Defenseman James Wisniewski suffered a serious injury tearing his anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. “Ever since the introduction there, I was kind of feeling the nerves, and to put that one home, I started to feel comfortable and I thought my play started to pick up”. While Detroit suffers similar losses, their offense took care of things during their 4-0 win against the Maple Leafs Friday night.
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The Red Wings come to town in good spirits after a 4-0 victory Friday in their first game under Blashill against visiting Toronto, led by former coach Mike Babcock.
During a break in the game when Detroit were up 2-0, Babcock and his accomplishments with the Red Wings – a Stanley Cup and 525 wins – were shown on the videoboards and the crowd gave him a standing ovation. “He was a big part of this organization for 10 years, had a few great years here. (Cam) Ward couldn’t do it in the third”. The Detroit Red Wings weren’t about to argue with the results. “We controlled the whole first period”, said the Canes’ Eric Staal, who had nine shots in the game. I don’t want this to be a Babcock bash session but the evidence doesn’t lie.
Then at 6:36, with the Red Wings energized, Pulkkien redirected a shot from Tomas Tatar, giving the Red Wings a sudden lead. Abdelkader’s hot start suggests that last season was not a fluke for the hard-nosed, hard charging winger. It needs to be stamped out early, whether by means of defensemen remaining more defensively-focused or through a little more chemistry between the players.
The puck flew out front, where Rask batted the puck past Mrazek for the tying goal.
He stopped them all – and, for that matter, everything he faced until the final minutes of the second.
They didn’t have to wait long for an opportunity to tie the game with the Hurricanes in third period.
– 2015 second rounder Travis Dermott had an assist in Erie’s 7-2 win over the Niagara Ice Dogs.
Turns out they needed it, after Justin Faulk made it a one-goal game by scoring with 2.1 seconds left. “It was nice to get a couple of goals”, Pulkkinen said to Fox Sports Detroit’s John Keating. Since I’ve made that decision, I sleep real good and I feel real good about the decision I made, and we’ve moved on. “We won the game and that’s what matters”. You don’t have to be the second coming of Toe Blake to figure out Larkin is one of those players, and realize how fortunate the Red Wings are he fell to them at 15th overall in the ’14 draft. Losing DeKeyser hurts but it’s not a killer for the Red Wings. Prior to the beginning of this season, he was a fixture behind Detroit’s bench after the 2004-05 National Hockey League season ending lockout.
Mrazek finished the night with 44 saves on 47 shots.
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After recording career highs in goals (23), assists (21) and points (44) last season, Abdelkader came out of the gate on fire scoring a hat trick in the first game of the season.
