Detroit Red Wings Fall to Chicago, Datsyuk to Miss Two Weeks: A Fan’s Reaction

The good new is Jimmy Howard made his return from injury for the Detroit Red Wings. The bad new is he suffered a tough loss in his first game back.

The Detroit Red Wings fell to the Chicago Blackhawks by the score of 2-1 on Tuesday, February 21. With the loss the Red Wings slip to 41-18-2 on the season while the Blackhawks improve to 33-21-7

Coming into the game the Red Wings were riding high with six straight wins, largely due to the stellar play of backup goaltender Joey MacDonald who was an AHL call-up when Howard went down. The Red Wings were red-hot sweeping their six-game home stand.

"Let's be honest, if things weren't going well, (Howard) would have been in two or three games ago," coach Mike Babcock. "Why would we when we had some time for him to get better? So it worked out really well."

Things are different on the road, however, where Detroit was 15-16-1 entering the contest.

Valtteri Filppula scored early in the game to give the Red Wings a 1-0 lead but Jimmy Hayes countered to tie the game in the second period while Marcus Kruger put the Blackhawks up 2-1 early in the third. Detroit was unable to score after the Filppula goal despite taking 32 shots on the night including 16 in the second period alone.

Howard was 27 for 29 in the net in his return but unfortunately suffered the loss. He falls to 32-12-1 on the season.

Corey Crawford had a spectacular outing for Chicago saving 31 of 32 shots on goal for the win. He improves to 22-14-5.

Unfortunately for the Red Wings, they were without leading scorer Pavel Datsyuk who had arthroscopic surgery earlier in the day to remove fragments from his right knee. He is expected to miss two weeks.

The absence of Datsyuk will surely hurt, but the Red Wings are in a strong enough position to be successful without their star center moving forward.

The Red Wings will have a day of rest before traveling for what will be a tough matchup against the Vancouver Canucks on Thursday, February 23.

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Sources:

All stats provided by NHL.com

Paul Rados is an avid Detroit Red Wings fan and a Featured Contributor for the Yahoo! Contributor Network. Follow him on Twitter @PSRados or leave him a message on Facebook. For a complete look at his freelance work please visit his Blog.

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