In Detroit, the Red Wings bolted to a 4-1 lead over the Pittsburgh Penguins on Wednesday night, then held off a late rally for a 6-3 win.
“It is only four games, but I think this has been a good stretch coming off a very good camp,” Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde said. “We haven’t been perfect, we had some mistakes tonight that led to some easy offense, but we’ve played four good games against tough opponents.”
Alex DeBrincat and Andrew Copp each hit for doubles in the Detroit win.
“This kind of start makes everything easier, and a lot of that is because of my linemates and teammates,” DeBrincat said. “We have so many scoring options that it is hard for anyone to cover all of them.”
It was the third straight win for the Red Wings.
Ville Husso made 29 saves in the victory.
The Penguins grabbed a 1-0 lead 53 seconds into the first period strike by Evgeni Malkin .
DeBrincat tied it, 1-1, 12:23 of the first.
It stayed tied until the sixth minute of the middle frame when Ben Chiarot struck for a 2-1 lead to Ottawa.
“Detroit’s a good team, and we just lost ourselves for six or seven minutes in the second period,” Penguins coach Mike Sullivan said. “They scored a couple goals, but we fought back into the game.”
Copp’s first of the night was a deflection for a3-1 advantage at 15:42,
David Perron added a marker at 17:49 of the second for a 4-1 lead for Ottawa.
“I liked our start in the third period, we could have easily extended the lead with a fifth goal, but we had a couple plays where we tracked back into our zone and didn’t get coverages sorted out,” Lalonde said. “They got two goals through traffic, and that put us back on our heels.”
Pittsburgh rallied in the third to cut the deficit to one goal at 4-3 off strikes by Erik Karlsson at 3:37, and Bryan Rust at 13:03.
“I liked what we showed in the third period, but we need to play harder in front of the net,” Malkin said. “We need to block more shots and clear more rebounds.”
The Senators replied to the rally with an empty-net goal from Copp at 18:28, and a power play goal into an empty net from DeBrincat 20 seconds later for the 6-3 final.
Tristan Jarry made 23 saves in the loss.
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