Detroit Red Wings

Red Wings swept by Leafs in season series
April 1, 2017, 11:33 PM ET [6 Comments]
Bob Duff
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The final curtain is fast approaching on Joe Louis Arena and Saturday, the Wings played their final game there against the Toronto Maple Leafs, so naturally, there were some emotions at work.

“As you’re winding down, you try to take in every moment, try to cherish every time out there, whether it’s a morning skate or a practice or whatever that might be,” Detroit defenseman Niklas Kronwall said. “You look up a little bit more. It’s special.”

Detroit forward Dylan Larkin admitted there was a different sense in the building whenever the Leafs provided the opposition.

“It’s pretty exciting, the chants that go back and forth,” Larkin said. “The fans don’t like each other that much.

I’m sure the Leafs fans are fired up and they’re probably pretty cocky because they are in the playoffs and we’re not.”

Athanasiou Hurt
For the third straight game, a Detroit forward was injured but at least this one was able to return to action.

Andreas Athanasiou was accidentally clipped in the mouth by the stick of Toronto’s Connor Carrick on the follow through of Carrick’s shot during the second period.

Athanasiou went to the Detroit dressing room for attention and returned for the third period wearing a full facemask.

“He got stitched up in the lip,” Detroit coach Jeff Blashill said. “It was a follow-through on a shot so that’s not a penalty.”

Swept Aside
Posting a 5-4 victory, the Leafs took all four meetings from the Wings this season.

The last time the Wings dropped every game of the season to the Leafs was in 2011-12, when Toronto won the only meeting between the two teams by a 4-3 count.

Certainly games against the Leafs are big games,” Blashill said. “We were excited. I thought we poured lots into the game.

“We’re disappointed we didn’t come out with a better outcome.”

You have to go all the way back to 1998-99 to find the last time the Wings were swept by the Leafs in a season series of more than one game. That season, Toronto won all three games from Detroit.

Shanny Skates
Leafs president and former Wings forward Brendan Shanahan couldn’t pass up one last chance to take a turn around the JLA ice surface.

After the morning skate concluded, Shanahan and a few others from the Leafs staff strapped on their blades and played some impromptu shinny.

“The thoughts were, ‘boy do my lungs and my legs hurt,’” said Shanahan, who appropriated Leaf coach Mike Babcock’s skates and a right-hand stick from the team’s stick rack in order to participate. “I was upset to desecrate the memory of me skating (in his prime).”

Shanahan admitted that saying goodbye to the place where he won all three of his Stanley Cups as a player was not easy.

“The emotions?” he asked rhetorically. “It’s the end of a great run. Hockey players refer to old arenas affectionately as barns and this to me is a great old barn.

“You say that, it gives it a little life and that’s the way I always felt about this arena. It had a personality.”

And an odor.

“It was not a beautiful trip to the dressing room on a red carpet in a private room,” Shanahan said. “It was underneath the stands, ducking under girders, going through beer-stained floors. To me, that was some of its personality.

“Any time one of the old arenas shuts down, it’s a little bit sad.”