Tomas Tatar scored on a breakaway 2:04 into overtime to lift the Detroit Red Wings to a 4-3 victory over the Ottawa Senators on Monday night.
Advertisement
The Red Wings hope it was a breakout performance offensively after having scored two goals or fewer in six consecutive games and 11 of 13. With Pavel Datsyuk back in the lineup, the previous set up didn’t produce goals, which in turn has them dropping in the standings. If you ask a die-hard Red Wings fan to list his most hated teams, I highly doubt the Capitals would even make the top five.
After nine minute of the opening period, the two teams started to feel out each other but didn’t open the throttle on offense. They went after one another testing out the defenses. So without further ado, let’s have a look at this week’s Clash of the Rivals, the Washington Capitals and the Detroit Red Wings.
For a team like Detroit that’s in a transition year with Blashill coming in, Tomas Tatar, Gustav Nyquist, Dylan Larkin, etc., have been excellent.
A penalty to Larkin for interference with just more than five minutes left in the period produced a goal off the stick of Mike Hoffman.
Mrazek lost his last start, but had given up just one goal in the 133 minutes prior while facing 73 shots. Both took eight shots against one another with Ottawa improving better on the faceoff winning 13 of 21.
After going a season-long four straight days without a game, the Capitals should be well rested as they begin the busiest stretch of their regular season. Finally, after a solid penalty kill, Brad Marchand broke up the ice, and centered the puck to a wide open Torey Krug, who buried the puck for a 3-0 lead.
Advertisement
Minuses: The challenge for the Red Wings is to get their “D” to move up more in the rush and attack in the offensive zone. Detroit finished the period strong shooting 13 shots against the Senators while allowing them seven. Notably, there were a couple times where Borowiecki tried to force the puck up the zone into places where the Senators couldn’t support the puck, which really shows the importance of Wideman being a puck-mover on that pairing; if Cowen was there, that’s two defensemen making consistently poor decisions that don’t result in anything positive for the Senators. From then on it was a fight to the finish with the Senators looking for the tying goal while the Red Wings did everything in their power to prevent it. Unfortunately for the Caps, things did not quite go the way they planned as they were swept by the Wings. Riley Sheahan added his third goal of the season and Mike Green had two assists. “He threw the puck at me and I had a breaker and I had chose to shoot at the blocker and there it was”. They had more urgency and I thought we came back to fight that.
