In Detroit, the Chicago Blackhawks scored four times in the first and third periods on Wednesday night and defeated Red Wings, 8-5.
Dylan Strome collected his first NHL hat trick and four points in the win.
“It’s my first hat trick since the 2017 Memorial Cup, so it had been a long time,” said Strome, who came into the game with four goals. “I’ve felt good for the last 12 or 13 games, and once the offense starts going, you remember they signed you to a contract for a reason.
“I’m still trying to prove that.”
Chicago moved to 16-20-7.
Marc-Andre Fleury made 28 saves in the Hawks win.
Alex DeBrincat hit for a pair of goals for Chicago and added a helper.
Chicago took the 4-0 lead in the opening frame off goals from Dominik Kubalik, two from Strome, and a single marker from Sam Lafferty.
“I don’t know what he (Strome) ate today, but I’ll bet it was something special,” Kubalik said. “Everything he touched was dangerous.”
Detroit rallied in the middle frame with three goals. Robby Fabbri, Tyler Bertuzzi, and Pius Suter scored to cut the Chicago lead to 4-3.
“We aren’t a team that can trade offense for offense and win games 6-5 or 7-6,” the Red Wings’ Danny DeKeyser said. “We have to take care of our own end first, and we didn’t do that tonight.”
After an early push in the third stanza from Detroit, Chicago got two goals from Strome and DeBrinca for a 6-3 lead.
“I wasn’t feeling very good about things, but the guys didn’t go into a shell,” Chicago head coach Derek King said. “They kept plugging along, and when Detroit made mistakes, we capitalized.”
Detroit rallied again with two goals, this time from Moritz Seider and Dylan Larkin for a one goal deficit at 5-6.
“After the first period, we told our guys that we still had 40 minutes left and Chicago had just scored four goals in only 20,” Red Wings head coach Jeff Blashill said. “We got back to being a good O-zone team in the second period, and you see the dividends it paid.”
The rally was snuffed out when Brandon Hagel pushed the lead to 7-5 and DeBrinca added an empty-net goal for the 8-5 final.
“[Hagel] was everywhere tonight,” King said. “Everywhere the puck went, he was hunting it down and getting it to our guys.”
The Red Wings dropped to 18-19-6.
“We got the late goal to cut it to one, so I thought we had a lot of momentum going into the third,” DeKeyser said. “But we just made too many mistakes to capitalize on it.”
Alex Nedeljkovic got the start and yielded four goals in the first period. He made 12 saves and was given the hook in the first intermission.
“Getting pulled tonight wasn’t on [Nedeljkovic],” Blashill said. “He’s had a heavy workload lately, and if our team wasn’t playing with energy, I don’t think it is fair to leave him out there.”
Calvin Pickard who made 18 saves and surrendered all four third period goals form the Blackhawks.
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