Trending: Wings keep it close but Lightning get the win

TAMPA-- The Red Wings made a few changes to their lineup but it didn't change their luck against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
After blowout losses in Boston and Montreal, Detroit put forth a better effort but still succumbed to Tampa Bay, 3-1, at Amalie Arena Thursday night.

The Lightning have beaten the Wings in 12 straight games overall and in 12 straight in Tampa.
Defenseman Trevor Daley returned to the lineup after missing four games with an upper-body injury. Luke Witkowski also played defense, replacing rookie Filip Hronek, who was a healthy scratch.
Luke Glendening scored for Detroit while Brayden Point, Steven Stamkos and Alex Killorn (empty net) scored for Tampa Bay.
Red Wings goaltender Jimmy Howard had 28 saves while Lightning goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy had 29 saves. Vasilevskiy is 7-0-0 in his career against Detroit.
The Wings travel to south Florida to face the Panthers Saturday night while the Lightning will be in Minnesota Saturday to face the Wild.
1. Jimmy Howard: Howard hasn't had much luck in Tampa with a 5-6-2 record, but his career 2.42 goals-against average and .921 save percentage are indicative of how well he has generally played against the Lightning. At 7:33 of the first period, Yanni Gourde's pass from behind the net hit Point in the skate and went into the net. At 15:19 of the second, Stamkos' shot from the slot beat Howard. But Howard made more than his share of spectacular saves, especially on Stamkos from the left circle on a 3-on-1 at 4:41 of the third period. He also had two big saves on the Lightning's first power play, stopping Stamkos in the slot and Nikita Kucherov in the right circle.

Quotable: "Obviously we lost, so not good enough. You know they've got a deep team. They're a strong team in all positions. I thought we did a good job executing tonight, we just couldn't get more than one past Vasilevskiy." -- Howard
Quotable II: "That's what we talked about, shift by shift making sure that we don't let plays like that … we're not hanging our head in here, we're going out next shift and I thought we did a good job of that, got to continue to, I thought we did a good job around their net, continue to put pucks there. Their goalie made some good saves, Howie made some good saves for us." -- Justin Abdelkader
2. Luke Glendening: You always know what you are going to get from Glendening - consistent effort and determination. You don't always count on him for scoring but he does have some offensive ability, as he demonstrated with 11 goals in 69 games last season. At 6:20 of the second period, Glendening went to the net looking for a rebound and found one, which he poked past Vasilevskiy with a second effort. Trevor Daley and Abdelkader got the assists. Glendening finished with 24 shifts for 14:29, had two shots, two hits, a takeaway, two blocked shots, was 7-of-13 in face-offs and was minus-1.

Quotable: "We got to find a way to score more and getting to the net is definitely one area we got to get better at. We had more shots tonight. We were in their zone but didn't get the result. We have the talent to do the job but we're not getting it done. It's seven games now and we got to find a way to get prepared and reset and big game on Saturday for us." -- Glendening
Quotable II: "Certainly I think it was much better than what we talked about the last two days. I thought we got away from playing the right way for too long in the last two games. I thought tonight was much better, it was much more the way we need to play, the way we were playing earlier in the season. I still think we're passing up chances to shoot the puck and scoring when we have scoring chances. We have to get that figured out. Real good players who can really score, (Andreas Athanasiou) passed up one on the power play, (Anthony) Mantha passed up one on the power play, we had two on one, I think it was (Darren Helm), shoot the puck, let's shoot the puck and score on rebounds. That's one thing we got to make sure we keep working on but I thought we checked way better, we were way better defensively and as a result we played way more time in their end." -- Wings coach Jeff Blashill
3. Trevor Daley: It is a team game and one non-goaltending player can't have the same impact as one basketball player can have, but having Daley back in the lineup seemed to be a calming influence, especially with Mike Green, Jonathan Ericsson and Danny DeKeyser still out. In addition to assisting on Glendening's goal, Daley carried the load on the blue line, playing a team-high 23:02. Daley had three shots on goal, tied with Niklas Kronwall and Andreas Athanasiou for second on the team behind Anthony Mantha's four.
Quotable: "For the most part I felt pretty decent. We didn't execute enough tonight to get two points. We've just got to stick to it and find a way. I guess you look at the score and you think that, but we can't have a mindset that we're comfortable with this. It's maybe something that we might build off but we've got a ways to go. When we lose, we can't say it's okay. We've got to find a ways to be better." -- Daley
Quotable II: "One guy matters, especially guys that are real good players in the league like Daley is. Less weird stuff happens when you got veterans who don't try to force things out of nothing and maybe certain step-ups and things like that, so certainly having Daley back really helped." -- Blashill
Quotable III: "Nothing against the young guys, but that's a tough position to throw them into. You need veteran presence, especially on the back end. Him being out there helped a lot for us." -- Howard