NEWARK, N.J. – With less than a minute left in the second period, Joakim Anderson threw a shot wide. Drew Miller chased the puck and threw it at net, where it bounced off Cory Schneider.
Anderson found the rebound and tipped it into an open net to tie the game at 1-1 with 36 seconds left in the second period.
“[When] I give up one to tie up, it just makes your margin of error razor thin for everybody,” Schneider said. “I think we just got to find away to get that second one.”
The Red Wings kept the momentum, adding two more goals in the third period to defeat the Devils 3-1 at the Prudential Center.
With the Devils down 2-1 and the end of regulation approaching, Schneider was whistled for a delay of game penalty for touching the puck outside the trapezoid.
New Jersey won the draw and turned it over to Tomas Tater, who fought off Andy Greene and Eric Gelinas to take the shot and put Detroit up 3-1.
“I’ve never been called for that before, I was pretty sure I waited until it got in the trapezoid,” Schneider said.
“It’s part of the game, gotta find a way to fight through that. That’s kind of how it’s been going for us, we just haven’t been getting a lot of breaks and that kind of adds to it. But officials have a tough job. He made the call he thought he saw. That’s what he’s got to do.”
New Jersey took a total of 11 shots — four in the first and second, and three in the last period.
“I thought we had more shots that. Maybe we were missing the net,” Jaromir Jagr said.
Seven of New Jersey’s attempted shots were blocked by the Red Wings.
“We’ve generated 21 shots and generated the same amount of scoring chances,” DeBoer said. “If it says 21 do you feel better about it? It doesn’t matter. We didn’t score.”
The only New Jersey tally came from Greene. He started the play from behind his own net, brining the puck to his offensive zone. He fed it to Patrik Elias who sent it back to the net, where Greene redirected it past Jonas Gustavsson.
“We created some quality chances tonight. I don’t look at a shot clock and say we didn’t have any offense. I thought we created enough chances to score three goals tonight, which would’ve given us an opportunity to win the game,” DeBoer said.
“We didn’t cash in on some of our chances. With our group we have to be opportunistic. If we get eight or nine chances in a game we’ve got to find a way to score two or three of them in order to have a chance to win and we didn’t do that.”
Johan Franzen was alone with an open net for Detroit’s go-ahead goal over halfway through the third.
“I made a mistake and a I saw him coming down there then he made a good pass and it just snuck between my skate and my stick there,” Adam Henrique said.
It was one of five shots Schneider faced in the frame. He faced 21 pucks overall, almost twice the number New Jersey took.
“We have to get more pucks to the net whether it’s [defensemen] or forwards driving in, bad-angle shots, we just got to start throwing more at the net,” Greene said.
“The goals that are scored, they’re all not pretty. They’re off the goalie’s pads and rebounds are sitting out there. We got to find a way to get in those dirty areas.”
