Red Wings-Golden Knights wrap-up: How to play with fire (and get away with it)

The Detroit Red Wings defeated the Vegas Golden Knights in a 5-2 win that was one of the closest 5-2 decisions I’ve ever witnessed. Detroit was dominant at times early, rallying from a 1-0 deficit with 3 straight goals (from Lucas Raymond, Robby Fabbri and Pius Suter, thanks to a 2-for-2 1st period power play), but Vegas was tremendously resilient.

Even after Vladislav Namestnikov made the score 4-1, Vegas refused to surrender, battling back via 20 3rd period shots and a total of 40 shots and 70 attempts overall, a good half of them taken in the 3rd.

Detroit continued to struggle in the faceoff circle, so, despite having 2 power plays in the latter half of said 3rd period, Vegas all but continually buzzed in the Wings’ zone, and the final five minutes were exemplified by a flurry of Greiss stops.

That being said, both teams were playing their 2nd game in 2 nights, their 3rd in 4 nights and 4th in 6 nights total, so the fact that the Red Wings could attribute their third period struggles to a “learning experience” was, in no small respect, due to physical and mental fatigue.

Long story long, the Red Wings won both Saturday and Sunday, rebounding nicely from their 0-3-and-1 stretch, and Dylan Larkin’s return from a family emergency seemed to give the team just enough “oomph” to win the race to 60 minutes’ worth of play.

Perhaps just as importantly, the Red Wings left the Golden Knights flummoxed with their effort, as the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s David Schoen noted:

Despite being on the wrong end of the special teams battle in the first period and enduring a closer-than-the-score-indicates 5-2 loss to the Red Wings, the Knights left Little Caesars Arena in Detroit feeling good about their work over the previous six days. Except for the hypercritical Jonathan Marchessault, of course. The winger is never satisfied.
“When you go .500 on a road trip, it’s just OK,” he said. “It could have been a great road trip if we won tonight.”
Marchessault scored his team-leading sixth goal early in the third period to cut the Red Wings lead to 4-2, and the Knights made a strong push on the second game of a back to back.
Detroit goalie Thomas Greiss made 19 of his 38 saves in the third to drop the Knights back to .500 overall at 6-6. The Knights finished the road trip 2-2 and open a six-game homestand Tuesday against Seattle.
Pius Suter and Tyler Bertuzzi each finished with a goal and an assist for the Red Wings, who went 2-for-4 on the power play. Center Nicolas Roy opened the scoring 3:48 into the first period and had an assist for his fifth point in the past three games since moving up to the first line.
“We made some mental mistakes,” coach Pete DeBoer said. “But I’m proud of our group’s resiliency. They’re not making excuses. They’re coming out and they’re working and we’re finding a way to be competitive.”

DeBoer felt that his goaltending was all right, but he also suggested that “the hockey gods evened things out” after Vegas rallied from a 2-0 deficit to defeat Montreal 5-2 on Saturday night. He told NHL.com’s Dave Hogg that the Golden Knights may not have earned their result on Sunday…

The Golden Knights outshot the Red Wings 13-7 in the first period.

“I thought we played our best first period of the road trip, and we were down 3-1,” Vegas coach Peter DeBoer said. “I’m sure Laurent would want at least one of those back, but we are asking him to play once every two weeks, and that’s tough. He made a lot of great saves tonight as well.”
Vladislav Namestnikov gave the Red Wings a 4-1 lead at 11:39 of the second period, banking the puck in off Brossoit’s back.
“I thought the second period might have been our best stretch of hockey this year,” Larkin said. “I thought we outworked them tonight. Every guy worked hard, and Thomas Greiss was incredible.”
Marchessault made it 4-2 at 4:25 of the third with a shot from the slot, but Greiss made 19 saves in the period.
Bertuzzi scored an empty-net goal with 11 seconds left for the 5-2 final. It was his ninth goal of the season.
“He’s a good goalie, he’s going to stop anything he can see,” Vegas defenseman Shea Theodore said of Greiss. “We needed to do a better job of getting in front of him and taking away his eyes.”

DeBoer also emphasized the fact that his team played “shorthanded,” as the AP’s Steve Kornacki noted…

“I thought we pushed back hard in the second and third,” Golden Knights coach Peter DeBoer said, ”but it was just one of those nights. It’s always tough to win on the road, and it is even tougher with this many key injuries.”
After Roy gave Vegas the lead 3:48 into the game with his second of the season, Detroit scored the next four goals to take control. Raymond tied it with the first of the Red Wings’ two power-play goals, getting a pass from Bertuzzi and beating Brossoit from the left circle for his sixth at 8:17. The 19-year-old now has 14 points to lead all NHL rookies.
”Lucas is dangerous,” Larkin said. ”He’s crafty with the puck.”
With Detroit on the man-advantage again, Fabbri scored from the right circle for his third with 9:47 remaining in the first. The Red Wings finished 2 for 4 on the power play and went 3 for 3 on the penalty-kill.
”Obviously special teams was a huge factor,” Blashill said. ”We won it with special teams and great goaltending in the third.”

Larkin told DetroitRedWings.com’s Brett McWethy that he was happy with his team’s performance as well…

“We played hard tonight,” said captain Dylan Larkin, who returned to the lineup after missing the past three games due to personal reasons. “Thomas Greiss was incredible, Ned’s been playing great the past couple times he’s been in.
“That second period was, I think, probably our best stretch of hockey there. We had a ton of chances, had a ton of offensive zone time, and we backchecked hard, got pucks back and then went back in the offensive zone. I just think we outworked them tonight and we got rewarded with two huge points at home.”

Coach Blashill was also pleased with the way in which his team pounced on Vegas after surrendering the game’s first goal…

“I think it’s always important [to get off to a good start]. You never want to be digging from behind the whole time, so I think it’s always important,” Blashill said. “You gotta win hockey games, and obviously both of us were kind of in the same spot. We were both on long trips. We got to come home.
“Our fans were excellent tonight, the crowd was great, so hopefully that’s advantage us. If that pushed us a little over the edge, that’s great. I thought they were better than us for the first few minutes, and once we scored, I thought we were real good until we got the 4-1 lead, then we weren’t quite as good. But I thought we really dug in and worked for a while.”

The one thing that concerns me about the Red Wings’ upcoming schedule is this:

Tuesday’s puck drop against the Oilers is set for 7:30 p.m. It will mark Detroit’s first matchup against Edmonton this season.

Edmonton is 9-and-1 on the season, and the Red Wings won’t be able to get away with the kinds of mistakes they made against Vegas on Tuesday.

Anyway, Detroit Hockey Now’s Kevin Allen noted that the Wings are finally getting some secondary scoring…

It’s been clear the Red Wings desperately need the second line to be more effective. They needed more production out of Filip Zadina, Pius Suter and Robby Fabbri.
Those players stepped up over the past two games. Pius Suter has two goals and two assists over the past two games. It is the first time in his young career that Suter has had back-to-back multi-point games. Fabbri also scored against Vegas. Zadina had an assist. The line combined for 12 shots on goal.
“I thought the line was our best line,” Detroit coach Jeff Blashill said. “That’s what we need. We can’t be in a situation where one line is always the line. ”

But Allen also put things bluntly:

As you would expect from a team that counts on younger players, the Red Wings are still inconsistent. They were both strong and shaky at different times in this game.
When the game was on the line in the third, they couldn’t win a defensive zone faceoff. They surrendered too many scoring chances in the third period.
“I thought for two periods, maybe a period and a half, we played good hockey,” Blashill said. “We got a lead and then we got away from it a little bit and they pushed hard…so we still have to learn to be smarter in those situations.”

We ought to end on a positive note, however, given that the Wings did win, so I’ll leave you with this from Dylan Larkin, who offered the following endorsement of the Red Wings’ other “Dynamic Duo” to MLive’s Ansar Khan:

Larkin and the Red Wings are delighted with the way rookies Raymond and Moritz Seider have played. They rank 1-2 in scoring, with 14 and 10 points, respectively, among NHL rookies.
“You could see it from the first day they got here,” Larkin said. “They’ve been playing pro hockey; they know what pro hockey is about. You have to show up and play every night.
“I thought it was fun to watch Mo tonight. Him and (Alex) Pietrangelo had a little battle of who could rush the puck, steal pucks more. Pietrangelo’s one of the best defensemen in the league and I thought Mo was one of the best players on the ice tonight. Lucas is dangerous. He’s someone that is incredible to play with because he’s going to make plays, he’s crafty and he’s going to get the puck to you.”

Balanced scoring, excellent play from the Wings’ younger players, great goaltending and strong special teams. All of those things are going well for the Red Wings, but they just won on Sunday, which is a reminder of how close the league is…And how far the Wings have to go.

Maybe that’s what makes a win like this so satisfying, and maybe that’s the message in itself–wins like these may still be a little unlikely, but they sure are fun and enjoyable.

Multimedia:

Highlights: Sportsnet posted an 8:19 highlight clip:

NHL.com posted a 9:10 highlight clip:

Post-game: Vegas posts its post-game interviews on Twitter, so:

Here’s Jonathan Marchessault…

? Marchessault: When you go .500 on a road trip, it’s just okay. It could’ve been a great road trip if we won tonight. pic.twitter.com/8Js4Pck2hz— Vegas Golden Knights (@GoldenKnights) November 8, 2021

Shea Theodore…

? Theodore on the road trip: It’s a good building block for us. Some of the games we came out too slow and we were able to recover. Tonight we just didn’t put enough pressure on them. pic.twitter.com/vYP0Hfpj8f— Vegas Golden Knights (@GoldenKnights) November 8, 2021

And coach Pete DeBoer:

? DeBoer: The hockey gods evened it up for last night. I thought we hung in there and battled back. pic.twitter.com/u7vv9tslXO— Vegas Golden Knights (@GoldenKnights) November 8, 2021

WXYZ’s Brad Galli posted a clip of Dylan Larkin’s post-game presser…