Red Wings – Kings Game Notes

The morning after a late West Coast game… Not a lot from the Detroit press.

Of course MacLeod is stuck at home since his paper won’t send him anywhere. Khan has a recap at mLive and the DetNews has one as well.

I’m a little surprised to not see any quotes about the officiating from Mike Babcock, given his comments after the games in St. Louis and Chicago last week. Of course no matter what he thinks of the penalty to Mikael Samuelsson for essentially driving to the net (among others), he’s probably been warned to keep quiet.

For the most part the Wings played a solid game, the Kings just took advantage of every chance they got. A power play goal where Chris Osgood makes the save but LA has a guy right there to bang it in. A deflection off of Nicklas Lidstrom’s skate.

Detroit did some of the same, though. Marian Hossa scored on a five-on-three, jumping past all three defenders before beating Jason Labarbara. Valtteri Filppula tied the game late by picking off an attempted outlet pass, putting himself all alone in front of Labarbara.

Osgood did a great job of staying with the shooters in the shootout, while Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg made Labarbara look silly.

One thing I took away from the game is that the makeshift third line of Filppula, Jiri Hudler and Tomas Kopecky looked very good. Much better than the reunited Grind Line, which is kind of sad but also very exciting to see.