Detroit Red Wings Shut Off Lighting, Win 4-0

On Thursday, all hope was lost among the Detroit Red Wings faithful, listening to the sports talk radio stations the series was over. Among most Wings fans saying “They can’t win in Tampa” – “Tampa will blow them out” the Wings really were getting out skated in the first.

Tampa came out like most would expect a team to come out in their home rink, determined. The Wings continued to whether the storm of the Lightning and closed down on the angles and clogged the neutral zone which caused the Lighting to play a game they don’t like to play.

Babcock is adamant that he doesn’t believe in-game to game momentum, and said after the game four loss where they blew a 2-0 lead late simply saying it was a “Gut punch.”

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Babcock responded like a fighter would do, the gut punch didn’t cause a knockout, nor did it cause him to coach scared. He responded by making adjustments and simply out coaching the Tampa Bay head man in Jon Cooper.

This game looked like it went in the first of game four, scoreless however Detroit was given a distinctive advantage of being on the power play.

A great hit by Abdelkader started the motion where Kronwall beautifully passed the puck to Riley Sheahan and he didn’t miss the one timer beat the big Ben Bishop and we went into the first intermission with Wings leading 1-0.

In the second, Detroit came out more responsive to the Lightning pressure simply limiting the space of Tampa Bay and giving them no room what so ever to move and it work tremendously well.

Tampa Bay didn’t get a shot 19 minutes and 18 seconds from the end of the first to middle way, through the second whether you credit the Red Wings or say Tampa didn’t play like they could being brutally honest it was a mixture of both.

Detroit Red Wings /

Detroit Red Wings

Simply put, Detroit played their best defensive game in quite some time, definitely all series long.

Drew Miller scored late in the second period which made it 2-0 heading into the third.

In the third, it looked like Tampa came out with their guns blazing getting opportunities, but yet again the young Petr Mrazek stood tall.

Petr Mrazek is only 23, but he isn’t playing like it especially in the third where he was tested from almost every angle.

Detroit delivered the blow to the Lighting by scoring on a Power Play, where Datsyuk worked his magic.

So what has been the biggest turning point in this series?

This series has been tough because the team that wins usually has done great on special teams in the two games the Lighting won, they scored their only two power play goals.

Detroit held them scoreless in Saturday’s game where they just couldn’t get the Power Play going, even trying to get one time shots outside the slot, but even doing so they couldn’t get enough traffic in front of the net to disturb the young net-minder.