack at trying to do so Sunday night when they host the Tampa Bay Lightning down 0-2.
“He had an immediate impact”, Blashill acknowledged.
There is no denying there is no love lost between the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Detroit Red Wings.
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“It’s always harder when you don’t have many pucks on the net”, Mrazek said. The officiating was perplexing – power play chances were 7-3 in favor of Detroit and there were a few obvious calls on the Red Wings that were missed. “I thought we played well on both sides of the puck”.
