Detroit Red Wings rake up the Toronto Maple Leafs

The Detroit Red Wings climber within one game of .500 with a 3-1 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Wings took it to the leafs off the rush and ended a three-game losing streak

The Detroit Red Wings have had a difficult run over the last few weeks. They came into Friday night’s tilt with a 1-5-5 record in their last eleven games. Even with that unfortunate run, the Red Wings are still within striking distance of a playoff spot.

The Atlantic Division has two very good teams, the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Toronto Maple Leafs. The gap between those two teams and the rest of the division is significant. The Red Wings faced one of the two elite teams, the Maple Leafs Friday night at Little Ceasars Arena.

The Maple Leafs opened the scoring with a set play off the face off. The Red Wings Andreas Athanasiou lost the draw in the right circle to the Leafs Dominic Moore. Moore slid the puck over to his left winger Matt Martin, who immediately fed the left defenseman for a one-timer. Leafs right winger Kasperi Kapanen stepped between the point man and the net, bringing Lewis Witkowski into the circle with him.

Andreas Borgman buried his third goal of the season on a thunderous slapper from the point as Moore and Martin crashed the net. The combination of Witkowski and Kapanen in front of goaltender Jimmy Howard effectively screened the shot. He had very little chance on the play. The Leafs took a 1-0 lead at 18:02 in the first period.

That lead held until 14:39 in the second period. Defenseman Danny DeKeyeser brought the puck out of the Red Wings zone and passed to captain Henrick Zetterberg before joining the rush. Zetterberg pushed the puck past Leafs defenseman Roman Polak at the top of the left circle but was unable to slide past his man. The rushing DeKeyser stepped up and found the net over the glove side shoulder of Leafs netminder Curtis McElhinney with a great snapshot from the slot. The score was tied at one.

With both teams special teamers tired, one minute into a Leafs power play, Wings defenseman Trevor Daley carried the puck up the ice. A half-hearted attempt to get back by the Leafs power play, two of whom opted for a line change rather than an effort to defend their net, left Daley and Dylan Larkin on a two on one against Leafs defender Jake Gardiner.

Gardiner took away the pass and left his goalie to deal with the goalless Daley. Larkin took an incredibly wide line, to set himself up for a one-timer at a wide open net. Daley is goalless no more after ripping a wrist shot over McElhinney, who was also cheating toward a cross-ice feed to Larkin that never came. Instead, Daley fed the scoreboard. He put the puck over McElhinney’s blocker into the short side top corner for a short-handed goal. The Wings took a 2-1 lead at 8:38 in the second period, and never relinquished it.

Detroit had several grade-a scoring chances in the second and third, but Howard stood tall. The Wings were a couple of quarter inches from two more goals, as Larkin and Athanasiou each ripped shots off the crossbar from the left side of the net near or below the bottom of the circle. McElhinney was clearly leaving the short side open up high. Henrick Zetterberg took advantage of this with just over ten minutes remaining in the third. He wound up for what appeared to be a bad angle slap shot, and the Leafs netminder hugged the short side. Zetterberg, instead of firing a low percentage shot, fired the puck to rushing winger Thomas Tatar. Tatar stretched the twine with a nifty tap-in goal at the far side of the crease. He lifted the puck over McIlhenny’s outstretched pad to put the game on ice.

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The Red Wings have eked out at least a point out in more than half of their last twelve games. Despite only winning two of those games, they are still in the playoff hunt. They are currently three points behind the Boston Bruins for third in the Atlantic Division. The Bruins have three games in hand over the Wings, however, making Detroit’s run to the playoffs more difficult. They need to start winning some of their overtime opportunities if they hope to turn the year around. If they had won half of the overtime losses on their record they would be tied for third in the Atlantic.