On Monday night in Buffalo, the Detroit Red Wings oscillated between resilience and despair. They found themselves in early trouble, and for most of the night, the Sabres answered each jab Detroit threw. But the Red Wings kept swinging until Buffalo could no longer respond, claiming a 6–5 shootout decision, snapping a five-game losing streak, and earning rookie goaltender Sebastian Cossa his first NHL win.
Timothy T. Ludwig, Imagn Images
Cossa didn’t start, but he did win—a muddy road to a sweet destination. At the end of the first, Detroit trailed 3–2, the weight of five straight losses heavier on their shoulders each time the red light illuminated behind Ville Husso’s net. At intermission, coach Derek Lalonde turned to Cossa. It would be hyperbolic to suggest he had been cast immediately as the Red Wings’ savior, but only just. Savior from the deficit, the losing streak, the spiral. And, on Monday night, Cossa saved them from all of it.
If the goalie change was mean to ignite a spark, it produced a quick result: a Lucas Raymond goal just one minute and five seconds into the second period. However, Nicolas Aubé-Kubel restored Buffalo’s lead 1:11 later, and Jason Zucker made it 5–3 at the 9:46 mark. Zucker’s goal sprung from an inexplicably poor gap at the blue line—a minimum of three Red Wings positioned to impede Zucker, none of them intervening—made all the more appalling by the presence of an NHL debutante in net.
At the midpoint of the third, the Red Wings appeared on the precipice of a new nadir. Then, Andrew Copp broke Detroit’s third period doom, with an extraordinary demonstration of individual relentlessness. After an offensive zone face-off, he won a race to recover a loose puck below the goal line, then kicked to the point for Vladimir Tarasenko—establishing offensive possession. He spent the next 10 seconds battling for open ice at the goal mouth past Buffalo defenseman Bowen Byram.
Copp’s refusal to abide Byram’s ceck brought him to the top of the crease at the perfect moment to put the rebound from a Ben Chiarot shot past his old teammate James Reimer. 5-4. A chance. 9:33 remaining to chase an equalizer. The Red Wings wouldn’t even need five minutes to find it. Moritz Seider—who’d earlier delivered a pair of thunderous body checks as if to brute force the way out of the slump—tied the game. A bad angle, two Sabres in the shooting lane, but Seider’s shot true and quick—exploiting a slow Reimer reaction to find room just beneath the bar.
By the end of the night, Cossa made 10 saves on 12 shots, but the two most important didn’t count toward that total. Those came in the first two rounds of the shootout. Raymond followed up the first by beating Reimer with a deke to his backhand, and after Alex Tuch kept the game alive in the top of the third round, captain Dylan Larkin picked up the rookie goaltender with the shootout winner—a wicked shot-fake into a backhand-forehand deke—then picked up the puck to commemorate Cossa’s first NHL win.
It was chaos. It yielded but a marginal gain in the standings. But Sebastian Cossa helped steer the Red Wings to a win Monday night and—gloomy though the bigger picture may be—that was enough for a smile. If only of relief. If only for one night.
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