Wings can’t figure out Flames

By Michael Caples –

DETROIT – For a moment, it looked like the Red Wing had gotten that one bounce they needed to put an end to their losing streak.

When Dan Cleary recorded his first goal of the season – the puck bounced in off him during his drive to the net – in the second period, momentum shifted in the Wings’ favor.

The problem was that the momentum swing was short lived.

Calgary captain Jerome Iginla scored two one-timer goals to lead the Flames to a 4-1 over the Wings, extending Detroit’s losing streak to six games. Over that span, the Wings have only scored six goals.

“You can let it snowball on you, and be mentally soft and feel bad for yourself,” coach Mike Babcock said after the game. “No one else is going to look after you, you have to look after yourself, you’ve gotta dig in and put a stop to it.  That’s the bottom line, 20 guys doing it right for 60 minutes.

“We’re not scoring easy right now. The other night we scored a goal, it wasn’t written down as a power-play goal but their guy never got onto the ice. We haven’t scored an even-strength goal come to think of it in three games. We’ve scored now six goals if I’m not mistaken in our last six, and that’s just not enough, especially for a team with some of the names we have, so we have to be a better team.”

Lee Stempniak opened the scoring for the Flames in the first period, somehow sneaking the puck through Jimmy Howard on a wide wraparound try. Iginla increased the Flames’ lead to two with a one-timer blast from the left circle four minutes into the second period.

Cleary knocked in the Wings’ lone goal off a rebound. Niklas Kronwall took a quick shot from the right side of the Flames’ net. The puck bounced into the air, hit Cleary’s body, and somehow found it’s way into the Calgary goal.

The Wings controlled play for the rest of that period, and the early stages of the third. Then, a turnover where none of the Red Wings picked up the puck in their own end led to Iginla’s second goal of the night – another one-timer from the same spot on the ice to beat Jimmy Howard.

“I thought we played real good at the start of the third, until we turned over that puck, coming out of our zone,” Babcock said. “We were coming out actually with numbers, and I don’t know if it was miscommunication with [Todd Bertuzzi] and Kronwall or whatever it was, but it was a gift, they got the one-timer there, and there was nothing Howie could do about that. I didn’t think we were very good after that.”

Adding to the Wings’ frustrations is the fact that three of the six losses have come on home ice. Detroit has not won a home game since Oct. 21 against Columbus.

“Of course when you’re not winning, where you’re losing six straight games, you’re concerned as a group and as a team,” captain Nicklas Lidstrom said. “Especially when you’re at home, you want to play a lot better at home, and we haven’t been able to do that.”

Assistant captain Henrik Zetterberg said that the Wings need to come up with new ways to put pressure on the other team’s goaltender. The Flames blocked 20 shots in the game.

“We’ve gotta find a way to get the puck to the net, maybe from the sides a little more,” Zetterberg said. “They’re blocking a lot of shots out front, it’s tough to get it through, and we’ve gotta be able to get the puck to the net to be able to score.”