Red Wings Beat The Blues

The Detroit Red Wings finally got their power play working.

Steve Yzerman moved into a tie for eighth place on the NHL career scoring list and Detroit went 3-for-8 with the man advantage as the Red Wings beat the St. Louis Blues 4-2 Wednesday night.

Detroit's power play was just 4-for-18 and ranked 10th in the NHL through four games before Larry Murphy, Igor Larionov and Nicklas Lidstrom scored with the man advantage against the Blues.

Yzerman's assist on Larionov's tiebreaking goal in the second period was his 1,487th career point, tying him with former teammate Paul Coffey for eighth place. Mario Lemieux is seventh at 1,494.

Murphy also had a goal and an assist, Tomas Holmstrom scored a goal and Vyacheslav Kozlov had two assists for the Red Wings.

Pierre Turgeon scored his 400th career goal and Michal Handzus also scored for the Blues, who lost the last game of a three-stop road trip after winning the first two. St. Louis played its first game without all-star defenseman Al MacInnis, who's out four to six weeks with an injured ankle.

"He plays a lot on the power play nd the penalty killing. He plays a lot of minutes," Blues forward Geoff Courtnall said of MacInnis. "But you can't use that as an excuse because we're going to be without him for six weeks and we have to find a way to win without him."

Detroit goalie Chris Osgood made 27 saves.

Roman Turek, who backed up Ed Belfour at Dallas last season, has lost all three of his starts in the Blues' net.

"(Detroit) had 10 or 15 point-blank scoring chances," Blues defenseman Chris Pronger said. "Even if they're on a power play, they can't be point-blank. You have to give perimeter shots and then clear the rebounds. You have to limit their scoring opportunities."

Detroit forward Darren McCarty, playing just his third game since ending a contract holdout last week, suffered an unusual injury during the game. Someone's skate cut his face near his left eye, cutting off a piece of skin that was grafted back on by a team doctor.

"Weird stuff always happens to me," McCarty said after taking 40 stitches to fix the wound.

"I didn't know how bad it was," McCarty said. "I felt the skate, but I didn't know it was bleeding and then I realized it was. When I got off the ice I told (trainer John Wharton) to put something on it so I could go back out there. He said no."

St. Louis was 1-for-7 on its power play, with the lone success coming when Turgeon became the 53rd NHL player to reach 400 goals 7:10 into the first period. He got free to the right of the net and converted a short pass from Jochen Hecht.

Murphy responded with a power-play goal 2:54 later when he skated in from the left side and fired in Kozlov's perfect pass through the slot.

Holmstrom scored his third goal by pushing a loose puck into the net at 14:29 to give Detroit a 2-1 lead.

Pronger kept a clearing attempt inside the Detroit line and passed ahead to Handzus, who got open behind the Red Wings defense and scored his third goal for a 2-2 tie 8:58 into the second period.

Detroit went back on top at 14:45, converting a 5-on-3 opportunity when Larionov one-timed Yzerman's pass past Turek.

Lidstrom gave the Red Wings a two-goal lead 10:48 into the third period when he scored his first goal on a power-play slap shot from between the circles.

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