Valtteri Filppula scored two goals Monday night as the Detroit Red Wings returned from the NHL’s Christmas break to earn a 4-1 win over the Nashville Predators.
Filppula opened the game’s scoring at 10:57 of the first period, taking a feed from Henrik Zetterberg in the slot to knock a shot past Nashville goalie Pekka Rinne.
Wuth 7:08 left in the second period, Pavel Datsyuk made it 2-0 on a wraparound chance. The goal was originally not called on the ice, with one of the linesmen confirming that the puck had gone into the net and video review unable to prove otherwise.
Just 13 seconds later, Danny Cleary snapped a shot from the slot past Rinne to make it 3-0 on Detroit’s eleventh shot of the game.
Filppula notched his second of the night at 5:22 of the third. Justin Abdelkader and Cory Emmerton were unable to beat Rinne from in close but the rebound came out to the right faceoff circle, where Filppula jumped up to fire a shot into the net before Rinne could get back into position.
Jonathon Blum broke Detroit goalie Jimmy Howard’s shutout with 2:12 left, wristing a shot from the blue line through traffic to get the Predators on the board.
Howard finished the night with 31 saves on 32 shots against. Rinne stopped 18 of Detroit’s 22 shots.
Neither team scored a power play goal. Nashville had five tries with the extra attacker and Detroit had two.
The Red Wings are back in action on Tuesday night when they host the St. Louis Blues.
Detroit forward Tomas Holmstrom left the game in the third period with what the team called a lower-body injury… Defenseman Jakub Kindl was a healthy scratch.
