Trending: Penalty kill struggles in loss to Hurricanes

DETROIT -- Any hopes the Red Wings had of jumping on the Carolina Hurricanes quickly was dashed early in the first period.
Despite coming off their five-day bye, the Hurricanes got the lead on a power-play goal at 2:57 of the first en route to a 3-1 victory Saturday night at Little Caesars Arena.

The Red Wings fell to 18-20-7 overall and 10-9-6 at home while the Hurricanes improved to 21-17-8 overall and 11-11-4 on the road.
Tomas Tatar (power play) scored for the Wings and Elias Lindholm (two power play goals) and Justin Williams scored for the Hurricanes.
1. Penalty killing: The Red Wings have certainly missed their disruptive trio of Justin Abdelkader, Darren Helm and Luke Glendening, all out with injuries and nowhere is their absence felt more than on Detroit's penalty killing units. In their last two games against the Dallas Stars and Hurricanes, the Wings penalty killers have surrendered four goals in six penalty kills. Part of the issue is the Wings are using players that do not normally kill penalties, such as rookies Tyler Burtuzzi and Dominic Turgeon. Though Detroit believes it's only a matter of gaining experience for their youthful penalty killers to become more proficient, they are resigned to the fact it could still take some time for their new units to jell.
Quotable: "That's a great question. Just in general, it feels like over the course of the year we've had really good success on it and now for whatever reason, the pucks have been finding their way in. You know what? We've probably got to look at some video, see what we can do better and just move on from there. What's happened is already history. We can't do anything about what's already happened. What we can do is change some things and then hopefully we'll get better for the next game." -- Niklas Kronwall
Quotable II: "I don't know if you can say besides personnel because personnel has a great amount to do with it. That doesn't mean that the guys out there aren't going to be real good killers, but they need reps. We'd like them to get reps and not get scored on. But that's part of it. They need reps and they need to continue to work through it. So right now, we had a couple mistakes made by guys that haven't had lots of reps. That's not why the puck necessarily went in, but that's part of it. We got to make sure … we came on the ice on one of the PK forechecks and we didn't execute the forecheck. Some of that I just put on reps. So, we got to keep grinding. We got to find a way to be better at it." -- Wings coach Jeff Blashill
2. Tomas Tatar: Heading into Saturday's game versus the Hurricanes, Tatar would be the first to admit his numbers are not where they should be this season with 11 goals, eight assists and minus-10 in 44 games. Always know as a streaky scorer, Tatar notched Detroit's only goal of the game late in the first period on the power play to tie the game 1-1. It was his 12th goal of the year, his first in six games and his third in his last 15 contests. The power-play goal was his seventh of the season, which leads the Wings. Anthony Mantha is second with six power-play tallies. Tatar and Mantha have scored 13 of Detroit's 27 power play goals this season. They also have scored more power play goals than any Wings player did during the 2016-17 season. Tatar, Dylan Larkin, Abdelkader and Thomas Vanek were tied with five power-play goals last season. Detroit's power play has hit the skids lately. Tatar's power play goal was the Wings second power-play goal in their last 15 opportunities with the man-advantage. It also broke an 0-for-10 slide. They are now 3-for-35 with the extra man in their last 11 games. Perhaps Tatar and the Wings' power play have begun to break out of their collective droughts, which could not come at a better time for a team needing all the offense it can muster for a run at a playoff berth.
Quotable: "The one thing we did on that was win a second-effort battle and we scored a goal. Scoring helps your confidence. But we didn't have enough timeline to really say for sure. I thought we had some looks on the 6-on-4 (at the end of game) but that's a little bit different animal. So, am I encouraged? I'm encouraged we scored, but certainly not enough to make any judgment one way or the other." -- Blashill
3.Jimmy Howard: When the game began, it was tough to tell which team was coming off the bye as the Hurricanes jumped out to a 1-0 lead at 2:57 of the first while out-shooting the Wings 7-0. Lindholm got his 13th goal of the season, on the power play, as he got the rebound of Jordan Staal's shot. Other than that shorthanded blemish, Howard was exemplary throughout much of the game. Perhaps his most spectacular save came just as the Hurricanes' second power play ended as he lunged to glove the rebound try of Jeff Skinner at 4:59 of the first. Howard was victimized by another Lindholm power-play goal at 6:54 of the third when Lindholm got his own rebound.
Quotable: "Any game you play, it doesn't matter. No matter the situation the other team has been in, you want to try to establish a forecheck early, get the pucks deep and try to put some mileage on their defense. Tonight we got a penalty early on and they seemed to get momentum off that. They scored one and then they go on the power play again. After that, they had the puck a little bit and spent some time in our zone. But it doesn't matter if they score right away, we have to find a way to be a lot better than we were." -- Kronwall