Detroit Red Wings’ Michael Rasmussen OK, but Vladimir Tarasenko ‘looking for his teeth’
The immediate status report on Michael Rasmussen is that his departure from Saturday’s game looked worse than it was — which made it easier to laugh about another player potentially having lost a tooth.
The Detroit Red Wings banked a second straight pair of points when they shut out Atlantic Division rival Tampa Bay Lightning, 2-0, at Little Caesars Arena. Rasmussen scored the insurance goal with 27.3 seconds left, crashing into the empty net after being whacked in the ankles by Nikita Kucherov. Rasmussen had to be helped off the ice.
“I haven’t had a chance to look at it,” coach Todd McLellan said. “I know there was some discussion about it. He was getting looked at in the doctor’s office. I think things are OK from what I’ve been told so far.”
The Wings (23-21-5) had a scheduled day off Sunday, and next play Monday at home against the Los Angeles Kings. Tyler Motte, out since Jan. 7 with an upper-body injury, has practiced three straight days, so he may be nearing a return.
Rasmussen wasn’t the only Wing to take an extra trip down the tunnel: A couple minutes into the second period, Vladimir Tarasenko got whacked in the face near the benches, sliding to the ice and then getting up and heading to the dressing room while a search ensued on the patch of ice.
“I think they were looking for his teeth, maybe, I don’t know,” McLellan said. “But then when he was on the bench, it looked like he had them all. So I don’t know what they were looking for. I have no idea.”
Tarasenko came right back and finished the game.
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It was a result all the more satisfying for the Wings after losing, 5-1, one week earlier in Tampa.
“That’s a team that has a winning pedigree,” Cam Talbot said after snapping the Lightning’s streak of 113 games without a shutout. “They know how to pull out these tight games. Kucherov is sitting there with the puck and he’s got options. You know he’s going to find somebody eventually. So give the guys in front of me a ton of credit, we blocked a lot of shots from the top, did a great job boxing out, let me see most of the pucks. Sometimes you just have to weather the storm and get a lucky bounce and we did a little bit of all that.”
