Howard Lifts Wings to Complete Sweep of Blue Jackets

It was a very solid 4-2 victory with input from all lines and good defensive accountability. The Jackets held a lead midway through the game on the back of a last minute goal from a Derek Brassard tip. It seemed goals would again be hard to come by with Chris Mason dominant up until that point. It must suck to be a goalie against the Wings though, as Nik Kronwall banged away and finally found the net followed by Darren helm taking advantage of a broken play just 14 seconds later to give Detroit the lead. Filppula added a very valuable goal to start the 3rd period but the biggest victory of the night came during a 4-minute period in which Detroit killed off two minutes of 5-on4 and two minutes of 5-on-3 PP time for the Blue Jackets with very little difficulty. That set up the win from there as Detroit moved to 15 wins on the season.

I don't normally make a habit of criticizing other teams, but Columbus will never be a serious threat to contenders with a powerplay like that. Howard had a good game and the PK from Detroit was solid yes, but it wasn't invincible and Columbus was just completely inept with the man-advantage almost all game. Even the late goal was borne of a pretty weak 72 secs of powerplay time. The way the played the 4 minute and most importantly, the full two minutes of 5-on-3 powerplay time was just disgraceful. They took long shots for easy blocks, they made in lanes that weren't open and barely made the Wings chase at all with poor cycling. I'm sorry, but I just had to get that out of my system. Arniel, you gotta fix this ASAP.

Anyway, this is a Red Wings blog so back to them...

It was another game with limited offensive input from Detroit's top scorers. Zetterberg and Lidstrom held pointless however Datsyuk got two assists, with one being on Cleary's EN goal with under a minute left. And this is the difference between this season and last. This is probably a game Detroit would've lost about 12 months ago, when they didn't have the depth they do now. Val Filppula had another two-point night with his second straight GWG and Franzen got a couple of assists. Mike Babcock is usually able to rely on at least one of the bottom three lines to step up if the top line is struggling.

To be fair though, "struggling" wouldn't describe the top line's performance tonight. Zetterberg and Datsyuk were dynamic on several instances and I think they (particularly Z) were very unlucky to not hook-up for some scoring of their own. Hank created several chances but it wasn't meant to be for him, as Mason was up to the task and made things tough for the Wings' forwards.

I mentioned in the preview that I thought this was a very important game to win.

The victory gives the Wings a 4 point lead in the Central (and Western Conference) over Columbus with a game in hand. This gap will definitely come in handy as Detroit heads to San Jose tomorrow to finish off November and head into a 16-game December.