GBGA Regular Season Game 41: Stolen Victory

Last night's game, as summarized by the Chicago media

1st Period


Chicago 1 Detroit 0; 3:35- PPG Bolland from Hossa & Leddy

Chicago shifts into the umbrella, and the Wings counter with a box. Abdelkader is playing high but not high enough to take away the passing lane to his left.

Hossa gets the attention of Lidstrom, who is covering low. Abdelkader's blown coverage both allowed Hossa to receive a pass and gave him the space needed to do something with the puck. A shot from Hossa is knocked down in the middle by Bolland. Lidstrom now has to turn 180 degrees if he's going to make a play on Bolland. In other words, he's in poor position to make a play. White is covering low as well and has a better chance of impeding a shot. 

Somehow Bolland shoots through that mess of winged wheel and gets it past Conklin (!). We're off to a bad start.

Chicago 2 Detroit 0; 4:19- Sharp from Frolik & Hossa

Hossa carries into the Detroit zone and has his shot deflected behind the net. Upon retrieval, Kronwall gets a stick on a pass and the puck is now airborne. Note Sharp lurking in the corner undefended and undetected.

Hudler sees the puck and tries to swat it down out of the air. This is a gamble and blows up in Hudler's face, as he was supposed to be covering the slot area. The puck goes over Hudler and falls at Sharp's skates. He digs it out and carries it into the middle of the ice.

Sharp double clutches and fires a slap shot. This is a soft goal allowed by Conklin, but fault also falls on the Wings defenders (mainly Hudler).

Chicago 2 Detroit 1; 13:29- PPG Filppula (14) from Zetterberg (23) & Hudler (15)

Detroit is at the tail end of a 5-on-3 powerplay. Zetterberg passes to Hudler in the middle of the ice, which pulls the Chicago defenders at the top of the triangle up towards the blue line just a bit. Hudler sees both defenders move and passes back to Zetterberg in the right faceoff circle.

Zetterberg sees that he's drawn the attention of the low defender. He has just enough time to pass across to Filppula before Duncan Keith converges on him. The pass is absolutely perfectly located, moving through the legs of the defender and onto Flip's stick. Pretty much the definition of a bang-bang play.

2nd Period 

None

3rd Period


Chicago 2 Detroit 2; 15:15- Cleary (10) from Zetterberg (24) & Filppula (21)

I'm starting this midway through an already impressive sequence of passing and boardwork for the sake of simplicity. Cleary has it behind the net and sees Zetterberg alone in the slot area. His pass through traffic connects.

Zetterberg sees that two Blackhawks have made a wall and cut off his path to the right. He makes a hard turn back to the left and puts a shot on net.

The initial shot is stopped but Cleary is in front of the net and hacks at the puck until it goes in.

Overtime


Chicago 2 Detroit 3; 3:08- Datsyuk (13) from Ericsson (7) & Franzen (20)

Datsyuk picks the puck up in the corner and slips past Kane along the boards. Pav shoots the puck directly into Ericsson. The puck hits him in the chest and falls straight down. 

Ericsson backhands one and the puck is moved to the side of the net. Franzen gets a stick on it and shoves it towards Datsyuk near the right post. 

Datsyuk whiffs on his first shot attempt, but there's no chance that Pasha is going to miss a second chance opportunity. He loads up and roofs a shot into a wide open net. Corey Crawford was upset after the game because he thought he was interfered with on this play. I don't see it. Is he pinned on the ice? Sure. Is it because his own teammate ran into him? Yep, it is.