Power Play Lights up the Islanders

The Red Wings’ special teams led the squad to a victory over one of the East’s elite squads. Despite being out possessed at even strength the team did a good job of keeping the Islanders to the outside and the special teams returned to the form that got the Wings to the top of the league. The grinders and Mrazek killed off 3 of 4 penalties while the skill players effectively went 3 for 3 on the Power Play. This was a big win for the home team and an excellent game for Mrazek who was due for a bounce back performance.

After a sloppy start to the game, the Wings would get the first chance on the man advantage thanks to Grabovski running into Mrazek. Only 12 seconds later a great keep in by DeKeyser and a great pass by Datsyuk gave Tatar some space who sniped the top corner to give the Wings the early lead. For the remainder of the period both teams did a great job of clogging the neutral zone and as a result neither was able to generate much offense. The Red Wings started to control possession for the remainder of the period and for the first time in a while we also saw an excellent penalty kill.

In the second, the Islanders had the majority of the zone time due to the Wings inability to exit the zone cleanly or efficiently. As a result the Wings spent nearly 4 straight minutes on the PK after Ericsson was called for slashing and a too many men on the ice penalty. Thankfully the PK continued to excel as the Wings killed off both penalties to keep the score 1-0. Just as the team was ready to head into the intermission with the 1-0 lead Brendan Smith came up huge. With only 46 seconds left, Smith snuck in from the left point and fired a rocket to the top corner to score the ever important second goal.

The third started off extremely poorly for the Wings as a quick penalty turned into an Islander’s PP. After only 10 seconds some miscommunication left Visnovsky alone in the slot and he fired a great shot inside the far post to cut the lead to one. Only a minute later the Wings narrowly escaped danger as a great move by Tavares led to a rebound that cut directly through the crease. However deHaan was called for holding and the Red Wings headed to the PP. There were some good looks on the man advantage but it wasn’t until after the penalty expired that an Ericsson shot from the point would take a bounce and find the back of the net to make it 3-1halfway through the third. Again on the PP with 7 minutes left, a scramble in front bounced out to Gus on the backdoor who put it in the empty net to put the exclamation point on a big Red Wings win.

Another big win for the Red Wings against a very good Islander squad. The Red Wings have now won 12 of 16 games and remain atop the Atlantic division. This is far more than we could have expected after seeing Jimmy go down with that horrific injury. This looks like a team that is ready for the hard nosed hockey of April and May. As the season continues I'm more optimistic about this team's ability to go on a long playoff run.