Postgame: Red Wings @ Blues – 2/7

I’m going to keep my postgame notes short so I can get on to the formal recap and get some sleep, I’ve got the feeling I’ll need to be up early to dig out in the morning.

Story of the game tonight is obviously Petr Mrazek’s debut. As I wrote earlier, he’s the first Red Wings rookie goalie to debut with a shutout period of hockey since Joey MacDonald. That’s not entirely impressive as the only goalie between them was Tom McCollum. More impressive is the one goal against was the least amount of goals allowed by a Wings rookie goalie in his debut since Kevin Hodson blanked the Chicago Blackhawks in his first career game. The 35:45 shutout streak was also the longest in a debut since Hodson.

A quirky stat, as pointed out by the Windsor Star’s Bob Duff, is that Mrazek gave up a single goal in his debut in each of the three professional leagues he’s played in.

#redwings Mrazek beat Kalamazoo 4-1 in #ECHL debut. Beat Texas 4-1 in #AHL debut.
— Bob Duff (@asktheduffer) February 7, 2013

The other big story is the secondary scoring. Five goals, only two of which came from the top six forwards. Daniel Cleary gets off the schneid to open the scoring, Jakub Kindl gets one, and Cory Emmerton adds another. Damien Brunner and Valtteri Filppula represent the top two lines for a balanced attack.

Not to be forgotten, though… The Wings closed the game with a really solid penalty kill. The Blues were out of it by then but it was good to go out on a high note.

Solid overall game, emphasis on the overall. We’ll see if they can carry that going forward and if Mrazek will get another look in the back-to-backs this weekend.