Wings 5, Coyotes 2

After losing to the Coyotes 5-2 January 24 in Phoenix, the Wings turned the tables on them at the Joe, winning 5-2 to put them at first in the NHL with 78 points, tied with Philly and the Avs. The Coyotes came out with a defensive strategy, sitting back much of the first period with no players up on the forecheck, in hopes of creating a theoretical bogged down neutral ice. But the Wings have too much experience in dealing with this effort to keep the game tight, so they were able to get passes down the wings and beat the Coyotes at their own system. Legace got the start, with Marc Lamothe as backup. In the first period, the play was pretty tight. Shots on goal were 11-10 Wings, and the Coyotes had a few good chances on Legace, but the league's best backup was able to come up with a couple stand-on-his-head saves. Mathieu Dandenault opened the scoring at 13:45, unassisted. The goal came on a shot from the point, and was initially credited to Henrik Zetterberg, but further review showed it went off of a Coyote skate rather than Hank's. 1-0 Wings. In the second period, Detroit Red Wings television source Fox Sports Net had a lot of technical difficulties, at times not having audio or visual of the game. Instead, they just showed a frame of empty seats and a blank scoreboard from the pregame show. At times, static-filled audio of Ken Daniels and Mickey Redmond came through on the frozen frame. It was like they were playing the game on Mars or something. Or broadcasting it over satellite phone from Baghdad. It's pretty ridiculous. I wouldn't come out so hard on FSN if it weren't for the fact that technical difficulties have been commonplace there. I can't remember a game on FSN in the past couple years where they haven't lost video for a few seconds, a frame doesn't freeze, or some graphic doesn't gets messed up. I'm not a stickler, but if you're a professional broadcast, this type of stuff should not happen. I almost miss the broadcasts on UPN50, where Wings hockey was broadcast years ago. Even though UPN50 had maybe 2 different graphics, they never had so many technical difficulties in one season as FSN has in a single game. So, through the choppy audio and few minutes of the game I actually saw, the Wings played a pretty good period. At 16:05, Brett Hull had a great power play goal, assisted by Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk. 2-0 Wings. Shots in the period were 12-8 Wings. In the third period, Chris Gratton beat Legace at 6:22 with a power play goal, assisted by Paul Mara and Mike Comrie, the new Coyote acquired in the Burke deal. It was a neat goal by Gratton, who banked it off an out-of-position Legace from the side of the net, parallel the goal line. 2-1 Wings. The Wings stormed back with an insurance goal at 8:27, from Mathieu Schneider on the power play, assisted by Tomas Holmstrom and Pavel Datsyuk, his second assist of the game to give him 58 points this season. It was a good shot by Schneider. With traffic in front, he picked the puck in between the circles and wristed it in to beat Boucher. 3-1 Wings. But the Coyotes wouldn't let that be all she wrote. Fredrik Sjostrom scored at 9:36, assisted by Todd Reirden. 3-2 Wings. With the game tight going into the final two minutes of action, Kris Draper gave the Wings the final insurance goal they'd need, with a hard shot from the top of the left circle beating Boucher, and just trickling past the goal line. Steve Yzerman had the assist on the play. 4-2 Wings. The Coyotes pulled Boucher to get the extra man, but Kris Draper scored on the empty net unassisted for his 23rd goal of the season. 5-2 Wings. Shots in the period were 9-8 Detroit. Final Shots 32-26, also in Detroit's favor. It was a good effort by the Wings tonight. In what could've been a tough game to play against a sit-back system, the Wings came out with poise and stifled the Coyotes' efforts. While it wasn't the most exciting game for fans, especially with FSN standards of broadcasting their games, it was nice to see the Wings comfortably handle the struggling Coyotes. Notables: Boucher has struggled since going on his record shutout streak: he is 3-10 in net since beating the scoreless record dating back to 1943. The Wings have only lost 3 of their last 11 decisions in the Joe. Hull tied Dave Andreychuk for all-time NHL lead in power play goals with his goal tonight. 263 power play goals, and Hull did it in 300 some less games (1,573 for Dave, 1,241 for Brett). In a post-game interview, Draper said that Hull has helped him put some more whip in his sticks. Jamie Rivers is the goat of the game, taking two bad penalties. On the second, he pushed a Coyotes player into Legace, giving the opposition the power play and potentially hurting Manny. Fortunately, Manny was able to shake it off. With the resulting power play, Gratton scored for the Coyotes to bring them within one. After making such a bonehead play, Jamie Rivers was lucky that Schneider followed it with a goal a couple minutes later, so Jamie should take Schneider out to dinner tonight. Intertops.com, an Internet bookmaker, has the chances that Hasek plays a full game for the Wings again before Jan. 1, 2005 at 15-1. Pavel Datsyuk and Jason Woolley didn't practice Tuesday. Apparently, Pavel felt under-the-weather and Woolley is a "little sore." (Editor: Here are the lines from the game, courtesy GWB) Whitney-Datsyuk-Hull Maltby-Draper-Yzerman Thomas-Mowers-McCarty Shanahan-Zetterberg-Holmstrom Shanahan-Yzerman-Holmstrom Lidstrom-Schneider Fischer-Chelios Rivers-Dandenault PP- Zetterberg-Datsyuk-Hull Shanahan-Yzerman-Holmstrom Whitney-Lidstrom Lidstrom-Schneider PK- Maltby-Draper Zetterberg-Datsyuk Shanahan-Yzerman Lidstrom-Chelios Fischer-Schneider Net- Manny Legace