Red Wings goaltender Jimmy Howard wasn't exactly in All-Star form Saturday in his return after missing more than a month with a groin injury, but in one regrettable way he was back to his old self: He got no support from his teammates in another overtime shootout, and they lost 5-4 to the Winnipeg Jets.
Howard struggled at times, allowing three goals he'd stop routinely when he's at the top of his game, but he came up big after the Wings forged a tie on Pavel Datsyuk's second goal that tied it 4-4 with 6:33 remaining in regulation. And he was huge in overtime -- along with teammates Niklas Kronwall, Luke Glendening and Drew Miller -- who were on for the full two minutes killing off a roughing penalty to Kyle Quincey.
All four shooters for Detroit -- Datsyuk, Tomas Tatar, Gustav Nyquist and Stephen Weiss -- failed to score on Winnipeg goalie Michael Hutchinson in the shootout. Winnipeg's fourth shooter, Drew Stafford, finally got one past Howard off his glove to end the game.
"Wow! After being out five weeks, it was great to be out there competing with my teammates," Howard said, acknowledging he didn't have his greatest night. "I'm not going to get too down on myself. I'll just watch the video and try to learn from my mistakes."
Howard's issues were typical of a goaltender who hadn't seen game action in awhile -- tracking the puck and timing.
"Sometimes I felt like I was ahead of the play, and sometimes I was behind it," he said. "That's going to come...In the middle of the game, I started to feel better and better."
Kronwall and Darren Helm each scored power plays to help the Wings take a 3-1 lead early in the second period. But then the Wings got careless, turning the puck over against a tenacious forechecking Winnipeg team that took advantage of too many mistakes.
"I thought we won the first 30 (minutes) and they had the 30 after that," Wings coach Mike Babcock said. "We turned over too many pucks second half of the second period, and that caused Howie to face a lot of rubber. That was probably good for him."
In one stretch, Howard made 10 straight saves. But a couple of soft goals and too many mistakes allowed Winnipeg to score three consecutive goals to take a 4-3 lead midway through the third period.
"Self-induced pain," is how Babcock described it. "And we had too much of that. Turnovers and penalties. We have to fix that. There's lots of things in the game we really liked, but the lack of ability to take care of the puck in the offensive zone really hurt us."
They'd better fix it fast. One of the teams they're jockeying for position with at the top of the Eastern Conference standings, the Montreal Canadiens, are visiting on Monday. Then the Wings embark on their toughest road test of the season: six games in 10 nights against some of the toughest opponents in the Western Conference.
While Howard's checkered performance was the focal point of the evening, he received nothing but full support from his teammates.
"He had a little bit of a tough game, but in the end he made some tough saves and in the overtime when we were killing penalties he gave us a chance to get to the shootout," Datsyuk said.
"It was frustrating to lose again in the shootout," Glendening added. "Jimmy played great to get us to the shootout and made some big saves in the shootout. Obviously, this is a reflection on the rest of us, not Jimmy. We've got to find a way to put the puck in the net in these shootouts."
