DETROIT -- It was just a matter of time before Gustav Nyquist found his way onto the Red Wings' score sheet.
Nyquist scored his first goal of the Eastern Conference series against the Tampa Bay Lightning Thursday to give the Wings a 1-0 lead late in the first period.
Unfortunately for Nyquist, and the Red Wings, Tampa Bay scored two goals within two minutes late in the third to force overtime and eventually steal Game 4.
But Nyquist finally got the monkey off his back.
The forward could very well have also earned an assist on the play that led in his goal. He began the rush by dumping the puck in Tampa Bay's zone, and found Henrik Zetterberg on the right side of the goal. Zetterberg fed it right back to Nyquist on a swift pass that split defenseman Braydon Coburn and goaltender Ben Bishop.
All that was left for Nyquist to do was find the back of the net. And he was not about to miss out on that opportunity.
"It was unbelievable pass, great play by him," Nyquist said. "Just put my stick on it and it gave us momentum. We had a great second period I thought we had a lot of chances, had some power play looks too, probably should have scored on one of those chances."
Nyquist, a prolific scorer during the regular season (59 goals in 179 career games with the Red Wings) has struggled in the postseason. Thursday's goal marked just his third playoff goal in 26 games.
It's not completely surprising, though. That's just playoff hockey.
It's a tight game, players have to fight for every inch, and if you want to score, don't even think about shooting from the outside. You have to go inside for the "dirty" goals, catch a puck off the leg, or get an extremely lucky bounce off the opposing goaltender's stick.
Just ask Pavel Datsyuk, Tomas Jurco or Joakim Andersson.
Andersson scored his first career playoff goal on a fluke play late in the second period to give the Wings a two-goal lead.
Andersson's shot deflected off Bishop's glove and into the air, and then bounced off Bishop's stick and into the net.
It appeared all the bounces were going in the Wings' favor, but Tyler Johnson snapped Tampa Bay's scoring drought at Joe Louis Arena with just over five minutes remaining in the game. Ondrej Palat scored less than two minutes later, and Johnson netted the game-winning goal in overtime.
"That's the NHL playoffs," said Drew Miller. "You don't think that way. You don't worry about, 'Oh man, poor us.' You just get ready for the next game."
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