Update (8:01): Justin left a great comment below, one I thought deserved more exposure:
I finally got to watch a whole Red Wings game, so I’ll provide a few comments:
The Red Wings didn’t play their best game, but against a weak Vancouver offense, it was still good enough to win. This stat sums up the performance by either side nicely:
The Datsyuk-Zetterberg-Holmstrom line managed 16 shots on Luongo.
The Canucks team as a whole managed 15 shots on Hasek.Luongo was the sole reason the Red Wings didn’t score 2 or 3 more goals. He made quite a few brilliant saves, the best one being a right kick save on a Dan Cleary tip early in the game.
At the other end, Hasek was OK. Granted he didn’t face a lot of shots and wasn’t really able to “get in the zone”. He couldn’t be blamed for the first goal, as Cooke’s shot deflected up off Draper’s stick. The second goal by Daniel Sedin was a bit weak; Hasek should’ve been able to make the save.
There was some controversy on whether Ellis’s goal should’ve counted, but 1) Luongo was out of the crease, and 2) a Vancouver player was responsible for Roberto getting bumped into anyway. Valid goal, and nice to see hard working Matt Ellis get his second career goal. Both of his goals have been scored with a backhand and him facing away from the net. Maybe he should try that more often?
Early on, Datsyuk tended to hang onto the puck too much and not shoot when he should have. But he got better as the game progressed and started taking a lot of shots. IIRC he ended up with 7 SOG to lead the team. But more importantly, he drew some penalties and was a big part of the game winning goal by Holmstrom. He was behind the net with the puck and drew two defensemen to him, leaving only one Vancouver player to watch both Zetterberg and Holmstrom. Dats got the puck over to Hank who was on one side of the net, Hank made an easy pass over to a wide open Homer on the other side, and Homer slammed the puck into the yawning cage for possibly the easiest goal of his career. The play was beautiful and made the Vancouver defense look like a bunch of amateurs.
Zetterberg was great on the penalty kill. The one powerplay goal Vancouver scored went in when Hank was in the box. Overall, I think the Wings actually had more scoring chances during Vancouver powerplays than the Canucks themselves.
Holmstrom was called for a BS goalie interference penalty early in the game. Yes Tomas bumped into Luongo, but Mattias Ohlund very clearly pushed Holmstrom into Luongo and prevented Holmstrom from being able to get away from the crease. How that can be called a penalty is beyond me. Holmstrom would later get revenge though, scoring two goals with one being the GWG.
Late in the game, Maltby turned some Vancouver scrub inside out then shot the puck into Luongo’s chest. For a second it looked like #18 and #13 had switched jerseys.
Hudler only got about 5 minutes of ice time, and it seems like Ellis has replaced him on the second line. Meanwhile, Filppula remains snake bitten. With the Vancouver net empty at the end of the game, Filppula brought the puck into the Vancouver zone but couldn’t maintain control of the puck to get a shot off. He can’t score even with the net empty…
That’s about all I remember to comment on. Hope this helped.
A very good take on the game, that’s for sure. - Matt
Sorry, no game recap today (unless work is very slow tonight). Dave has a great one over at Gorilla Crouch you should check out, though. And an advanced warning: I may not have one for the Sharks game Friday, either. Just too busy on this end…
I finally got to watch a whole Red Wings game, so I’ll provide a few comments:
The Red Wings didn’t play their best game, but against a weak Vancouver offense, it was still good enough to win. This stat sums up the performance by either side nicely:
The Datsyuk-Zetterberg-Holmstrom line managed 16 shots on Luongo.
The Canucks team as a whole managed 15 shots on Hasek.
Luongo was the sole reason the Red Wings didn’t score 2 or 3 more goals. He made quite a few brilliant saves, the best one being a right kick save on a Dan Cleary tip early in the game.
At the other end, Hasek was OK. Granted he didn’t face a lot of shots and wasn’t really able to “get in the zone”. He couldn’t be blamed for the first goal, as Cooke’s shot deflected up off Draper’s stick. The second goal by Daniel Sedin was a bit weak; Hasek should’ve been able to make the save.
There was some controversy on whether Ellis’s goal should’ve counted, but 1) Luongo was out of the crease, and 2) a Vancouver player was responsible for Roberto getting bumped into anyway. Valid goal, and nice to see hard working Matt Ellis get his second career goal. Both of his goals have been scored with a backhand and him facing away from the net. Maybe he should try that more often?
Early on, Datsyuk tended to hang onto the puck too much and not shoot when he should have. But he got better as the game progressed and started taking a lot of shots. IIRC he ended up with 7 SOG to lead the team. But more importantly, he drew some penalties and was a big part of the game winning goal by Holmstrom. He was behind the net with the puck and drew two defensemen to him, leaving only one Vancouver player to watch both Zetterberg and Holmstrom. Dats got the puck over to Hank who was on one side of the net, Hank made an easy pass over to a wide open Homer on the other side, and Homer slammed the puck into the yawning cage for possibly the easiest goal of his career. The play was beautiful and made the Vancouver defense look like a bunch of amateurs.
Zetterberg was great on the penalty kill. The one powerplay goal Vancouver scored went in when Hank was in the box. Overall, I think the Wings actually had more scoring chances during Vancouver powerplays than the Canucks themselves.
Holmstrom was called for a BS goalie interference penalty early in the game. Yes Tomas bumped into Luongo, but Mattias Ohlund very clearly pushed Holmstrom into Luongo and prevented Holmstrom from being able to get away from the crease. How that can be called a penalty is beyond me. Holmstrom would later get revenge though, scoring two goals with one being the GWG.
Late in the game, Maltby turned some Vancouver scrub inside out then shot the puck into Luongo’s chest. For a second it looked like #18 and #13 had switched jerseys.
Hudler only got about 5 minutes of ice time, and it seems like Ellis has replaced him on the second line. Meanwhile, Filppula remains snake bitten. With the Vancouver net empty at the end of the game, Filppula brought the puck into the Vancouver zone but couldn’t maintain control of the puck to get a shot off. He can’t score even with the net empty…
That’s about all I remember to comment on. Hope this helped.
I hate to talk negatively when the Wings are doing so well, but it seems like 80% of the Wings’ close wins over the last 2 years have had caveats like “[other goalie]was the only reason the other team was in it.” I’m kind of sick of hearing that… game after game, regular season or playoffs, we double or triple the shots of the other team to win by one or two goals. The term “low-percentage shots” has come up in the past… when is this going to be acknowledged as a serious problem? Giguere, Kiprusoff, Toskala, Giguere again… all opponent goalies that “just happened” to have the series’ of their lives when Detroit came to town. If we’re tripling up crappy teams in shots, we should be tripling them up in goals, because when it comes playoff time we need to capitalize on a much higher percentage of our chances.
So…if the Wings didn’t get such a high number of shots, there would be no problem? It’s fine to win by one or two goals if the shot totals were a lot closer? Just think about how silly what you’re saying really is. I hear people saying it all the time, and it has never really made sense.
“…game after game, regular season or playoffs, we double or triple the shots of the other team to win by one or two goals.”
That’s not true at all. Instead of making general accusations, why don’t you find some evidence showing that the Wings only win by one or two goals when doubling or tripling the opponent’s shot total? Because I can point out games from the most recent playoffs where the Wings dominated their opponent in the shot totals and also in the final score. Game 1 and 5 against Calgary and Game 5 against San Jose come to mind. I’ve provided some examples…why don’t you do so too? I can probably find some regular season games too, but those’ll take a while to dig through.
“The term ‘low-percentage shots’ has come up in the past…”
That’s just a stupid term (no offense). Unless you want to watch each game and document each shot, that argument really has nothing to back it up. Every time I watch the Wings, they get a fair mix of “low” and “high” percentage shots – just like every other team in the league. The only reason they have more “low percentage shots” is because they take so many more shots overall.
As for the “making goalies look good” thing… Has it ever occured to you that maybe these goalies ARE good? Gee, imagine that. How do you think these teams even got into the playoffs if they didn’t have a good goalie? Kiprusoff is a Vezina winner. Giguere is a Conn Smythe and now Cup winner. Nabokov (I think you meant him and not Toskala) is a Calder winner and was OUTSTANDING in the most recent Olympic Ice Hockey tournament. These are all EXCELLENT goalies. Just like last night. Yes we got 39 shots on net and only scored 3 goals, but Luongo is considered by many to be the second best – if not the best – goalie in the world. We scored more goals than his GAA – that’s something to be proud of, not be ashamed of.
Bottom line – the Wings win by controlling the puck and outshooting their opponents, and I’ll take that system over any other any day.
Hey, man, we’re all in this together, no need to be so sarcastic. I wasn’t accusing YOU of taking bad shots. I’m not saying they should change their system; but when I see the words “domination” and the score is 3-2, it raises an eyebrow, and I can remember that eyebrow being in the air a fair amount during last year’s postseason. And I never said those goalies aren’t good. Please make sure you read my response carefully before responding with such vitriol, especially if you’re going to “quote” things I never said.
Here are some data I got, all the playoff games from last year, SF SA GF GA:
46 20 4 1
51 15 3 1
30 28 2 3
35 21 2 3
38 24 5 1
55 21 2 1
34 19 0 2
22 19 3 2
30 27 1 2
49 27 3 2
33 24 4 1
22 28 2 0
19 32 2 1
27 33 3 4
28 29 5 0
39 23 3 5
37 26 1 2
29 29 3 4
So we outshot teams by an average of 10 shots and scored .7 more goals per game. I’d like to see a goal more than once every 14 shots or so, although I’ll admit it doesn’t look as bad as I thought it would. Here are the data for this year:
39 11 5 1
39 15 3 2
42 21 5 2
27 25 4 2
35 29 3 6
30 28 4 1
36 29 2 3
28 21 4 2
35 20 4 2
26 27 3 3
42 15 2 2
Outshooting 34-22, outscoring 3.5-2.4. So it’s better this season than it was in the playoffs. Of course, I made the comment before last night’s utter destruction of the Sharks.
I know you’re a passionate fan and you take offense when someone says ill of the Wings. But I’m a passionate fan too, and neurotic when it comes to this team, so I admit maybe I’m a little too critical. But it’s been that way for years, so it’ll be a struggle…
I would also like to point out that in both of those scenarios, we are being proportionately outscored per shot, which I think was the only tangible criticism I levied in my original post.