NHL Game Summary - Detroit at Tampa Bay
Tampa, FL (SportsNetwork.com) - Petr Mrazek posted 28 saves for his second shutout of the series and the Detroit Red Wings took a 4-0 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning in Game 5 of this Eastern Conference quarterfinal series.
There was no Detroit collapse in this game, as the team took a 3-2 lead in this best-of-seven series thanks to goals from Pavel Datsyuk, Riley Sheahan, Drew Miller and Danny DeKeyser.
"I thought our team played well today," said Miller. "It starts with our goaltender and he played great."
In Game 4 on Thursday, the team allowed two goals in the final six minutes of regulation, and eventually dropped a 3-2 decision in overtime.
The Red Wings will have their first chance to close out this series on Monday night at home when they host Game 6.
Ben Bishop allowed three goals on 29 shots in the loss for the Lightning.
"What's been frustrating is we haven't been scoring, and especially a team that's used to scoring, if you take out the last game, we've gone about eight of nine periods without a goal," said Lightning head coach Jon Cooper. "It's pretty tough to win when the goal of the game is to score and you're not scoring."
Skating on the power play late in the first period, the Red Wings went on top thanks to crisp passing. Henrik Zetterberg sent the puck from the left circle to the high slot for Niklas Kronwall, who quickly fired it over to the right circle where Sheahan one-timed it home with 23 seconds left.
The Red Wings took a 2-0 lead with 4:14 to play in the middle frame after Luke Glendening sent a shot on net from the right wing that was stopped and Miller was there to put home the rebound.
Tampa had a power play early in the third, but Mrazek kept the puck out of the net when he made a big glove save on a Valtteri Filppula wrister from the right circle.
Datsyuk put the game out of reach with 4:13 to play on the power play when his wrister from the slot had eyes as it made its way through several players for his third of the series.
DeKeyser scored with the net empty and 1:38 to play to account for the final score.