The view from Detroit

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.’’