Tampa Bay Must Contain Aging Pavel Datsyuk, Still the Detroit Red Wings' Top Gun

The Tampa Bay Lightning had to be reasonably happy with their first opening-round game against the Detroit Red Wings on Thursday—or at least happy with everything save the result.

For their part, the Red Wings will need to be much better than they were if they’re going to make this a real series.

Tampa outplayed Detroit by enough of a margin that Red Wings head coach Mike Babcock complained about it in the second period. He couldn’t have been happy with a third period that saw the Lightning out-chance Detroit 10-1 in a desperate effort to knot the score.

Chris O'Meara/Associated Press

And yet, somehow, the Red Wings came away with the 3-2 win in Tampa.

Rookie goalie Petr Mrazek both deserves and will get much of the credit for the outcome, but Mrazek’s heroics would have been for nothing if not for star center Pavel Datsyuk’s uncanny ability to stem the tide and, worse, make the Lightning pay every time he got a chance with the puck.

The statistics are probably the best way to express how good Datsyuk was. On a night when the Lightning had a ridiculous 68-28 lead in shot attempts in all situations and a dominant 46-20 performance at even strength, the 36-year-old’s on-ice even-strength numbers, as provided by NaturalStatTrick.com, stand out in a major way:

• Shot attempts with Datsyuk on the ice: 11 for vs. 11 against (50 percent)
• Shot attempts without Datsyuk on the ice: nine for vs. 35 against (20 percent)

That’s herculean. And it’s not just that Datsyuk plays a brilliant possession game—it’s the things he can do with the puck when he has it. He scored twice on the night, including on Detroit's very first shot of the game.

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Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper’s first-period comments to NBC’s Andy Brickley do a good job of summarizing the game both up to that point and afterward:

"

If you were going to tell me in the first 14 minutes of the game we were going to give up one shot on goal, I’ll take that all days of the week. We’ve had it in their end for quite some time here, we’ve had some puck possession. They got a seeing-eye single—a good tip from a great player—but I’ll take the way we’re playing.

"

To be sure, the balance of probability is going to favour Tampa Bay in any game where it spends such a high percentage of the time in Detroit's end of the rink. Babcock grumbled to Brickley in the second period that the Lightning had “carried the majority of the play” and that they had “been on top of” the Red Wings.

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There’s probably not much more that Tampa Bay can do about Mrazek, who was brilliant. It did a good job of getting in his space, taking two interference penalties in the game in the process.

The Lightning put pucks on net and generated scoring chances. If they can keep doing that, they’ll score enough on Mrazek through sheer volume to beat Detroit—at least they will if they can keep that pesky Datsyuk from scoring the way he did in the first game.

Cooper, who had home-ice advantage, opted mostly to match his veteran shutdown tandem of Matt Carle and Braydon Coburn against Datsyuk. It was a sensible decision that allowed him to have both Victor Hedman and Anton Stralman shelter younger defenders (Andrej Sustr and Nikita Nesterov), and for the most part, the latter quartet did an admirable job.

However, Datsyuk’s hands are so quick that all it takes is one broken play and a tiny bit too much gap for him to beat even a veteran like Coburn one-on-one:

Prior to the series, Chuck Pleiness of The Oakland Press predicted that Datsyuk was going to be essential to the Wings’ hopes, and Game 1 certainly bore that out:

"

The Wings can’t afford to lose Pavel Datsyuk during the series. Datsyuk missed eight of the final 14 game of the regular season. In those [six] he played with had three goals and four assists. In 63 games he registered 26 goals and 39 assists. Even at 36, he’s a game changer that’s a master at stripping pucks without drawing a penalty.­­

"

While Detroit just has to hope that Datsyuk’s wobbly ankle holds out, Cooper and his staff have to figure out how to contain him if it does.

Joel Auerbach/Associated Press

One item that might help would be a return to health for blueliner Jason Garrison, who hasn’t played since being injured in a March 28 game against the Red Wings. At the time, Joe Smith of the Tampa Bay Times reported that Garrison would be out three to four weeks.

If he’s back at the lower end of that time frame, he could play in Game 2.

In all likelihood, Cooper will keep Coburn and Carle in the shutdown role regardless, but the return of Garrison would give him the option of reuniting Hedman and Stralman, thus giving him another excellent tandem that he could trust against Detroit’s top line.

It certainly won’t be an easy task for Cooper and the Lightning. It is, however, a lesser obstacle than the challenge facing Babcock and the Red Wings. 

Tampa Bay has to find a way to contain one player. Detroit has to improve dramatically in multiple areas. Wednesday was a near-miss, and if it happens again, even the duo of Datsyuk and Mrazek will have trouble saving the team from defeat.

Statistics courtesy of NHL.com and Natural Stat Trick. 

Jonathan Willis covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter for more of his work.