Damien Brunner helped the Detroit Red Wings win their first game of the season tonight. Usually in a shootout it is Pavel Datsyuk who is showing the soft hands, not tonight though.
The Wings were tied with the Columbus Blue Jackets 3-3 and no one in the shootout had scored yet, when Brunner took his shot.
There is no doubt that was of Datsyukian proportions. As I watched the shootout I was excited to see if Datsyuk would pull off something crazy, I was shocked when it was Brunner pulling off the dirty dangle. “I’ve been in a lot of shootouts in Switzerland for the national team,” Brunner told the Associated Press. “So I just went in and tried to stayed cool. Luckily, it went in.”
The one thing lost in all of the is that Sergei Bobrovsky put on another strong showing for the Jackets. He has stopped 71 of 76 shots in the first two-games of the season.
Detroit avoided starting 0-2 in the shortened season, you don’t want to get down in a hole early with just 48-games to play. The Wings face the Dallas Stars at 7:30 EST on Tuesday.
John Machurek is the NHL Editor-in-Chief for The Inscriber.
Contact him on Twitter @JohnnyMacNHL
E-Mail John JohnnyMachurek@theinscriber.com