Brandon Sutter: Brandon Sutter nets goal in OT loss to Wings

Detroit (4-3-1) lost in overtime to Calgary on Friday night.

Notes: Defenceman Ladislav Smid made his season debut with the Flames after sitting out Calgary’s first six games with a neck injury.

So we’ll call them the Detroit Red “Wrings”. It’s a huge opportunity for the Oilers to erase that tough 0-4 start and begin anew, and a win on Friday would really signify that this team may be ready to take a step forward – finally.

Green is listed as day-to-day according to Wings general manager Ken Holland after suffering what appeared to be a shoulder injury on a hit by the Flames’ Josh Jurris late in the first period, Friday.

The second powerplay unit also accounted for the game’s second powerplay goal. “That’s why we got Marchenko”. It’s no different than we did with Bo a year ago – in his first 8-10 games he averaged more than 10 minutes once.

“It’s a challenge, it’s not easy to get up in the morning (and fly to Vancouver) but he should have enough of the afternoon to regroup”, Blashill said. He’s going to have to come and execute at a real high level. Once known as puck possession champions, this iteration couldn’t possess a pronoun, which might explain why they struggled through the first two periods to make this game theirs.

“His back had been bothering him all of (training) camp and he’s felt progressively worse”, Holland said. As an NHLer, you never want to two-time the puck, especially since you still have to see it at work every day, and working with someone you two-timed can be very awkward. “Hopefully it’s nothing more than a little bit of time off. We’ll know more on Monday or Tuesday”.

What’s been one of the Red Wings’ downfalls in this four-game winless streak?

Holland feels the Red Wings haven’t been consistent enough over the full 60 minutes of a game. Mistakes happen because we play a different way.

The other positives I can take away from this game were we produced on the power play and stopped them with our penalty kill.

Lucky to be down only 2-0 after surrendering a bushel of Grade-A scoring chances, the Red Wings needed only 2 ½ minutes early in the third period to eliminate the deficit. But they don’t! I sure didn’t see any in this game!

The Red Wings out shot the Calgary Flames for the most part but towards the end Calgary caught up and put us in a coffin with the overtime goal. The Wings have dropped games to Edmonton and Calgary in the last three days and are in position to lose another here against a Canucks team who is getting a few great goaltending out of Ryan Miller.

Bo Horvat’s icetime was pretty low too.

Blashill said there would be no changes to the forwards against Vancouver, with Tomas Jurco again the lone healthy scratch.