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Zetterberg's goal lifts Red Wings on Yzerman's night

Jan 3, 2007 - 5:34 AM DETROIT (Ticker) -- On the night the Detroit Red Wings honored an old star, one of their brightest younger players won the game for them.

Henrik Zetterberg scored the game-winning goal as the Red Wings downed the Anaheim Ducks, 2-1, on the night they retired Steve Yzerman's No. 19.

The victory was Detroit's fourth straight.

"We were sitting on the ice for about an hour. Once we got our legs going in the second, I thought we played a lot better," said Detroit defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom, who took over as team captain when Yzerman retired. "They're a tough team to play, they don't give you a whole lot. They come at you real hard, too, so I thought it was a great effort by the team tonight."

"I didn't think we really played a complete 60 minutes," said Anaheim coach Randy Carlyle, whose club fell to 1-4-0 in their last five games. "We had a lapse in the second period that cost us. They're a good hockey club. They have good puck-control game, and they executed that in the second period."

The left wing netted the decisive tally at 16:51 of the second period when he took a pass from Tomas Holmstrom in the corner and poked the puck past Ilya Bryzgalov to give the Red Wings a 2-1 lead.

"He (Holmstrom) made a good spin-around, backhand pass," Zetterberg said. "I had to take a look again and saw it was Homer. I thought it was Pavel (Datsyuk) out there. He made a great play. I just put it in there." "We had two guys go to the same man," Carlyle said. "You can't leave a guy going to the net."

Earlier, Zetterberg assisted on defenseman Mathieu Schneider's power-play goal at 1:00 of the second period to give Detroit a 1-0 lead. Ryan Getzlaf's power-play goal for Anaheim at 3:24 of the second knotted the game, 1-1.

Dominik Hasek recorded 21 saves for his fifth straight win. He has yielded just five goals over that span.

"I think obviously Dom was real good early," Detroit coach Mike Babcock said. "We knew as a coaching staff getting through the first period was going to be hard. We'd been out there a long, long time. You have no idea how cold it was sitting out on that ice."

Before the game, the Red Wings honored longtime captain Yzerman, whose number was raised to the rafters of Joe Louis Arena in a ceremony that last about 90 minutes.

Yzerman served as captain of Detroit for 20 straight seasons, the longest such streak in NHL history. He led the Red Wings to Stanley Cup titles in 1997, 1998 and 2002.

The center totalled 1,723 points in his 22 seasons with Detroit, the second-most in Red Wings history, trailing only Gordie Howe's 1,809.

"It was always great to play against him and watch him, because he was a special player and a classy guy," Anaheim star Teemu Selanne said. "One of my heroes and a great story. Hockey needs more guys like him."