Red Wings’ Lyon Sweeps Islanders for the Season

Alex Lyon is now 3-0 against Patrick Roy’s team as the Red Wings came back to win 4-2 against the New York Islanders tonight. It was a back and forth affair, but the Red Wings would ultimately manage to keep Lyon’s win streak against the Islanders alive.

Said Raymond: “He was unbelievable. The stops at the end, they were huge for us.”

Anders Lee scored on the veteran netminder after Lyon lost his stick making a save that took him out of net briefly before returning to the net where he lost track of the puck. That had the Red Wings down 1-0 with just under 5 minutes of playtime having elapsed. Mo Seider tied it up on a slap-shot from the faceoff zone before Kyle Palmieri had the Islanders back up 2-1 for much of second and third period. Dylan Larkin tied the game a little over halfway through the third period as he was falling to his knees, and Lucas Raymond got the Red Wings their first lead of the night on a tip-in two minutes later. Simon Edvinsson got his second empty-net goal of the season to seal it. Roy had pulled the goalie about two and and a half minutes earlier.

Power Play Ineffective

The Red Wings’ hot power play has started coming back down to Earth. Patrick Roy’s Islanders gave the Red Wings three power plays before the third period. Detroit took advantage of none of them. Luckily the New York ranks second to last in the league when it comes to power play as well and didn’t score on the three they got either. Larkin and Simon Edvinsson both were penalized in the first period, though neither led to goals. A poor dumpoff from Seider to Raymond wasted half of a power play. The resulting turnover had the Red Wings stuck in their own zone for almost an entire minute. That exact thing happened a couple games ago and led directly to a shorthanded goal. The Red Wings have these periods of being a good team, but these lapses in concentration can and have proven deadly against better opponents.

“This is a game we scored three five on five goals, which has been a struggle for us. But we need the power play to keep this going forward,” Detroit coach Derek Lalonde told media in New York.

Lineup Still in Disarrayd

The seemingly nightly shakeups to the forward lineup aren’t working in terms of creating consistent offense. Having Larkin and Raymond being the only forwards to score while being outshot 21-29. The rotations of the defenseman outside the top pairing are leaving much to be desired.

With Patrick Kane out, Marco Kasper was back down to the third line as Joe Veleno returned to the ice. The Red Wings only had two shots when Seider’s one-timer flew in from the faceoff zone to tie the game.  The Red Wings did have scoring chances early in the period before Lee scored, but they could not handle the puck bounce. Meanwhile, the defensive core is still struggling when one of Simon Edvinsson or Seider aren’t on ice. Jeff Petry misread the puck on the Palmieri goal and was looking at Lyon when that went in. Albert Johansson has only just gotten his first NHL point nearly 20 games in. It seems like they just can’t settle themselves into a groove. Maybe not being sure who’s going to be where on a given night is contributing to that.