Wings Soar, Stomp Blues

Brendan Shanahan just wanted to shoot the puck and see what happened.

And he liked what he saw.

Shanahan's goal with 24.4 seconds left in the second period broke a 2-2 tie and Detroit Red Wings went on to a 5-2 victory over the St. Louis Blues on Wednesday night.

Shanahan's 30th goal of the season came on a wrist shot from the high slot and trickled through St. Louis goaltender Roman Turek's pads. It's the ninth time Shanahan has scored 30 or more goals in his 14-season NHL career.

"I just tried to use the defenseman as a screen and put it on the net and see what happened," said Shanahan.

It was a save that Turek should've made, but the Blues' Cory Stillman refused to blame his goaltender.

"That has nothing to do with Roman. He stood on his head the last two games," Stillman said. "We've got to play better."

"There's still five games left, and you never know what can happen," Stillman said.

The victory ran Detroit's home unbeaten streak to 16 games (14-0-2), two short of the team record of 18 which was accomplished in 1931-32 and 1954-55. The Red Wings have also only lost twice in their last 24 games overall (17-2-5).

"I think we're just trying to play good hockey," Shanahan said.

Igor Larionov and Martin Lapointe added third-period goals for Detroit.

The game was tied -2 after the first period.

The Blues opened the scoring with a power-play goal at 6:38, when Daniel Corso's slap shot from the top of the right circle went off the stick of Red Wings defenseman Larry Murphy and beat Chris Osgood.

Detroit tied it with 3:50 left in the period when Boyd Devereaux banged in a rebound off a Lapointe shot. The Red Wings went ahead with 1:35 left in the period on Kirk Maltby's short-handed goal. He put a cross-crease pass over Turek.

But the Blues tied it with just 11 seconds left when Stillman tipped Alexander Khavanov's slap shot from the high slot past Osgood high on the glove side for another power-play goal.

"When you play a team like St. Louis, you've got to be careful," Lapointe said. "Both teams were a bit shy at the beginning, probably us more so than them. But we didn't panic."

Notes