Andreas Athanasiou scores twice in another Detroit Red Wings loss

The Detroit Red Wings certainly played well enough to win tonight, but that was not the case. The Montreal Canadiens rolled into Motown early this morning, 4 am to be exact and left with a 3-2 victory.

The Canadiens played at home last night and lost to the Wild 1-0. They had some traveling issues leaving Montreal as a snowstorm hit just before their departure. They got into Detroit quite late or early this morning to be exact. The hope was the Detroit Red Wings could jump out and wear down the tired Habs tonight but it didn’t go that way. For the seventh straight game, the Habs beat the Wings.

Jimmy Howard is now 1-6-1 in his last 8 starts. His save percentage has held during the stretch near .910%. He has not been the problem, the team in front of him is playing up and down much too often. Mostly down over the last 5 weeks.

Andreas Athanasiou scored a pair of goals from the exact same spot on the ice. Both goals were at the bottom of the right circle. The left-handed shooting AA was able to score from the same spot in two different ways.

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The first one was a two on one with Darren Helm. Athanasiou was looking at Helm the whole way, almost as if he didn’t see the net and blasted a shot past Niemi. Niemi didn’t even move as the puck whistled past his glove. I think Andreas was clearly looking towards Helm as if he was waiting to make a pass froze the goaltender.

The second goal was in the third period on the power-play. Yes I said power-play, the Detroit Red Wings haven’t scored a goal on the PP in five straight contests going into the game yet they finally found a way to knock one in.

The Detroit Red Wings were jamming away on the power-play when Athanasiou found a rebound and absolutely blasted a slap shot from the bottom of that right circle. The Wings were trying to mix things up on the power-play, they rotated guys in the one-timer position. Dennis Cholowski had time there rather than manning the point. Filip Hronek looked terrific manning the point.

Montreal scored a pair of goals 1:06 apart to start the second period. The first came from pest Brenden Gallagher 30 seconds into the frame. Joel Armia upped the ante with a goal at the 1:36 mark right after.

Jeff Petry buried a beautiful goal early in the third period. It would end up being the game-winning marker. The Detroit Red Wings had four players in the defensive zone, and the Habs had three, yet they were able to score on the rush.

Two players went to Tomas Tatar at the half wall, Darren Helm was the forward who should have been looking for a “late trailer” to pick up rather than helping his defender with Tatar. Tatar spotted the son of former Detroit Tigers’ great Dan Petry streaking in. He got the pass and delivered a slap shot past Jimmy Howard. It was Jeff Petry’s 9th goal of the season. He is having a terrific season for Montreal. He has 30 points in 44 games.

After the game, Niklas Kronwall mentioned the team wasn’t good enough. He claimed they made to many mental mistakes. He pointed the finger at himself as he tried to feather a pass that got intercepted. He mentioned the power-play was decent but not nearly as efficient as it should be.

Jeff Blashill basically piggybacked on those comments. He mentioned the Detroit Red Wings are a team that has to fight and claw for goals and they have no business giving up 3 quick ones. Meaning each goal was scored extremely early to start a period.

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The Detroit Red Wings have a couple of days off prior to playing another set of back-to-back games. They will travel to Winnipeg to take on the Jets Friday night and then they are in Minnesota on Saturday night.

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