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Habs sink Wings at the Joe 3-1
By TonyH | November 28, 2008
Red Wings drop home game to Habs 3-1
Just the way Canadiens coach Guy Carbonneau drew it up.
DETROIT (AP) -The Montreal Canadiens clogged up the neutral zone and Carey Price took care of almost everything that managed to slip through.
Price made 32 saves, and Maxim Lapierre, Tomas Plekanec and Christopher Higgins scored second-period goals in Montreal’s 3-1 victory over the Detroit Red Wings on Wednesday night.
“We didn’t forecheck,” Plekanec said. “We stayed in the neutral zone and tried to make them make turnovers and we did a great job.”
Just the way Canadiens coach Guy Carbonneau drew it up.
“They’re a team that likes to control the puck,” Carbonneau said. “Just tried to play as tough as we can in the neutral zone and make them dump it in.”
Johan Franzen scored for Detroit, and Ty Conklin stopped 22 shots.
“I thought they played their system real well,” Red Wings defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom said. “I think we saw their first play was right at the red line and they were backing off and not giving us any speed through the neutral zone. Once we got the puck in we lost a lot of 1-on-1 battles in the corners, couldn’t sustain that pressure that we wanted to.”
Lapierre opened the scoring 5:23 into the second period when his attempted pass from behind the net deflected in off Lidstrom’s skate.
Source: more from NHL.com
“Montreal is a good team, and we don’t want to take anything away from them,” coach Mike Babcock said. “They had a good plan, and they worked hard, they competed hard. I knew looking at the schedule in the summer that this was a tough game.”
The Wings hadn’t been shut out at home since Dec. 31, 2007, and Johan Franzen made sure that stretch stayed alive with a beautiful goal at 13:31 of the third period. He stripped Ryan O’Byrne of the puck and then bulled his way to the net, weaving around one Canadien after another like they were pylons before beating Carey Price with a backhand.
Source: more of Helen St. James article at the Detroit Free Press
Johan Franzen finally broke Price’s shutout on an unassisted goal with 6:29 remaining when he stole the puck in the neutral zone from defenseman Ryan O’Byrne.
Franzen broke in on the left side and made an outstanding goal scorer’s move, which was all the more impressive considering he’s 6-foot-2, 210 pounds.
He took the puck from his backhand to his forehand and to his backhand for his 10th goal in 16 games.
It was not nearly enough.
This was certainly one of the more challenging spots created by the schedule-maker this season.
Detroit played Monday in Vancouver, stayed overnight, left Tuesday morning and didn’t get back home until around 7 p.m.
There simply wasn’t much recovery time following an eight-day trip that resulted in victories at Edmonton and Calgary, and an overtime loss in Vancouver.
Coach Mike Babcock said he saw the potential danger with this game as soon as the schedule was released.
Source: more of Dave Dye’s article at the Detroit News
Carey Price made 32 saves as the Montreal Canadiens defeated Detroit 3-1 at Joe Louis Arena.
“I knew looking at the schedule in the summer that this was a tough game,” Babcock said afterward. “We stayed over (after Sunday’s game in Vancouver) to try to counteract it, but obviously we still didn’t have the kind of jump we normally do, and they won more one-on-one battles. They played everyone back, clogged up the neutral zone. We turned it over too many times.”
It was the first time the Red Wings scored fewer than two goals in a game this season. They had gained at least one point in nine consecutive games (7-0-2) and in 18 of their first 20 before Wednesday.
Source: Ansar Khan’s article at Mlive
Topics: Canadiens, Original 6, Red Wings, Scores |