Red Wings Blank Tampa Bay, 3-0, Take Series Lead

(photo by Dinur Blum)

The Detroit Red Wings shutout the Tampa Bay Lightning 3-0 last night in front of a boisterous home crowd at Joe Louis Arena, taking a 2-1 lead in the playoff series.

While Detroit had home ice advantage, the Lightning had felt confident going into the game, hoping their physical strategy would continue to spark offense.

Instead, that hard-hitting team did not show up and fell behind early, 1-0 after the first period, after Pavel Datsyuk beat Bishop.

“They got an extremely fortunate bounce on their first goal, and now we’re behind,” Lightning head coach Jon Cooper said. “That was the only bounce they got, and it’s the only one they ended up needing. We didn’t get the bounces. We worked our tail off to get them, but Datsyuk’s goal, he doesn’t see it. It hits off the back of his leg and it’s an inch inside the post. We had open nets that (were) an inch outside the post.”

The Lightning outshot Detroit 22-21 and failed to capitalize on six power play opportunities, including one 5-on-3 in the beginning of the second period.

Detroit’s second unanswered goal came from Justin Abdelkader on the power play.

“We just seemed like the plays were there, it was just the puck bounced or it was just a bit inside or the guy couldn’t get the shot off he wanted,” Bolts Captain Steven Stamkos said. “We did have some chances but probably didn’t deserve to win. They battled hard. They didn’t give us much.”

“We’ve got to stay confident, but we have to also realize that we have to play the way we did in the first two games in order to give ourselves a chance to win because that’s a good hockey team over there,” Stamkos said.

Bishopmade 18 saves in the contest.

The Lightning will look to tie the series on Thursday in Game 4 at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit at 7 p.m.

“We just weren’t very good today. We have to find a way to dig a little deeper and win the next game,” said Stamkos.