Red Wings-Penguins preseason quick take: Tweetcap of Detroit’s 2-1 win over the Pens

The Detroit Red Wings played their second of three exhibition games to be played over the course of three nights in Pittsburgh Wednesday, winning an ugly, mucky, grind-y 2-1 affair over the Penguins.

This game was really kind of a muck-and-grind mess, and Pittsburgh opened the scoring with a Xavier Ouellet goal at 17:38 of the 1st…

But Detroit would push back and tie the game 5:32 into the 2nd, as Daniel Sprong found the back of the net from Petry and Compher…

And with Alex Nedeljkovic seemingly hexing the Wings, Simon Edvinsson would solve things in the third period:

The 1st period began with rather pedestrian hockey for the first couple of minutes. The Penguins’ “B Team” was surprisingly tenacious on the puck, but Detroit’s top two lines and top defensive pairing were dressed, and the Wings slowly but surely generated shots on Alex Nedeljkovic, who was quite good early.

At 4:45, Simon Edvinsson was taken down by Chad Ruhwedel, and the Red Wings went to the game’s first power play.

Detroit utilized a first PP unit of Sprong, Kasper, Compher, Walman and Petry, but it struggled to battle its way through the Pens’ PK…

So Fabbri, Larkin, DeBrincat, Seider and Raymond came out, and DeBrincat immediately got a good scoring chance on Nedeljkovic via a Lucas Raymond pass.

DeBrincat had a couple of good looks, but the PP did not connect…

And Reimer had to make a good stop on Poulin as Eemil Viro made a bad turnover and got checked, and Antti Tuomisto didn’t pick up the Pen in front of the net some 7:20 into the 1st.

A little later, Simon Edvinsson made a great rush and put the puck off the referee’s leg, right to Nolan Stevens in front of the net. Nedeljkovic had to make a good stop.

The Wings were dressing the following lines:

DeBrincat-Larkin-Raymond

Fabbri-Compher-Sprong

Hanas-Kasper-Czarnik

Gettinger-Shine-Stevens

Walman-Seider

Simon-Petry

Viro-Tuomisto

Reimer

At 10:55 of the 1st, the shots were 6-0 Detroit…But the Penguins got a couple of chances around the 12:15 mark to push back to 6-2.

Quite honestly, Walman and Seider gobbled up minutes in the 1st period, and that was understandable given how thin the Wings’ defense was.

So former Wing Xavier Ouellet scored from Harkins and Puustinen at 17:38, making it 1-0 Pittsburgh.

Worse, Austin Czarnik went for hooking/slashing at 19:02, affording Pittsburgh a power play up 1-0.

The Wings held the Pens off the board until the first intermission, but only just. Reimer had to make a tremendous set of saves as Puustinen sent two shots on the net, and as Puustinen got the puck back from his down-low winger, either Compher or Edvinsson made a great block.

In the 2nd period, the Red Wings had 48 seconds of Austin Czarnik’s hooking penalty to kill, and Kasper, Compher, Seider and Walman worked the puck out of trouble and Nedeljkovic chipped the puck up to his forwards, and the Pens nearly scored;

Reimer had to make a big stop and flop to stop the rebound as Smith fired a hard shot in on the Red Wings’ goaltender.

Simon Edvinsson made a bad play to tug a Penguin down at 1:32, and Pittsburgh headed to the power play yet again.

James Reimer made some amazing stops without a stick, one, two, and then three, and Moritz Seider was tripped from behind–slew-footed by Sam Poulin…

And with 2:54 gone, Walman and Poulin both sat for “roughing” and “tripping,” respectively.

But the Red Wings would break through:

So that’s Sprong from Petry and Compher at 5:32. Game tied 1-1.

The Pens went right back to work, however…

The Pens’ forecheck was really punishing, honestly, and eventually, Harkins and Petry engaged in some pushing and shoving, and Hanas and Zohorna shoved and pushed…

And the middle of the game was pretty ugly, to be honest.

Cross Hanas ripped a high, hard shot off the junction of the crossbar and the goalpost just after the 11:00 mark, so Nedeljkovic’s jinx of the Red Wings seemed to be on, full bore.

Later…

Regrettably, Dominik Shine headed to the penalty box at 15:16 for a high-stick on Jansen Harkins, a 2-minute minor…

And Pittsburgh got a 4-on-3 when Dylan Larkin was called for interference and Avery Hayes was called for embellishment/unsportsmanlike conduct…Because Hayes ran into Larkin’s shoulder and fell as he shuddered from the hit.

Detroit killed the penalty, and when Robby Fabbri and Shine worked as Shine came out of the penalty box, Nedeljkovic made a big stop.

Cross Hanas made a nice play at the end of the 2nd period to swipe the puck back to himself at the Wings’ blueline, preventing a breakaway, and that was the 2nd period.

In the 3rd period, Pittsburgh chipped the puck in on Reimer and chased, so Reimer gloved the puck and held on some 8 seconds in…

As the period continued, the Penguins really wanted to make something out of a “nohtin game,” and Detroit had to work very hard to earn its ice and grind against the Penguins’ grinders…

But Detroit did its job well enough to sustain possession, for the most part, and the first six minutes passed relatively uneventfully, save the aforementioned bump and grind.

As play progressed, the Penguins continued to crash and bang, and Detroit really was on its “back skate” for the vast majority of the game, in no small part because Nedeljkovic seemed to know everywhere the Wings were going to dump the puck in or send a shot on goal, un-screened.

Regrettably, Lucas Raymond took a penalty at 9:10 of the 3rd for taking down Janssen Harkins as he committed a “fly-by” that angered Detroit…

Forty-two seconds later, Simon Edvinsson flipped the puck out of play as Dominik Shine ran Harkins, and the Pens headed to a 5-on-3...

Moritz Seider and Jake Walman made some good stops as Reimer made saves in the 3rd, and Pittsburgh called a timeout at 10:22 to re-set their 5-on-3…

Once again, Detroit headed to the penalty box as Viro grabbed Vinny Hinostroza with 12:27 gone…

And Sam Poulin touched the puck with his hand off a faceoff, so the refs called Poulin for what is now an illegal play, yielding 1:58 of a 4 on 4.

On the 4-on-4, Simon Edvinsson took a pass from J.T. Compher and ripped a slinky wrist shot through Nedeljkovic to make it 2-1 with 6:46 rermaining in regulation time/13:14 gone in the 3rd:

To be quite honest, it was a very quiet game for the DeBrincat-Larkin-Raymond line, and the Sprong-Compher-Fabbri fandango was much more powerful scoring-wise, but that’s preseason hockey for you. There are ups and downs for everyone.

Statistics: For some reason, NHL.com blocked off the Game Summary, Event Summary and Rosters with 400 errors, so we’re going with FancyStat Tweets instead.

The Red Wings will conclude their three-in-three slate against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Thursday night at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto (7 PM EDT on TSN4/ESPN+).

Update: Here are Sportsnet’s highlights…

https://youtube.com/watch?v=qao7rV-VGEE%3Fsi%3DOgw_XlpyJE8YyCKJ

And here are NHL.com’s highlights:

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George Malik

My name is George Malik, and I'm the Malik Report's editor/blogger/poster. I have been blogging about the Red Wings since 2006, and have worked with MLive and Kukla's Korner. Thank you for reading!