BOX SCORE: Panthers 8, Red Wings 1<\/a><\/p>\nThe Wings finished the season 41-31-10, with 92 points. They went 8-12-4 in their final 24 games, earning only 20 of 48 points, which set them tumbling from the top of the Eastern Conference standings – to out of the playoff picture.<\/p>\n
But the way this ended, with the lack of competitiveness, will leave a mark for a while.<\/p>\n
“We’re representing our city, our organization, our fans, ourselves in here in the locker room,” forward James van Riemsdyk said. “That’s obviously not acceptable, the level we played at. It’s definitely disappointing.<\/p>\n
“Not a very good game by us. Not a lot of execution. Definitely wasn’t a good one.”<\/p>\n
Having been eliminated Saturday, the Wings had two meaningless games in the standings to get through before the end of the season. The long amount of important games, and to see the playoff chase conclude, might have been mentally crushing.<\/p>\n
But van Riemsdyk believes there should have been more to give in the finale.<\/p>\n
“It sucks the wind out of your sails a little bit when you have higher goals for your season and don’t reach them, but we have to have more pride and we’re representing the jersey and our fans and ourselves and our teammates in here,” van Riemsdyk said. “That just wasn’t acceptable, it wasn’t good.”<\/p>\n
Justin Faulk scored his 16th goal (fifth with the Wings) for the lone Wings’ offense. Goaltender John Gibson started and allowed four goals on 15 shots before being replaced by Cam Talbot midway in the game.<\/p>\n
The Wings sat out captain Dylan Larkin, who missed seven games with a lower-body injury in March, but returned to the lineup playing through injury until Wednesday’s season finale.<\/p>\n
Mike Benning had the first two goals of his career, Luke Kunin had two goals and Vinnie Hinostroza, A.J. Greer (power play), Cole Schwindt and Cole Reinhardt added Panthers goals.<\/p>\n
The Panthers scored four goals in a span of over seven minutes in the second period, turning a 1-0 game into a 5-0 blowout. Faulk stemmed the damage briefly, pinching from the point and beating goaltender Daniil Tarasvov.<\/p>\n
But the Panthers inflicted further damage in the third period.<\/p>\n
“Horrible, there’s really not much else to say about it,” forward J.T. Compher said. “No one in that room should be anywhere near proud of waht happened on the ice.<\/p>\n
“We didn’t play like we had respect for the game. That was the result when you don’t respect an opponent or anything in this league. That’s what happens.”<\/p>\n
tkulfan@detroitnews.com<\/p>\n
@tkulfan<\/p>\n
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Detroit Red Wings lose final NHL game of the season in Florida<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sunrise, Fla. \u2014 It wasn’t a pleasant way for the Red Wings to end this season. Humiliating and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5102],"tags":[261,6675,1082,3711,595,62,57,5141,5,5344,4602,12641,1821,1803,14650,4,63,3358,244,4568,1930,1120],"class_list":{"0":"post-553633","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida-panthers","8":"tag-a-j-greer","9":"tag-cam-talbot","10":"tag-cole-reinhardt","11":"tag-cole-schwindt","12":"tag-dylan-larkin","13":"tag-florida","14":"tag-florida-panthers","15":"tag-floridapanthers","16":"tag-hockey","17":"tag-j-t-compher","18":"tag-james-van-riemsdyk","19":"tag-john-gibson","20":"tag-justin-faulk","21":"tag-luke-kunin","22":"tag-mike-benning","23":"tag-nhl","24":"tag-panthers","25":"tag-red-wings","26":"tag-the-panthers","27":"tag-the-wings","28":"tag-todd-mclellan","29":"tag-vinnie-hinostroza"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116412470351202500","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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