In Vancouver, Alex Nedeljkovic made 43 saves and the Detroit Red Wings shut out the Canucks, 1-0, on Thursday night.
“It’s big. It’s one that we can look back on as the year goes on now and kind of tell ourselves we can play in these low-scoring kind of games,” Nedeljkovic said. “We can play good defense and I think we did play some really good defense tonight. We gave up some chances, but they got some high-end players so they’re going to get their chances and tonight pucks were hitting me.”
The win snapped a six-game losing skid by the Red Wings.
“It’s been a hard stretch and certainly it’s not all on his shoulders,” coach Jeff Blashill said. “It’s a team thing, but it’s been a hard stretch for sure and so for him to come out, I thought he was in total command of his game. I thought he played the puck really well. I thought pucks stuck to him. I thought he found the puck through traffic well and he made big saves at big moments.”
Pius Suter scored the game’s only goal in the middle frame.
“Just try to be patient as you can, try not to bite and if you can outwait them and take away some time and space, you make it more difficult on them,” Nedeljkovic said. “I felt good these last few weeks, honestly. It’s a combination of maybe trying a little too hard, being a little too hard on myself, not getting a few balances here and there, but I felt really good tonight.”
Detroit moved to 25-29-7.
“The goalie played good, there’s no doubt about that, but that first period might have been our worst period all year, including the games we gave up five goals,” coach Bruce Boudreau said. “We must have given the puck away 25 times. That gave them the confidence to play. If you step on them early, they probably say ‘Oh, here we go again.’ But we didn’t. We gave them a chance.”
The Canucks dropped to 30-25-7.
“At the halfway point, we started playing good and created plenty of chances to score,” Vancouver’s Elias Pettersson said. “We’ve just got to bury them. It’s one of those days when you just have to tip your hat to the other goalie. We’ve got to find a way to put the puck in the net.”
Thatcher Demko made 34 saves in the hard luck loss.
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