In Detroit, a stingy defense and three goals put the Red Wings over the Columbus Blue Jackets, 3-1 on Saturday.
Calvin Pickard made 21 saves to get the win.
“Obviously, my games at this level have been few and far between in the past few years, but I know I’m still capable of playing at this level,” Pickard said. “It helped that I got to play the last 50 minutes of the Nashville game, even though you never want to have a game like that, and I was able to get one game in down in Grand Rapids.”
The win snapped a three-game skid for Detroit.
“These guys care and they were embarrassed by the Nashville game,” Red Wings head coach Jeff Blashill said. “They showed up yesterday and worked their tails off at practice, and they showed up today and worked their tails off during the game.
“Now they have to do it again tomorrow against the same team.”
The Blue Jackets have now lost three in a row.
“It’s a mystery,” Blue Jackets head coach John Tortorella said when asked about his team’s performance. “I said before this trip that we were going to find out a lot about this team and these individuals.
“I saw some terrific things out of certain people today and I saw some things that were terrible with others,”
Nick Foligno scored for the Jackets in the middle frame to make it 2-1.
“That was shocking,” Foligno said. “We haven’t played like that in a long time, so I wish I had some answers. It wasn’t acceptable.”
Detroit took a 2-0 lead on goals from Adam Erne and Robby Fabbri.
“We’ve really been struggling to score, and then we get two goals in [29] seconds,” Pickard said. “You always want to play with a lead in this game, and we were able to do that all day.”
Anthony Mantha scored in the third period to give the Red Wings some breathing room.
“This wasn’t about X’s and O’s – it has nothing to do with X’s and O’s,” Tortorella said. “This is an important trip for this organization, not only now, to see what kind of gumption we have, but also projecting what the team is going to be in the future.”
Elvis Merzlikins made 31 saves in the lo9ss.
The Blue Jackets held a players only meeting after the game, no word was released on topics.
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