The Detroit Red Wings fall to Senators in uninspiring performance

The Detroit Red Wings are a better team than the Ottawa Senators, although they didn’t play like it last night.

The Ottawa Senators rolled into Motown to take on the Detroit Red Wings. The Wings should have been able to win that game especially after the performance they mustard in Washington on Tuesday. With two days off I expected the Wings to come out punching, they did not.

Well, Michael Rasmussen did throw a few, but he has no business scrapping, the Wings already have placed Anthony Mantha in the shelf with a broken hand that occurred in a scrap. Ras was coming to the aid of Luke Glendening, who turned his back to the hit coming and was belted head first into the boards.

Ben Harpur is a much more seasoned fighter than Rasmussen, even Mickey Redmond mentioned to the viewers, he (Ras) probably doesn’t know who he dropped them with here. Harpur landed about six strong blows before Mike was able to regain his balance and try to throw a couple of his own, although he was mostly just hanging on for dear life turning the exchange.

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The Sens got the first two goals of the night, Chris Tierney opened the scoring and oddly enough closed the scoring as he hit the empty net which provided the Sens with the dagger and insurance tally. Tierney was a player that came to the Sens as part of the Erik Karlsson deal, way of San Jose.

Thomas Chabot is a 21-year-old star on the back-end for the Sens. He leads the NHL in points from all defensemen. He scored his 9th goal of the season last night beating Jimmy Howard from the point. Chabot has 34 points on the young season and is on his way to being a Norris Trophy candidate.

Glendening scored a nifty backhand goal in tight at the end of the first period to get the Detroit Red Wings on the board. He roofed it over the shoulder of Craig Anderson; assists came from Bert and Rasmussen.

Dylan Larkin tied the game on a breakaway goal as he exited the box after serving a questionable penalty call. Fran Nielsen found Larkin with a beautiful stretch pass and once again, like he’s done so often this season Larks did not miss. This kid is turning into a star in front of our eyes. We need to enjoy this kids development as we go. I know the team is struggling throughout an up and down season, but Larkin is a player that gives us a reason to watch each and every night.

Mark Stone who is the Sens top forward found a puck sitting behind Howard and buried it with enthusiasm into the gaping net. Howard couldn’t squeeze a five-hole shot that squeaked through the wickets. Some including myself yelled “leaky.” Kronwall was near Stone but didn’t react nearly as swiftly to clear the puck before Stone banged it in. Instead of doing a drive-by always stop at the net, you will get rewarded once and a while. It would end up being the game-winning goal.

The Detroit Red Wings power-play has fallen way off. They have been less than 8% successful over the last dozen games, ranking them the worst in the NHL over that period of time. I mean the NHL is a special teams game anymore, if you can’t net any of your man advantage opportunities you won’t too to successful winning many games. The absence of Mike Green won’t help this cause moving forward.

The penalty kill has remained respectful but not nearly as good as it was early on during the season. The PK oddly enough ranks second in the league on the road yet near the bottom at home which seems extremely odd.

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The Detroit Red Wings are back at it tonight on Long Island. Yes, another back to back with little time to iron out any wrinkles from last night. Hopefully, the club shows up to New York in a bad mood.

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