N ASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Red Wings coach Mike Babcock couldn't get back into Bridgestone Arena after his jog Thursday, pounding away until someone took mercy.
"I got locked out. I had to beg somebody. Somebody on the cleaning crew let me in, so I appreciate that," he said.
That's the kind of persistence the Wings need to show tonight if they want to win Game 2 of the series against Nashville. The Predators won Game 1, 3-2, but the Wings got two power-play goals and 32 shots on Pekka Rinne the last two periods, and they did it all with only 11 forwards.
So if tonight's 12 forwards -- Gustav Nyquist joins the group after Darren Helm's season-ending arm surgery -- can do a more persistent job of getting inside Rinne's space, pushing him back into his net and having traffic in front of him, this series could turn to Detroit's home-ice advantage.
"I think we were at the net, but we had a hard time maybe to get to the net when we should go to the net and drive to the net," Tomas Holmstrom said. "They kept us to the outside, so when shot come, we were on the outside. So that's something we've got to work on. You've got to just beat your guy and be more determined that you're going to go to the net."
At 6-feet-5 and with agile feet, Rinne is hard to beat cleanly. Babcock called him a "second-shot" type of goaltender, meaning that, "you're not scoring on him on the first one, and the only way you're getting a second one is if you have a net presence. To me, we were too easy to play against in that way. We have to get to the net more."
The Wings' experience won't allow any nerves about trailing in a series. Practice was upbeat, and the only grumbling in the dressing room afterward was regarding how Shea Weber could ram Henrik Zetterberg's head into the glass in Game 1 and only be punished by a fine.
Most of the talk from the Wings' camp and the Predators' centered on discipline, that there was no way Game 2 will be like Game 1, which saw the NHL's least penalized regular-season teams combine for 17 penalties.
"We have to be a lot more disciplined," Rinne said. "We took a lot of penalties in our offensive zone, and those are the ones you have to get rid of. So we just have to be a little bit more disciplined."
Rinne had reason to chastise his teammates, as he was the one who had to stop 14 shots during eight Detroit power plays. That two of those opportunities led to conversions has to encourage the Wings, because they entered the playoffs having succeeded with the man advantage only six times since early March, and four were against Columbus.
Still, Babcock wants more speed with the man advantage. Neither side believes there'll be many power plays tonight, so the focus is on five-on-five play, and for Detroit, on having their role players more involved.
All of the Predators' goals have come from outside their top-six group, which is the kind of success the Wings are used to having.
No one expected this series to be short, and the Predators are well aware their opponent is the least likely to be rattled.
"They've got a lot of guys who've been through a lot of situations, and they have a lot of experience," Nashville defenseman Ryan Suter said. "I think they're going to come out just as hard as if nothing were to have happened."
Suter spoke specifically about the Wings shrugging off the nastiness that marred the end of Game 1, but his words also reflect where the Wings stand in this series. They lost the first game by one goal, playing with a short bench, and shut down the NHL's top power play six times, including 1:14 of a two-man advantage.
"We've been through this before," Zetterberg said. "We're just going to prepare ourselves for Game 2. I think we did a lot of good things, we've just got to keep doing that."
The biggest factor will be getting to Rinne; that's where persistence will pay off.
Contact Helene St. James: 313-222-2295 or hstjames@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @freepwings.
Join Free Press special writer Nick Meyer for live blogs of Games 2 and 3 of the Red Wings-Predators series at freep.com/sports.
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02/10/2008 - 0 Comments
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