DETROIT — A 3-1 loss to the two-time defending Stanley Cup-champion Florida Panthers at Little Caesars Arena became a secondary storyline for the Detroit Red Wings on Friday night, as captain Dylan Larkin exited midway through the third period with an undisclosed injury and didn\u2019t return.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe crumpled up there,\u201d Red Wings head coach Todd McLellan said of Larkin. \u201cHe\u2019s in the back. He\u2019ll get checked out. We don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to be long term, but he needs to be looked at. We\u2019ll give you an update when we have it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Goalie John Gibson stopped 20 shots for Detroit (35-21-7; 77 points), which earned just one of a possible four points on its brief two-game homestand. Behind a 28-save night from netminder Sergei Bobrovsky, Florida (31-29-3; 65 points) snapped a four-game losing streak.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor a team that played last night, we should\u2019ve been able to jump on them,\u201d Ben Chiarot said. \u201cThey played a pretty sound defensive game. Their goalie gave them some good saves when they needed it. Not the kind of pop that we were looking for coming out of the gate. Not our best effort tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Panthers broke the ice when Matthew Tkachuk, who also took home a gold medal with Team USA alongside Larkin at the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026, was left alone in the slot and one-timed Carter Verhaeghe\u2019s behind-the-goal-line feed into the back of the net for the 1-0 lead at 11:06 of the first period.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe shouldn\u2019t have that much time and space, so it\u2019s as simple as that,\u201d McLellan said of how Tkachuk scored his first of three goals. \u201cWe can\u2019t get beat out of the corner, for one, and lose that race. And we can\u2019t leave net front, so it\u2019s Hockey 101. The guy behind the net isn\u2019t going to score. He\u2019s got to get it into a scoring area, so if you do leave, you better kill the play. It\u2019s a mistake. If we make one of those mistakes a night, we\u2019ve got to be able to score at the other end because we\u2019re not going to be perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although the Detroit Tigers don\u2019t kick off their 2026 MLB campaign until later this month, Alex DeBrincat showed off his baseball skills by batting the puck out of mid-air after a shot from Patrick Kane in the high slot bounced off the back glass for a 5-on-3 power-play goal to tie it 1-1 at 10:56 of the second period. Larkin earned the secondary assist on DeBrincat\u2019s third goal in as many games and his team-leading 32nd of the campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DETROIT — A 3-1 loss to the two-time defending Stanley Cup-champion Florida Panthers at Little Caesars Arena became…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182288,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-182287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}