Detroit Weekly News sports desk
St. Louis scored three times in the third period at Little Caesars Arena on Saturday afternoon to win 5-4. Detroit had led by two three and a half minutes into that period and finished the game with 28 shots on goal against 15. John Gibson stopped ten of the shots he faced, and that is the whole account of it.
How it got away
St. Louis put one shot on goal in the first period and scored with it. Dalibor Dvorsky took a Justin Barron pass and beat Gibson at 2:29, and for the next sixteen minutes the Blues did not test him again while Detroit worked the other end.
The reply, when it came, was the kind of goal that does not show up in any system. Joel Hofer misplayed the puck behind his own net at 8:13 and J.T. Compher put it into an empty one for his first of the season. Keegan Kolesar made it two 41 seconds into the second period, on a breakaway, also his first of the year, and Lucas Raymond added an unassisted third at 13:14. Jimmy Snuggerud tipped one past Gibson in the final half minute of the period to keep St. Louis in range.
Emmitt Finnie restored the two-goal cushion at 3:29 of the third on the power play, with Raymond and Moritz Seider assisting. Detroit was 4-2 up with most of a period to play and had conceded ten shots all night.
Then St. Louis scored three times in under ten minutes. Pavel Buchnevich pulled one back at 8:37 from a Jake Neighbours feed, Barron tied it at 12:57, and eighteen seconds after that Aleksanteri Kaskimaki tapped in an Alexey Toropchenko pass for the first goal of his NHL career and the winner with 6:45 left. Detroit pushed Gibson out for the last three minutes of it and did not get the puck back.
Individual performances
Raymond was the best Detroit skater, with his fifth goal of the season and his ninth assist. Finnie’s power play strike was his sixth. Compher and Kolesar both opened their accounts for the year, and Seider picked up his eighth assist, so the night was not short of things to point at.
The goaltending is where the comparison hurts. Hofer made 24 saves and gave up four goals, one of them to his own error behind the net. Gibson made ten saves and gave up five, which works out at a save percentage of .667 across 57 minutes of ice time. A team that outshoots an opponent by thirteen and loses has usually only lost in one place.
Barron and Snuggerud each finished with a goal and an assist for the visitors. Kaskimaki’s goal was the only point of his night and the only one that settled anything.
What this changes
Detroit sits at 6-5-3, which is 15 points from 14 games and a home record of 4-4-1. St. Louis leaves with a 7-6-1 record and the two points. Nothing in the Atlantic Division is decided in the first week of November, but a side that loses after leading by two in the third has spent a point it had already earned.
The more pressing matter is who plays the next one. Detroit now goes into a road back to back against the two Florida clubs, which asks for two goaltending performances in two nights from a group that has just produced its worst of the season.
What’s next
Detroit is at the Florida Panthers on Monday 2 November, with the puck at 7pm Eastern and national coverage on ESPN+. Tampa Bay follows on Tuesday.
Raymond’s form is the thing to watch across the two games. He has five goals and nine assists and he produced a goal and a primary assist on a night when almost nothing else Detroit did held up, which is the profile of a player carrying more than his share. Fourteen points from fourteen games is a pace worth keeping an eye on rather than a pace worth celebrating, and the next two opponents will make the distinction clear.
Sources
- ESPN, box score and game recap, for scoring, assists, goaltending lines and records.
- Sports Media Watch, broadcast listing for the Florida fixture.
- ESPN, box score, for the attendance figure of 17,565.
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