Red Wings 5, Canucks 4

Wings fight back for first road victory of the season

Chris McCosky / The Detroit News

Vancouver, British Columbia -- If ever the Red Wings were going to cave in to the frustration, it was going to be Tuesday night.

They were down 2-0 and starting goalie Chris Osgood was pulled just seven minutes into the game.

"You just keep playing," Wings coach Mike Babcock said. "We haven't done a lot of winning here lately. We've been talking about how we've been doing a lot of good things and hadn't found a way to win. You can feel bad, or you can keep grinding and try to build some confidence."

The Wings picked themselves off the mat with four third-period goals, two by previously goal-less Pavel Datsyuk and a winning power-play goal by Jason Williams with 5:03 left. The Red Wings skated out of GM Place with their first road win of the year, 5-4, over the Vancouver Canucks.

"The way things have been going so far, we really couldn't catch a break," said Williams. "We had the lead again in the third and they got a five-on-three and it's like, 'Oh, no, here we go again.' But it just goes to show, we were determined to win this game. Our focus right from the start was we have to get this win tonight."

The win stopped the Wings' three-game winless streak, a four-game road winless streak, and it stopped the Canucks' three-game winning streak.

"We've been working so hard and we're so close," said Howard, who stopped 20 of 22 shots. "That was the message in the locker room between periods. Stay with it. Eventually things are going to turn."

Datsyuk's second goal of the game, also a power-play goal, gave the Wings a 4-3 lead with 10:29 left.

But Ericsson and Brad Stuart took penalties, giving the Canucks a two-man advantage for 63 seconds. Henrik Sedin, who scored in the first period, rammed home a goal with 7:57 left to tie it.

"That was a suspect call, there," Danny Cleary said. "But they made a nice play."

The Wings got a power-play chance two minutes later when Willie Mitchell got his stick high on Henrik Zetterberg. Williams took a pretty pass through the crease from Valtteri Filppula and buried it.

"That was a great pass by Fil to see things through all those sticks," said Williams. "Cleary did a great job in front, too. He got behind the defense and that helped the play work. We watched when we pre-scouted them and we felt we could do down-low play like that."

Tomas Holmstrom recorded his team-high sixth goal, and Niklas Kronwall also scored for the Wings. Former Wing Mathieu Schneider scored for the Canucks.

The game could not have started any worse for the Wings. Thirty seconds in, Brian Rafalski failed to clear a bouncing rebound off a shot by former Wing Mikael Samuelsson. Sedin got to it and slid it easily past Osgood.

Then, defenseman Christian Ehrhoff, skating down the left wing, sent a harmless-looking wrist shot at the net, which beat Osgood on the trapper side.

It was a terrible goal and Babcock quickly sent Howard onto the ice to fetch Osgood.

"My thinking was that he wasn't very good," Babcock said of his quick hook on Osgood. "I thought that I had to take him out."

Howard said the sudden change worked in his favor.

"When you start, you tend to think about it all day," he said. "I didn't have any time to think. You just go out there and don't try to do anything special, just play the one shooter and you trust your talent."

Meanwhile, the Wings continued to squander quality scoring chances. Todd Bertuzzi was set up on the side of the net by a great pass from Filppula and he couldn't stuff it past a sliding Roberto Luongo, who faced 42 shots.

Filppula couldn't finish on a pretty individual rush. Kirk Maltby, prone on the ice in front of an out-of-position Luongo, couldn't get a stick on a rebound that lay uncovered in front of the net. Zetterberg had a breakaway attempt thwarted by a Luongo kick save.

Later on the same rush, with Luongo on the seat of pants inside his cage, Nick Lidstrom rang a shot off the crossbar.

Finally, with 4:13 left in the first, the Wings beat Luongo. It took a lot of hustle, Zetterberg, and a picture-perfect passing to do it.

Zetterberg won the puck behind the net and worked a pretty give-and-go with Datsyuk. Once Zetterberg got it back, he had Luongo all the way over to the left post and fed it to Holmstrom.

The dam finally broke open in the third, led by Datsyuk.

"Look, we're not going anywhere if every nine games Pav and Z have one goal," Babcock said. "They know that and they put a lot of pressure on themselves to create offense. And they are going to. You can't keep good players down. Once they get a goal it's like an adrenalin rush and they get rolling. I am sure we're going to reap the benefits of that."

Ice chips

Scary moment early in the second period. Canucks' center Ryan Johnson , skating full speed, lost his balance trying to maneuver past Lidstrom and flew head first into the boards behind the Wings' net. Johnson lay motionless and was carried off the ice on a stretcher. He was alert and had full movement before going to a nearby hospital for further tests.

... Brad May dropped the gloves again, this time with Tanner Glass . It was uneventful, mostly pushing and shoving.