The 1st meeting this season of the big 2 in the west took place Thursday night. Corey Schneider got the start at the Joe Louis for the Canucks whilst Jimmy Howard returned between the pipes for the Redwings.
After a quiet opening to the game which saw both teams kill 2 minute minors, LaPierre and Abdelkader decided to try and liven it up on the 7 minute mark as the gloves came off. Abdelkader got the better on this one with LaPierre taking some big whacks as he got caught on his knees.
Burrows had the 1st great chance of the 2nd period as he got behind the Detroit defence and went 1 on 1 against Howard. A pretty weak shot straight at the Redwings netminder and he fought the puck off easily.
Detroit took the lead just over 8 minutes into the 2nd as Justin Abdelkader beat Schneider on the short side after a fantastic cross ice pace from Todd Bertuzzi found him skating in all alone infront of the Canucks goal.
Filuppla made it 2-0 around 2 minutes later as he and Franzen exchanged passes and Filuppla fired a quickly released shot that went in over Schneider’s glove. It was all Detroit in the 2nd period as they created chance after chance, Schneider remaining strong in the Vancouver net to keep the score down.
The Canucks thought they were back in the game right on the buzzer to the end of the 2nd period but a long range punt at the net that Howard let squeak through his body didn’t get over the line before the 0’s got on the clock and it was rightly called that time had expired before it crossed the line.
The third period was more even as the Canucks managed to play their way back into the game without being a major threat on the Detroit goal. Both teams had powerplay chances they couldn’t take advantage of, Detroit especially poor with the 1 man advantage as they went 0-15 on the PP so far in the season.
With 6 minutes left in the 3rd Alexander Burrows had a glorious opportunity to make it a 1 goal game as he had a wide open goal to put the puck into but only managed to find the bar as a sprawling Howard was beaten all ends up.
The Canucks pulled Schneider with well over 2 minutes left on the game but to no avail as the Redwings saw the remainder of the game out and came away with a 2-0 win, their 2nd shut out in a row.
Jimmy Howard saw off all 25 shots on goal to earn him my star of the game. A solid performance at the start of the game when the game was still 0-0 which enabled the Redwings to build towards a solid shut out win.
The Canucks struggle again and now have a 1-2-1 record to start the season whilst the Redwings start with an impressive 3-0 record, posting back to back shut outs in the process.
By Adam Yates
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