Coyotes Vs. Red Wings, Game 2: Detroit Continues Phoenix Shutdown, Leads 4-1 After Two Periods

The Detroit Red Wings continued their dominant play and kept their three-goal lead over the Phoenix Coyotes. They’re up in Game 2 of their Western Conference Quarterfinal 4-1.

Things continued going the Red Wings way when Tomas Holmstrom scored the Red Wings second even-strength goal of the game at 1:10 to make it 4-0. Pavel Datsyuk got another assist, meaning he has figured into all four goals scored by Detroit in the game, and five of eight in the series. The count is 2-3-5 for one of the most talented forwards in the sport. The Red Wings started looking almost Globetrotter-esque at this point, making some wonderful plays but not able to connect on goal number five, yet. Even better, Johan Franzen finally returned.

The Coyotes finally responded at 7:02, when Radim Vrbata got a big rebound and pushed it into the open side to make it 4-1. It was Vrbata’s second goal of the series, with Keith Yandle finally registering a point. The ‘Yotes are going to have to take a long road to come back, but at least they’ve started early enough.

The game started to get a bit uglier, with teams taking penalty after penalty. Not the sort of game either team wants to get into, as Detroit would prefer not to let Phoenix back into this game. On the other hand, Phoenix is a goal away from being back in it, and doesn’t want to give the Red Wings a chance to run away.