Detroit — Dylan Larkin was looking to make up for lost time, and no sooner than he had, the Red Wings’ captain found himself missing even more.
And just as the Red Wings were reminded how much fun it can be to play a hockey game in an arena full of fans, they were reminded how it felt on far too many nights last season.
Still, there’s no point in belaboring that last part after a wild 7-6 overtime loss to the two-time defending Stanley Cup champs Thursday night in the season opener at Little Caesars Arena.
The Wings couldn’t finish what they started against the Tampa Bay Lightning, but the point their fans should take away from this — along with the one Jeff Blashill’s team earned in the NHL standings — is that things should be a bit more entertaining around here this winter.
This game had just about everything, didn’t it? A hat trick and some heated arguments. A cheap shot and a sucker punch in retaliation. Thirteen goals. Eighteen penalties. Seventy-four shots. And all of it in front of a roaring crowd that was 20 times more than anything the players experienced last season, when the pandemic turned these games into glorified scrimmages, in many respects.
“That’s what we were talking about in between periods, how loud it was,” said Tyler Bertuzzi, who gave the fans plenty to cheer with a natural hat trick and a four-goal night in his return to the lineup after missing most of last season with a back injury. “The atmosphere, it almost felt like a playoff game. It’s good to have them back.”
And it was good to be back, frankly, for both Bertuzzi and his linemate, Larkin, who’d seen a disappointing season end abruptly back in April when the Dallas Stars’ Jamie Benn played chiropractor with a cross-check to Larkin’s neck.
Welcome back
The Red Wings actually had surprised Larkin on Thursday with a pregame ceremony that’d been postponed by a year, celebrating his captaincy by bringing back a group of his predecessors who’d worn the ‘C’ in Detroit, including the likes of Alex Delvecchio, Nick Lidstrom, Henrik Zetterberg and the team’s general manager, Steve Yzerman.
Then Larkin gave everybody a reason to celebrate, opening the scoring at the 14-minute mark of the first period, jumping off the bench and charging to the net to shove a loose puck past Andrei Vasilevskiy, who’d failed to handle Robby Fabbri’s knuckling shot from the left circle.
Bertuzzi, who’d played just nine games last season, took it from there, scoring twice early in the second period to make it 3-0, and then giving his team another emotional lift after Larkin’s night ended early.
Larkin was checked from behind into the boards by Tampa’s Mathieu Joseph, and after crumpling to the ice initially, he jumped to his feet and took a wild swing with his gloved fist to deck Joseph as he tried to skate away.
That retaliation — Lightning captain Steven Stamkos called it a “sucker punch” — drew a match penalty for “intent to injure,” and maybe the league office will deem it worthy of a suspension, too, we’ll see. (“I think it’s way different if a guy hits a guy with his glove off than his glove on,” Blashill shrugged. “So, to me, I’d be surprised. But I’m not the NHL”)
But the pair of minor penalties assessed to the Lightning in the ensuing melee had their coach, Jon Cooper, incensed on the visitors’ bench as the Wings began a 4-on-3 power play. (“For us to come out of that 4-on-3 was mind-boggling to me,” he said. “I just don’t know how that got rewarded, but it did.”) And when Bertuzzi scored again less than a minute later, the arena was at full tilt, with hats littering the ice and the Wings seemingly on their way to an impressive season-opening win.
Unfortunately for them, there was still half a hockey game to play. And an opponent that’s loaded with offensive talent and always seems to be more dangerous when it’s challenged like this.
“There’s a little bit of a winning pedigree in that locker room,” noted Cooper, whose team got thumped, 6-2, by Pittsburgh in its season opener Tuesday night. “They’ve shown that fight before.”
Sure enough, they showed it again, as the Lightning struck twice on their own power play to rain on Bertuzzi’s hat parade. Stamkos netted both of those, to pull Tampa within a goal by the end of the second period.
And even after Detroit scored twice to start the third, there was no guarantee that three-goal lead would be safe, either. Indeed, it wasn’t, as Tampa took advantage of an ill-timed penalty and some poor decisions by the Wings’ defense late in regulation to tie it with three goals in a span of less than 4 minutes.
Then came overtime, where the defending champs controlled the puck for almost the entire time playing 3-on-3 before Ondrej Palat — who got away with another hit from behind on the Wings’ Michael Rasmussen in the third period — finally ended it.
“That part is certainly frustrating,” Blashill said. “You’ve got to be able to finish that out. We were in position to win the hockey game, played well enough to win the hockey game …”
Newcomers shine
And yet they didn’t, for a variety of reasons, though goalie Alex Nedeljkovic really wasn’t one of them, considering he finished with 41 saves. Neither were the rookies, Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider, both of whom made their much-anticipated NHL debuts and looked like they belonged, on the ice and on the scoresheet as well.
Some of the other new additions showed what they can do, too, whether it was Pius Suter playing like a legitimate second-line center — something this team didn’t have a year ago — or Nick Leddy helping to push the pace from the blue line.
And there was plenty of pace in this one Thursday night, even if the moving parts weren’t always headed in the right direction. The rowdy crowd — beer-chugging is the new Jumbotron sport at Wings games, apparently — probably had something to do with all the frenetic energy on the ice, but so be it. I think Wings fans will take another losing season if it looks more like this, though the head coach might lose his mind in the process.
“Every game kind of takes on a life of its own,” said Blashill, whose team scored six goals only twice in 56 games last season — and not at all the season before that. “That game, at times, got a little bit chaotic. It’s certainly great to score, but I don’t think we can expect to score six every night. … We’ve got to buckle down and do a better job. I thought there were times we did and times where we obviously didn’t.”
Yet on a night where they did, and then didn’t, it was an exhilarating ride throughout. Maybe that’s not the point of all this, but for one night, it sure felt like it.
john.niyo@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @JohnNiyo