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Lightning Strikes Red Wings Down

Tampa Bay thumps Detroit 5-1

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Lucas Raymond, Red Wings
Lucas Raymond scored the only Red Wings goal in a 5-1 loss at Tampa Bay.

Suddenly, the Detroit Red Wings find themselves living in George Costanza world. Their trip to the Sunshine State has turned into opposite day.



Thursday, the Wings went into Florida to face the Panthers, a place where they were winless in 10. Detroit would whip the reigning Stanley Cup champions 5-2.

Saturday, heading to Amalie Arena to face the Tampa Bay Lightning, logic suggested that the Red Wings should be feeling good about leaving the state with back-to-back wins. After all, they’d won four of six in that rink.

However, it was the Wings who wound up on the end of a whipping. Tampa Bay smacked Detroit 5-1.

“So disappointed in the start,” Detroit coach Todd McLellan told FanDuel Sports Network Detroit. “More importantly, I’m disappointed in our group because I thought we were kind of at our best but not really working. We were in position a lot of times but didn’t really get the job done.

“They owned us in and around our blue paint and I didn’t think we were real aggressive around their blue paint.”

With the loss, Detroit was slipping to four points out of a playoff spot.

Red Wings Collapse in Second Period

It was only 1-0 Lightning after 20 minutes, but Tampa Bay took control early in the second period. The Lightning would score three goals in the first 3:58 of the frame.

“Even though it didn’t show that we spent so much time in our end, we just kind of had some breakdowns when we did,” Detroit forward Patrick Kane said.

Raymond Keeps Rolling

The lone bright spot on the ice was Lucas Raymond. He got Detroit on the board with a second-period power-play goal.

It was the 10th time in 11 games that Raymond has collected a point. He was scoring his 19th goal of the season while collecting his team-leading 50th point.

Even though the Red Wings power play also got on the scoresheet for the 10th time in 11 games under McLellan, it wasn’t a stellar night for Detroit with the manpower advantage.

The Wings were 1-for-6 on the power play. They’d come into the game 14-for-28 since McLellan took over as coach.

“We feel pretty confident in our power play,” Kane said. “It kind of let us down a little bit tonight.

“If we get one maybe on our first couple of power plays it changes the momentum of the game. They get one and score and they scored pretty quick on that one.”

Red Wings Get Right Back It

Detroit was jetting to Dallas immediately after Saturday’s game for a Sunday (8 p.m.) start against the Stars.

“That’s the importance of kind of flushing this one and getting back on the ice tomorrow night against Dallas,” Kane said. “Learn from this one I’m sure we’ll go over some things and get right back at it.”

Detroit is winless in the last 11 games at Dallas (0-8-3).