The Detroit Red Wings defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning 2-0 on Saturday night, and this morning, MLive’s Ansar Khan discusses the contributions of one goaltender Cameron Talbot, who set an NHL record last night over the course of pitching a 28-save shutout:
Cam Talbot stopped all 28 shots to help the @DetroitRedWings become the first team to shut out the Lightning since Nov. 14, 2023. Tampa Bay's streak of 113 games without being shut out was the longest active run in the NHL until tonight.#NHLStats: https://t.co/CqAc4ymxIe pic.twitter.com/wwivYcz1nS
— NHL Public Relations (@PR_NHL) January 26, 2025
As Khan noted, Talbot wasn’t about to “pump his own tires,” but he did point out that the Red Wings faced a difficult opponent which they respect, including superstar Nikita Kucherov, who played only 20 seconds less than Moritz Seider’s all-skater-leading 26:34…
“That’s a team that’s got a lot of pedigree, winning pedigree,” Talbot said. “They know how to pull out these tight games. And (Nikita) Kucherov sitting there with the puck and he’s got options. You know he’s going to find somebody eventually. So, give the guys in front of me a ton of credit. We blocked a lot of shots from the top, did a great job boxing out. Let me see most of the pucks tonight. And sometimes you just have to weather the storm and get a lucky bounce, and we did a little bit of all that tonight.”
The Red Wings (23-21-5, 51 points) have won back-to-back games, both with Talbot in net. Talbot is 7-1-0 in his past eight starts. The one loss was a 5-1 setback at Tampa Bay Jan. 18 when he was pulled after two periods.
As such, coach Todd McLellan wanted to give Talbot a chance to redeem himself. The Tampa Bay Lightning would point out that there were two missed “open net” situations for them, but you’ve got to be lucky to be good:
“Staying calm in the moment when he’s obviously under siege at the end of the game,” McLellan said. “We were debating on who we were going to start, and I’ve been around Talbs enough to know that he probably wanted to start after what happened in Tampa, and it wasn’t on him by any means. We had a good game the other night (4-2 win over Montreal Thursday) and I just had a gut feeling this is what he wanted, and he got the opportunity and took advantage of it.”
Continued; you can call Talbot “old” at 37 and a journeyman given his many NHL stops, but he’s mostly been another adjective and set of adverbs: “very, very good!”
