Blogs > Red Wings Corner

Up-to-the minute updates and insights from the Red Wings locker room at home and on the road. By Chuck Pleiness of The Macomb Daily.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Thoughts on Game 15 (4-3 win in Tampa)

-- Coach Mike Babcock shuffled his forward lines in the last two periods. He put Zetterberg-Samuelsson-Franzen back together. He also reunited the Griffins line of Hudler-Kopecky-Filppula and the Grind Line of Maltby-Draper-McCarty. Not sure if he's going to keep those lines for Friday's game against the Panthers.

-- Chris Osgood is 17-0-0 all-time against Tampa Bay. But Babcock wasn't impressed with win No. 17.

"I think Ozzie would thank his teammates tonight," said Babcock. "Ozzie bails us out some nights. We bailed him out tonight."

It looked like Ozzie was unscreened on the game's first goal -- a Mark Recchi shot -- and didn't bail out his teammates on Matt Pettinger's late goal.

-- What a great short-handed shift by Kirk Maltby five minutes into the second period. Maltby not only pinned the Lightning in their own zone single-handed, he also skated out from the corner alone after winning a battle with three Lightning.

-- That flurry of power plays in the last half of the second period was sparked by Zetterberg. Z drew three Tampa Bay penalties in a seven-minute span, including the rarity of drawing one penalty then another during the delayed call.

-- Good line by Babcock afterwards, joking that so many Red Wings jerseys in the crowd threw off the Detroit players ... "I thought the thing that threw us off in the first period is we came out and the bottom bowl was filled with Red Wings' fans. You know how we've been at home this year. We thought we had a home game. That threw us right off."

More comments on the Red Wings' slow start ... "That was a terrible first period," said Zetterberg. "We didn't play good at all. We came back in the second and started to play good again." ... "In the first period, we didn't play the way we were supposed to. Babs (Babcock) came in (to the locker room) and made sure we knew that," said Tomas Kopecky.

-- Brett Lebda was finally on the ice for an even-strength goal scored -- Johan Franzen's goal halfway through the third. Lebda has been on the ice for nine goals against this season. With just 10:24 of ice time, including no special teams time, Lebda clearly isn't in Babcock's good graces yet.

-- The Lightning had an odd pattern of matching up lines in the first two periods. They matched up forwards with Detroit's forward lines, not defense tandems. The Lecavalier line was always out against the Datsyuk line, but the Tampa blue line was shuffled. Prospal's line matched up against Zetterberg's. The Stamkos line matched up against Draper's.

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