It was another night where the Detroit Red Wings felt they played well enough to earn at least a point in the standings, but unfortunately there aren’t any points handed out for good effort.
Detroit’s two-game winning streak was halted by the Philadelphia Flyers on Wednesday night, losing 4-3 in a back-and-forth affair. They started well, outshooting the Flyers by a 7-1 margin – a stark contrast to being badly outshot the night before against the New York Islanders.
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“I thought we played better than yesterday,” captain Henrik Zetterberg said. “It was a well-played, tight game, I think. Both teams, lots of chances. You want to get at least one point out of it.”
Martin Frk, Mike Green and Gus Nyquist all tallied goals for the Red Wings. Frk’s goal came with 1.3 seconds left in the first period to tie the score after Dale Weise had given the Flyers the lead.
But, despite the strong start, the team clearly started to show signs of fatigue in the third period, only getting off four shots on goal.
“It feels like we left two points out there tonight,” said Howard, who made 27 saves. “Maybe we ran out of gas there. We were only able to muster four shots in the third. But for the most part, we did a pretty good job.”
Detroit surrendered the winning goal to the Flyers thanks to a big rebound, giving forward Sean Couturier all he needed to bury it past Howard for the 4-3 lead. Howard made a great save but didn’t have any defenseman nearby to clear the puck away. Head coach Jeff Blashill attested to the errors his team made and the need to clean it up, especially in a hostile road environment.
They taxed us in the D-zone for sure,” coach Jeff Blashill said. “They certainly had some good chances off that. You know, you go on the road, you don’t have room for error. We made a couple errors. We have to make sure we are tighter than that.”
“These are hard games,” said Martin Frk, who scored his second goal in as many games.. “We knew they are good offensively and they score a couple nice goals. You’ve got to stick with it the whole game, we cannot let up and give them easy chance. It’s kind of frustrating.”
