Regular Season Game 24: They Could've Used Hasek

1st Period


Buffalo 0 Detroit 1; 8:50- Kindl (1) from Holmstrom (7) & Abdelkader (4)

Holmstrom brings the puck from behind the net and moves along the half boards. He gets stickchecked and starts to lose his balance here. Kindl is open at the blueline and Homer throws it up to him.

Kindl has a huge seam to shoot through (my lines might not exactly match up with the lane, but you get the idea). Enroth just flat out gets beat here. He's not screened and he just...misses, I guess.

Buffalo 0 Detroit 2; 13:38- PPG Franzen (11) from Lidstrom (12) & Datsyuk (15)

As I've garishly illustrated above, Detroit gets set up in the umbrella on the powerplay. Franzen is between the high and low Buffalo defenders and sneaks into the high slot. Lidstrom reads this well and slap passes it to Franzen.

Buffalo does a really good job forming a box. They do a really bad job playing defense. Lidstrom's pass is in  Franzen's skates, but The Mule gathers is and beats Enroth, who is being screened into submission by Holmstrom.

Buffalo 0 Detroit 3; 14:41- Filppula (8) from Zetterberg (9)

Zetterberg pressures on the forecheck, causing a turnover at the blueline.

Zetterberg almost gets the puck stolen back, but he manages to get a pass off for Filppula.

Fil fakes backhand then pulls it across to the forehand. This freezes his defender and allows him the room to shoot. Filppula shoots and obviously he scores or else I wouldn't be screencapping this.

2nd Period

None

3rd Period


Buffalo 1 Detroit 3; 13:47- Hecht from Pominville & Leino

Lidstrom is the lone defender back to break up a Buffalo 2-on-1. Lidstrom gets his stick down but not parallel to the ice, and Pominville is able to slip it underneath to Hecht. Jimmy barely has time to react before Hecht has it past him.

Buffalo 1 Detroit 4; 18:43- EN Datsyuk (8) unassisted

This pass falls into the "srsly? wtf" category. There aren't any Sabres in the vicinity of this pass but there's a Datsyuk.

Pavel has a huge lane and dumps it in from center ice. This is just like Lidstrom's goal against Vancouver in the 2002 playoffs, except that it's an empty netter in an early regular season game in 2011 so it's nothing like that.