DETROIT, Mich – On a night to remember for Johan Franzen the Detroit Red Wings laid a drubbing on the San Jose Sharks and finally showed up in the win column.
The Wings came out with desperation on their breath and right from the puck drop were clearly the better team. Franzen led the charge with a natural Hat Trick in the first period, two assists and another power play goal in the 3rd for good measure. He was the man on fire at Joe Louis arena. The final score was 7-1 and Johan who is also known as “the Mule” because of his size and enviable work ethic contributed on six of the seven goals scored for Detroit.
Rob Blake was interviewed during warm up and expressed that they would be ready and knew what was coming their way. Good intentions don’t always lead to the performance you want or expect from your team. I mean let’s face it unless your back really is up against the wall like it was for the Red Wings finding the intensity required to match the home team tonight in red was next to impossible.
Add in the embarrassment factor of getting swept at home and you have the results we witnessed tonight. Perhaps in the future when any team is in a position where they are ahead in the series and want to come out playing as desperate as the competition they should hire a hypnotist to convince them that they are in the other team’s shoes.
The Sharks didn’t play that badly. At the end of the first period San Jose was down 5-0 but had out shot Detroit 11-9. They had some good scoring chances but Jimmy Howard who was the goat in last game’s 4-3 overtime loss shut the door early.
On the other end Evgeni Nabakov wasn’t great and he didn’t get much help from the guys in front of him. Nabakov was pulled after the first period after letting five goals on nine shots for a save percentage of 0.444. Thomas Griess played the last two periods of the game stopping 26 of 28 shots he faced and looked very comfortable during his first ever NHL playoff game. The second period was a tie on the scoreboard and close enough on shots and the third was a parade to the penalty box for San Jose.
We could dwell on the lack of intensity the Sharks had and how they got caught flat footed on numerous occasions, but I am yet to know of anybody in the hockey world who thought that the Detroit Red Wings, the most successful organization in hockey over the last 20 years would be swept four straight.
The next game is back at the HP Pavilion in San Jose which was voted the most difficult building to play in for the road team by a Sports Illustrated poll who questioned over 270 NHL players.
The real test for this team comes Saturday night to see if they are able to really put this behind them and play to earn the right to compete in the next round.
This is why general managers go out and sign guys like Rob Blake and Dan Boyle. These are veterans who have won Stanley Cups and know how to focus on the next game, not the past. It is important that players learn their lessons from a loss like this one and in many cases it is good to keep egos in check.
The veterans are so important to a team’s moral in this situation and we won’t know how this squad truly handles tonight’s game until they take the ice for game five. Coach MacLellan summed it well in the post game press conference.
“This spanking will wake us up a little bit and make us aware we are in a hell of a series, we are not out of the woods,” McLellan said. “I’m saying (that) we have to respond to it.”
Both teams will use the cliché “one game at a time” but that truly is the case. For San Jose one win means that they can rest up for the winner of the Vancouver versus Chicago series and for Detroit a win means that they play at least one more game at home.
The next battle begins at 7 pm PST at The Shark Tank Saturday may 8th. Until then,
Keep your sticks on the ice, Contact Cam.Gore@prohockeynews.com
You must be logged in to post a comment.