The Chicago Blackhawks couldn’t muster another comeback in their second preseason game, a 3-2 loss to the Detroit Red Wings on Thursday night at Joe Louis Arena. We’ll assume it wasn’t a great game to watch, since nobody broadcasted it and we were left with a bizarre combination of radio coverage and tweets to go by.
Bryan Bickell and Garrett Ross scored the only goals of the evening for Chicago, both in the third period, but they came after the Red Wings had already extended a pair of two-goal leads. Tomas Tatar scored the first goal of the game on a deflection late in the first period, while Tomas Nosek added the initial insurance goal less than a minute into the third period.
Bickell’s goal put the game back into question for a few minutes, until Andrej Nestrasil effectively put things away with the third goal of the night. Ross cut the lead to one inside the final minute, but a last-ditch effort to tie the game fell short.
Following a late start due to the Blackhawks arriving to the arena late, the team clearly started off slow and mustered just five shots in the first 20 minutes. Red Wings goaltender Jimmy Howard rarely got challenged early on, and ended up playing the entire game while saving 26-of-28 shots on goal.
Antti Raanta was similar effective for Chicago over the first half of the game, but he saw nearly as many shots in 30 minutes as Howard saw all night. Raanta was 21-of-22 in goal before being replaced by Michael Leighton, who was 17-of-19 as the Red Wings continued their aggressive play.
The final shots tally clearly leaned in Detroit’s favor, 41-28. Neither team was effective on the power play, with a combined eight opportunities going scoreless in the game. All in all, we’ll just to have to tally this one up as a learning experience, and move on to Friday’s game against New York.
(By the way, no 3 Stars tonight since the game wasn’t broadcast on TV and it would be general guessing based on the box score. If you kept close tabs on the game, feel free to leave your stars in the comments.)