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Red Wings defang Coyotes; look forward to series with Sharks
By Daniel Dullum April 27, 2010 |
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GLENDALE, Ariz. – For the better part of Tuesday afternoon, Detroit’s Jimmy Howard was taking considerable heat on local sports talk radio for the benefit of a pro-Phoenix Coyotes audience. It seems the rookie goaltender made some casual comments after the Red Wings dropped game six of their NHL Stanley Cup opening round playoff series to Phoenix on Sunday. Something about the Coyotes being the benefactors of some lucky bounces in their 5-2 victory at Joe Louis Arena that forced game seven in the Valley of the Sun. Did the white-clad fans give Howard the business? Yes, he said, they did. Did it faze him? Not in the least. “I hear a lot of it was misinterpreted,” Howard said following the Red Wings’ decisive 6-1 victory over Phoenix. “Hey, the whole playoffs, we got lucky bounces too. It was completely blown out of proportion.” Howard was merely following the lead of his veteran teammates, who used their business-like approach to their advantage. “We did have some guys who hadn’t been in a game seven before, but I think the experience really came in handy in a game like this,” said Detroit defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom, who scored two goals two days shy of his 40th birthday. “I thought the team was very relaxed, even after the first period when we had some chances to score on (Phoenix goaltender Ilya) Bryzgalov. The team was very patient out there. Special teams was key again in this series.” “It was good in that it wasn’t like a last-second victory where everybody is sky high,” Red Wings defenseman Brad Stuart, who scored a crucial goal late in the second period, said. “We had some time in the third period to start thinking about San Jose. We’ll try to use that momentum as best we can.” By defeating Phoenix four-games-to-three in front of a sellout crowd of 17,543 at Jobing.com Arena, the Red Wings advance to the Western semifinals for a series against San Jose. “This was tough when the series goes this long,” Stuart said. “It doesn’t compare to winning everything, but it’s a satisfying feeling. But there’s no time to enjoy it. We have to move on to the next series.” “It’s a great feeling to come off a game seven like this playing the way we did on the road,” Lidstrom said. “I think it really helped our team to respond in this series the way we did. “San Jose has two huge lines, and they have a lot of depth on their team too,” he continued. “They play a very sound system and it’s tough to get scoring chances on them, similar to what Phoenix did. They really clog up the neutral zone, so it’s going to be another tough opponent for us.” While winning a seventh game is nothing new for the Red Wings in their storied history, doing it away from home is. The last time Detroit won a game seven on the road it was in the six-team era, on April 9, 1964, with a 6-4 decision over the Chicago Blackhawks in semifinal play. Since then, the Red Wings lost their only other game sevens played on the road – 4-0 at Toronto in the 1964 Stanley Cup final and 3-2 in a first-round series at St. Louis in 1991. All together, the Wings, a Stanley Cup finalist the last two seasons, are 13-8 in seventh games. “It’s a great feeling to win a game seven on the road,” Lidstrom said. “It was a tough series as well. Phoenix was a tough opponent and forced us to a game seven. So we’re happy about the way the team responded tonight.” The loss dropped the Winnipeg Jets/Phoenix Coyotes’ franchise record in NHL seventh games to 0-4. Their last previous game seven was a 1-0 overtime loss to the St. Louis Blues on May 4, 1999. In the World Hockey Association, Winnipeg was 1-1 in game sevens, both in 1977. In that postseason, the Jets defeated the San Diego Mariners 7-3 on April 24, 1977, in the West semifinals and lost to the Quebec Nordiques 8-2 in the Avco Cup championship final on May 26, 1977. Though it’s been 33 years since the Jets/Coyotes franchise has won a game seven, it doesn’t diminish the progress made by a team that was mired in bankruptcy last summer and didn’t hire Dave Tippett as its head coach until a week remained in training camp. The Coyotes are still owned by the NHL, which fished the club out of bankruptcy court last September. The league, meanwhile, is negotiating to sell the Coyotes to a group led by Jerry Reinsdorf, owner of the Chicago White Sox and Bulls. “We’re looking forward to a stronger organization next year,” Tippett said. In a scoreless first period, the Wings outshot Phoenix 17-6, and eventually built a 50-33 shot advantage. “It took a lot of pressure off of me,” Howard said. “As a goalie, the guys in front of me did an awesome job and that pretty much dictated the game. It helped my confidence, for sure. You build on that and move forward.” Tippett referred to the offensive onslaught as “a hurricane, not just a storm,” adding, “We didn’t keep up to their pace the whole game. I thought their top players dictated the pace and we had no answer for them. “Hat’s off to them; Detroit played an unbelievable game. They turned it up to another level we couldn’t get to tonight. The reality is, we just got thumped.” Phoenix defenseman Keith Yandle said, “It’s terrible. It’s a tough pill to swallow. No one here wanted this season to end; we wanted to keep playing. “It just stinks that summer is starting.” Detroit scored first when, with Phoenix’s Martin Hanzel serving a slashing minor, Pavel Datsyuk was parked in the slot and converted a centering pass from behind the goal line by Lidstrom at 2:01 of the second period. Less than two minutes later, Datsyuk swooped in and sent a backhand shot past Bryzgalov’s blocker at 3:42 for his fifth goal of the playoffs. Datsyuk almost had natural hat trick but missed on a point blank shot at 5:00. “That was a key for us, not to change anything,” Stuart said. “We saw that things were going pretty good. We were getting a lot of shots and did a lot of work down in their zone. For us to change anything wouldn’t have been ideal. We just wanted to continue doing what we were doing, hope they would eventually break down, and that’s what happened.” Lidstrom added, “In the first period, I thought we had some great chances on Bryzgalov, but he made some big saves like he did in game six at Detroit. So we really stuck with our game plan tonight. Once we got that first goal, it helped us a lot to settle down. We played with a lot of confidence tonight.” Old power play woes reappeared for the Coyotes, who were 0-for-5 with the man advantage. But after the Red Wings killed off a holding minor to Jonathan Ericsson, Phoenix’s Vernon Fiddler won the faceoff in the right circle and fired a shot past Howard on the stick side for an unassisted goal, cutting the Coyotes deficit to 2-1. Then, Bryzgalov caught fire with a series of acrobatic saves as Detroit began to apply more offensive pressure. At 13:52, Lidstrom sent a one-timer off a long rebound from just inside the blue line past Bryzgalov on the power play to make it 3-1; a goal that effectively took the crowd out the game. “I thought we were very poised with the puck,” Lidstrom said of the Red Wings power play, which converted three of six opportunities. “We had some motion, we were getting the shots through, and when you get the puck on the guys’ sticks, you’re going to get some chances.” Phoenix had a golden opportunity to get back in the game with Stuart and Darren Helm serving concurrent minors. But after the Coyotes used a time out and failed to cash in on the five-on-three situation, Stuart left the penalty box and blew a breakaway shot past Bryzgalov at 19:55, giving Detroit a 4-1 lead going into the second intermission. “Killing off that five-on-three was critical,” Lidstrom said. “It could have been a different game if they scored a goal there.” “When we killed that five-on-three penalty, I’d say that was pretty much the game right there,” Howard said. “When Stuey (Brad Stuart) came out of the penalty box and scored, it was a good feeling.” The onslaught continued in the third period when Todd Bertuzzi poked in a rebound off a shot by Valtieri Filppula. And, with Fiddler serving a double-minor at 11:10, Lidstrom closed out the scoring, and the Coyotes’ season. During the post-game handshake, a Stanley Cup tradition, the crowd, mostly clad in WhiteOut gear gave standing ovation in the final minute of the Coyotes’ notable playoff run. “I think it was an unbelievable season, and our fans did a great job of supporting us,” Yandle said. “We had a good hockey team and all the guys in here had fun, and I personally want to thank all of the fans.” The Coyotes were missing Shane Doan, their captain, for the fourth consecutive game. Doan rammed his right shoulder into the rear boards during game three in Detroit. Tippett said he had “a long talk” with Doan, adding that the veteran winger had suffered a shoulder separation that would need “at least three weeks” to recover. “Shane has a grade three separation, and he was trying to push his recovery into three or four days,” Tippett said. “It was obvious in practice yesterday he couldn’t play. We certainly missed him. He’s one of our top players and it was hard to have him out. “His arm just couldn’t function the right way,” Tippett continued. “One day at practice he looked like Zorro handling his stick!” “As a player, this season didn’t start out the way I would have liked it to, and it didn’t finish the way I would have like it to either,” Doan said. “As a group, it was an unbelievable time, and as a team, we had an unbelievable run. I’m really excited about next year and I’m going to enjoy all the little things about this year.” |
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