Of late, it’s been either feast or famine for the Kings against the Detroit Red Wings. Since the start of last season, the teams have played each other five times, with the Kings winning two in regulation and one in overtime and losing two. In the three wins, the Kings outscored the Red Wings 10-3. In the two losses, they were outscored 11-5. Here’s how the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News covered yesterday’s game, followed by some additional postgame quotes from the Red Wings’ locker room…
Detroit Red Wings 4, Los Angeles 1: Wings break two-game skid (Detroit Free Press)
Pavel Datsyuk scores twice, Wings end road losing streak (Detroit News)
End of slump relieves Red Wings’ Pavel Datsyuk (Detroit News)
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COACH MIKE BABCOCK
(on the game…) “I thought we played good. The story of our year is, we’ve played a lot of good hockey and we found ways to make enough mistakes that we haven’t been able to win enough. You can’t continually get 38 shots a game and give up 22 or 24 and not win. Eventually, it’s going to happen for you. It was great to see Pavel (Datsyuk) get a couple tonight. He’s a goal scorer, wants to score, wants to feel good about himself. I thought we had a great effort out of (Henrik) Zetterberg’s line. … We had a huge save on the penalty shot that wasn’t even a penalty. The other play I thought was huge was when they scored shorthanded and we responded on the same power play.’’
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NICKLAS LIDSTROM
(on the game…) “We wanted to hang on to the puck, especially offensively in their zone, try to grind their D and get some shots on their goalie with traffic. We had the (power play) going early on. That really got us going. … We stuck with our game plan for 60 minutes tonight. We played solid defensively, tried to clear the rebounds in front of the net for (Jimmy Howard). On the offensive side, we did a great job of really hanging on to the puck. … They got that shorthanded goal and we responded right away by scoring on the power play and getting ourselves right back into the game. … Special teams was very important today.’’
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JIMMY HOWARD
(on the game…) “This is our best game we’ve played in a while. We did a good job tonight. We kept the third man high. Really didn’t give them much.’’
(on Kopitar’s penalty shot…) “I stayed patient with him. You know he’s a talented player. I figured he was going to make a move and I just went out, followed him back, stayed patient and was able to make a glove save.’’
Damn Red Wings! Hate them! Now we gotta bounce back. Now for the Blues. Our next several games are going to be big tests for the Kings.
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CB14 Reply:
November 20th, 2011 at 9:30 am
@Laura, Yeah, the Blues are 4-0-2 since firing their Head Coach.
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Considering the major retooling our team has gone thru since the end of last season, I don’t think last year games vs Detroit mean anything at all.
So far, the Kings have not shown any of the paper potential against Detroit, Vancouver, Pittsburg…even Edmonton.
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Paul G Reply:
November 20th, 2011 at 9:32 am
@Gustavo, because those are puck possession teams and were a dump and chase outdated team
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USHA#17 Reply:
November 20th, 2011 at 5:06 pm
@Gustavo, Or New Jersey
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Regardless of whether the Kings defeat the Wings or not, every game they play against them shows how outdated Terry Murray’s system is…
They have to stop the dump and chase system and start playing a more puck posession system like Detroit
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puck73 Reply:
November 20th, 2011 at 11:07 am
@Paul G, They changed the system starting with the Vancouver game a couple weeks ago, your a little late! Why dont you give the opposition some credit? The fact is, Detroit responded when they should have been deflated after giving up a shorty. Also, we hit a couple of goal posts and missed a penalty shot.
I was blasting TM for quite a while when he was having are players muck and grind along the boards, clearly it has changed.
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tornado12 Reply:
November 20th, 2011 at 2:43 pm
@puck73, also, the kings weren’t skating yesterday. Doesn’t matter what system you play if you don’t do the basics
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Paul G Reply:
November 20th, 2011 at 2:48 pm
@tornado12, i completely agree which is why I think Brad Richardson needs to be traded…his heart is there but hes not putting it all together and he cant use age or inxeperience as an excuse
Paul G Reply:
November 20th, 2011 at 2:46 pm
@puck73, while some things I did notice were changed, there were not any significant changes in terms of puck possession…Im not asking for a normal system I’m asking for a puck possession system like Detroit and Chicago
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what is the Kings record with these 1pm starts?
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kingkrazy Reply:
November 20th, 2011 at 12:31 pm
@tornado12, not very good.
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Kings have very very poor record in 1:00 and 5:00 pm starts. Players have game day routine that gets out of sync. Coaches need to make changes like everyone at downtown hotel before game
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Its LA baby! To laid back to play at 1pm They can barely play 60 minutes at 7pm!
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