In Chicago, the Blackhawks laid an egg in a 5-3 loss to the Detroit Red Wings on Saturday night.
Detroit struck on the power-play, the first time in 15 games in which the club did anything with the extra man.
“It was a big power-play goal at that moment, and then I thought it was a really, really big [penalty] kill at that moment,” Red Wings head coach Jeff Blashill said. “So there’s a timeliness to it. That becomes enough of a difference in enough games, and we’ve lost enough games where I think 5-on-5 we maybe have deserved a better fate but lost on special teams.”
Jonathan Bernier made 33 saves in the win.
Mattias Janmark and Alex DeBrincat scored for the Blackhawks.
“It was a weird game,” Blackhawks head coach Jeremy Colliton said. “I think overall we did a lot of good things, created more than enough offensively, had a bit of trouble breaking through to score, convert, obviously early. And they did, they converted their chances. Got to give them credit there. In key moments they were able to come through with a big goal to turn momentum, particularly the first, the second and fourth goal, even the fifth goal.”
Frans Nielsen and Evgeny Svechnikov scored for the Red Wings.
“It, for sure, feels good, [we] scored five goals in back-to-back games now,” Nielsen said. “It’s something we really struggled with [early this season]. Special teams, we’ve been losing that battle a lot this year, and every time you lose a special teams battle in a game it’s tough to win.”
Christian Djoos (power play), Darren Helm and Bobby Ryan also scored for the Red Wings.
“The focus was on rebounds the whole game. I think Subban gives [up] a lot of rebounds, so it was just a matter of the time and matter of the place,” Svechnikov said. “Luckily, I was right there, but I should’ve scored the breakaway.”
Chicago’s Dominik Kubalik scored with 12 seconds left in the game to put some lipstick on the pig.
Malcolm Subban made 27 saves in the loss.
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