I try new things and work out bugs in my preseason recaps, so you’ve been warned:
The Detroit Red Wings managed to defeat the Chicago Blackhawks 4-3 in a shootout in their first preseason game on Wednesday night.
The Wings prevailed in a wild and woolly affair that was punctuated by a late game-tying goal by try-out Bobby Ryan, a 24-save regulation-and-OT shutout for Calvin Pickard, who split the game with Thomas Greiss, and shootout goals from Taro Hirose and then Ryan salted the game away.
Here’s the AP’s game recap:
Chicago captain Jonathan Toews played for the first time in more than a year Wednesday night in the Blackhawks’ 4-3 shootout loss to the Detroit Red Wings.
Toews assisted on Dominik Kubalik’s goal late in the first period in the exhibition game and opened the shootout with a goal. The 33-year-old forward sat out last season because of chronic immune response syndrome. He last played on Aug. 18, 2020, in Chicago’s first-round playoff loss to Vegas
Bobby Ryan scored the tying goal for Detroit with 1:51 left in regulation and added the winner in the fourth round of the shootout.
Adam Erne and Taro Hirose also scored for Detroit in the shootout. Toews and Lukas Reichel were the only Blackhawks to score in the tiebreaker.
Michael Rasmussen and Mitchell Stephens also scored in regulation for Detroit. Thomas Greiss and Calvin Pickard each play half the game in goal, with Greiss allowing all three goals on 15 shots, and Pickard stopping 24 shots.
Brandon Hagel and Jujhar Khaira also scored for the Blackhawks, and Kevin Lankinen made 30 saves.
There aren’t any quotes from the game as the Red Wings’ press corps doesn’t fly with the team during preseason games, and Detroit didn’t hold any Zoom calls as the team flew right back to Detroit for Thursday’s game vs. Buffalo (7:30 PM EDT, streamed on the Wings’ YouTube channel)…
So you can read the Detroit News’s Ted Kulfan’s recap, MLive’s Ansar Khan’s recap, the Free Press’s Ryan Ford’s recap if you wish; Detroit Hockey Now’s Bob Duff penned a list of 3 stars from tonight’s game, including a player who made a good first impression:
Center Mitchell Stephens was playing opposition for the first time while wearing a Red Wings jersey. Stephens was also making a strong case that he’ll be someone in the reckoning in the battle for the bottom-six forward roles.
He scored the Red Wings’ second goal. Stephens put a team-high four shots on goal. He delivered a hit and had a takeaway. He skated 19:24 of ice time, second among the team’s forwards behind Erne (19:38). A winner of 60% of his faceoffs, the night also saw Stephens working 3:43 while Detroit was shorthanded.
“I’m excited to show the players, the coaching staff and the management what I can bring to the team and earn opportunities,” Stephens said. “For me, it’s to come in and make a good first impression and sort of show I can help the team win.
The Game Summary and Event Summary are available as stats sheets:
In the multimedia department, the Free Press and Detroit News posted photo galleries from the game, and there are highlights via both Sportsnet and NHL.com:
Bluntly: Bobby Ryan is obviously earning a spot on the roster, though there are seven preseason games to go;
Alex Cotton and Donovan Sebrango finished an ugly -3 on those first-half-of-the-game goals for the Hawks, receiving an unwelcome to NHL-level competition, but Cotton ended leading the Wings in shots; Sebrango made a gorgeous defensive play to deny a Blackhawks goal while breaking his stick in the process;
Greiss was a little shaky on a couple of the Hawks’ goals, but he received no help from the aforementioned defensive pair, which left the front of the net to Michael Rasmussen. Overall, Greiss was OK over the first half of the game, and Pickard, despite giving up a pair of shootout goals, was excellent;
Rasmussen played superbly on a line with Adam Erne and Vladislav Namestnikov, serving as the center on said line;
You could very well argue that the Mitchell Stephens-Bobby Ryan pairing (Ryan also played PP point with Filip Hronek) could be a foundational pairing for a regular season fourth line, presuming that Ryan makes the team as a pro try-out;
Filip Hronek had a bit of an adventure working with Brian Lashoff as the Wings’ de-facto first defensive pair, and, while there were some hiccups, the Jordan Oesterle-Gustav Lindstrom pair looked really solid;
Kirill Tyutyayev had moves galore, but looked a little out of his element, though he was occasionally paired with Namestnikov on the power play;
Carter Rowney’s first two periods and Givani Smith’s third period’s worth of play make for an intriguing battle for that 13th forward’s spot;
And the aforementioned Rasmussen was a victim of the league’s crackdown on cross-checking, taking a penalty for a cross-check that was legal last year, but the Bobby Ryan penalty for “cross-checking” was daffy, because Ryan flew by a Hawks player, who plain old fell down on his own, and the refs called the penalty anyway.
Overall, the Wings got better as the game went on, and the roller-coaster nature of the game’s score was not necessarily indicative of the pluck and resolve that a very lean team utilized to salvage a tie out of a game where the Hawks out-shot them by a fair margin, and won the special teams battle (and, gah, already a too-many-men penalty, when will they end?).
The Belle Tire logo looked just wrong on Hawks helmets;
And finally, my cousin gets a shout-out as our resident Roseville native turned Chicago Public Schools teacher managed to serve as a good luck charm for the Wings by taking in the preseason game, and he got a discount on his tickets as a CPS employee. Take that, “Detroit Sucks” chant!
