Detroit Red Wings toy with Montreal Canadiens, 5-0; fourth victory in five games
MONTREAL — Rack them up for the Detroit Red Wings, whose good habits just won them their fourth game in five outings.
They had fun Tuesday at Centre Bell, playing a Montreal Canadiens team decimated by injuries and spinning an early lead to a 5-0 victory. Even with as much winning as the Wings have done of late, they're still among the 11 worst teams in standings, keeping them in the running to be in the draft lottery for the first overall pick.
Marco Kasper, the No. 8 pick from 2022, missed the game with a lower-body injury, but got to watch David Perron score twice and set up Lucas Raymond's goal. Matt Luff made it 3-0 when he got to the puck just after Jonatan Berggren had been knocked down on his attempt, and Joe Veleno scored on one of the three straight power plays the Wings had late in the second period. Ville Husso made 24 saves.
The Wings (35-33-9) have five games left in the season.
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Husso just wants to have fun
Husso made his first start since March 20 after visits to multiple specialists assuaged his concern about a lower-body injury.
"I'm lucky I can come back now and try to go out there and have fun and try to be the same Ville I was before," he said. "I feel 100%."
Even so, coach Derek Lalonde said the medical staff wanted to see how Husso handled being in a game. Husso's return meant the Wings had to remove Alex Nedeljkovic from their roster, because he had been recalled on an emergency basis and the Wings have used up the four regular call-ups teams get after the trade deadline. Husso was not tested much, but he was on form when Jonathan Drouin had a point-blank chance in the second period.
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Perron had fun, too
Lalonde extolled Perron's value after the morning skate, touching both on his offense and his vocal leadership. Hours later, there was Perron grinning as he helped the Wings build a lead in the first period. First it was skating the puck into Montreal's zone and then timing a pass that Raymond stick-worked into a 1-0 lead just short of the five-minute mark. Perron followed up with a breakaway goal at the period's midpoint, taking a pass from Jordan Oesterle and racing up ice from the neutral zone to score for the 21st time this season. Perron scored again in the third period when he finished Olli Määttä's shot on net.
Fun memory
The Canadiens started goaltender Cayden Primeau, who was born in Farmington Hills to former Wings forward Keith Primeau. The Wings drafted Primeau at No. 3 in 1990 (passing on Jaromir Jagr, but that's not the fun memory) but by the mid 1990s, Primeau was unhappy with his ice time, playing behind centers Steve Yzerman and Sergei Fedorov. After intense negotiations, Primeau was the centerpiece of the package the Wings sent to the Hartford Whalers to acquire Brendan Shanahan (the other pieces were defenseman Paul Coffeey and a 1997 first-round pick) at the start of the 1996-97 season. Shanahan went on to help the Wings win the Cup the next spring — and again in 1998 and 2002.
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Contact Helene St. James at hstjames@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @helenestjames. Read more on the Detroit Red Wings and sign up for our Red Wings newsletter. Her latest book, “On the Clock: Behind the Scenes with the Detroit Red Wings at the NHL Draft,” is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Triumph Books. Personalized copies available via her e-mail.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Red Wings toy with Canadiens, 5-0, in Montreal
