Lightning Strike Down Red Wings, 3-1

By Neal Nachman
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Updated: February 3, 2016

Special teams, a season-long issue for the Detroit Red Wings, proved to be their undoing on Wednesday.

The Tampa Bay Lightning scored twice on the power play to defeat the Red Wings 3-1 at Amalie Arena in the first game for both clubs following the All-Star break.

“It’s two big points and losing points like this to this team in our division, you can’t be that happy about it,” Detroit captain Henrik Zetterberg said.

Petr Mrazek, coming off an outstanding January, had his seven-game road winning streak snapped. It was the first time in nine starts, since Jan. 2, that he allowed more than two goals.

The Lightning are 9-1 in their past 10 games. They moved two points ahead of the Red Wings (25-17-8) in the Atlantic Division. The Red Wings wrap up the quick trip to the Sunshine State on Thursday at Florida against the division-leading Panthers.

Ben Bishop made 24 saves to improve to 8-4 vs. the Red Wings during the regular season.

“I thought five-on-five was fairly even, certainly ebbed and flowed,” Red Wings coach Jeff Blashill said. “In the end, on the road, we lost the specialty teams battle 2-0. You can’t lose the specialty teams battle 2-0 and hope to win.”

Trailing by two goals, the Red Wings pulled Mrazek with more than two minutes to play in the third period. They applied some pressure, but couldn’t capitalize.

“When both teams aren’t giving much it’s hard ice,” Blashill said. “This is how it’s been all year, how it’s going to continue to be. So scoring is hard. I thought five-on-five was a bit of a wash. We got to find a way to win the specialty teams battle.”

Gustav Nyquist scored Detroit’s lone goal to tie it 1-1 at 5:06 of the second period. He fired in the fat rebound off a shot by Tomas Tatar. It was Nyquist’s 14th goal, just his second in the past 17 games.

But with Pavel Datsyuk in the penalty box (tripping) for just the second time in 35 games, Tyler Johnson snapped the tie at 6:30, just 22 seconds into the power play.

The Lightning built a two-goal cushion when Nikita Kucherov scored on the power play at 3:23 of the third period. He went to the net and converted a pass from Ondrej Palat.

“I think five-on-five both teams played really tight,” Zetterberg said. “Everyone was above everyone in the neutral zone, didn’t want to give the other team any odd-man rushes, so close games most of the time end up in the special team battles and they won that tonight.”

The Red Wings hadn’t allowed a power-play goal in nearly three weeks. They had killed 18 consecutive opposition power plays, dating back to the first period of their 3-2 victory at Arizona on Jan. 14.

The Red Wings went 0 for 2 on the power play. They have 5 for 34 in their past 13 games (14.7 percent).

“I think we had a couple good looks,” Nyquist said. “I thought (Bishop) made some big saves but obviously we gave them some chances to have some pretty clear-cut scoring chances that they scored on.”

Tampa Bay’s J.T. Brown opened the scoring at 1:23 of the second period on a bang-bang play, rushing the net and converting a nice pass through the crease by Braydon Coburn.

“I thought Petr played well,” Blashill said. “Two of the goals are back doors and the one was a pass out to Kucherov. (Mrazek) was real solid. He played the puck well. We got to score more than one goal for him.”

Tampa Bay has won five consecutive games at home against the Red Wings during the regular season, dating back to Nov. 30, 2011. Detroit won the first two games this season against the Lightning, both at Joe Louis Arena. The teams wrap up their four-game season series March 22 in Tampa Bay.