Patrick Kane may have cost Red Wings their playoff spot with careless penalty
The Detroit Red Wings entered Sunday’s game against the Minnesota Wild flailing. They’d seen their once-significant cushion for a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference completely disappear, and they needed points badly.
Heading into the third period down 4-1, things looked bleak, but Axel Sandin-Pellikka, J.T. Compher and Patrick Kane ripped off three goals in an eight-minute span to tie the game and set the Red Wings up to at least push it to overtime.
Then, disaster struck. With 3:37 to go, Kane took a needless and careless penalty when he tripped Quinn Hughes, putting a lethal Minnesota power play in position to win the game.
A minute and a half later, Kirill Kaprizov wired home his 43rd of the year to give the Wild the win and leave Detroit in an even worse spot in the chase for the second wild card spot.
On Monday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discussed why a very immature play from such a seasoned veteran was such a blow to Detroit’s dwindling playoff hopes.
Tyler Yaremchuk: I had to watch that Patrick Kane clip like six times because I was just like, what am I missing? Why did he do that? It cost the Red Wings, and I mean, one play and one win, if you want to do that you can go back to any one of their 29 or 37 losses this year, and think that’s the one that cost them, but for a veteran guy to do something that stupid. If you missed it, Detroit climbs back against Minnesota, then with three and a half minutes to go, they called it a trip on the ice, it was basically a spear with nobody around. Kane just jabs Quinn Hughes and takes him down. Minnesota scores on the power play with under two minutes to go, and a game that looked like Detroit had it in the bag for a while, to at least get a point out of it, they get nothing out of it… You look at those standings, losing one point, that’s just a borderline death blow, especially when you consider the momentum.
Carter Hutton: And the actual fact too is it’s a nothing penalty on a play. It was 4-1 for the Minnesota Wild, and you’re at home and you fight back. You get booed off the ice and you find a way to fight back into that game. Think about that momentum of like maybe winning that game and carrying it over into the stretch run, and as you wake up here, it’s such a tough penalty to take. It’s hard to really judge Patrick Kane, but it was a selfish play and it really ended up costing the Detroit Red Wings.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode below…