DETROIT \u2013 The Detroit Red Wings opened the season Thursday amid optimism and excitement.<\/p>\n
Three rookies injected energy and skill into the lineup. A new starting goaltender seemed to solidify the position. They wore special uniforms to commemorate what will be a season-long Centennial celebration.<\/p>\n
They faced a team that played the night before and started its backup goalie and even took an early lead.<\/p>\n
It was all downhill after that as the Montreal Canadiens dismantled the Red Wings 5-1 at Little Caesars Arena.<\/p>\n
The Canadiens (1-1-0) played the night before, losing 5-2 in Toronto, and started backup goalie Jakub Dobes, but Detroit didn\u2019t capitalize.<\/p>\n
Dylan Larkin\u2019s power-play goal energized the crowd 3:50 in the first period.<\/p>\n
But the Red Wings left the ice to a chorus of boos following the second period after the Canadiens scored the next five goals.<\/p>\n
After Juraj Slafkovsky scored on the power play to make it 5-1 at 17:12 of the second, John Gibson, making his Red Wings debut, was pulled for Cam Talbot. <\/p>\n
Gibson allowed five goals on 13 shots but didn\u2019t get a lot of support in front of him. The Canadiens scored twice on odd-man rushes \u2013 Zachary Bolduc on a breakaway at 10:14 and Oliver Kapanen on a two-on-one at 12:43 to take a 2-1 lead.<\/p>\n
Mike Matheson\u2019s goal with 6.7 seconds remaining in the first period was deflating. Alexandre Carrier scored 5:19 in the second as the Canadiens didn\u2019t step off the gas.<\/p>\n
Todd McLellan, in his first season-opener as Detroit\u2019s head coach,<\/a> split up the Albert Johansson-Travis Hamonic defense pairing in the second period after the pair were a minus-3. Johansson was paired with Moritz Seider and Hamonic with Ben Chiarot.<\/p>\n This was one of the Red Wings\u2019 most anticipated openers in some time after rookies Axel Sandin-Pellikka, Michael Brandsegg-Nygard and Emmitt Finnie made the season-opening roster.<\/a><\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t get any easier for the Red Wings, whose next two games are against Toronto, Saturday at home (7 p.m., FanDuel Sports Network) and Monday on the road (4 p.m., FSN).<\/p>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DETROIT \u2013 The Detroit Red Wings opened the season Thursday amid optimism and excitement. Three rookies injected energy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-213874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}