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Franzen continues hot stretch as Red Wings down Blues

Mar 26, 2008 - 4:52 AM ST. LOUIS (Ticker) -- Johan Franzen continued his hot streak as he scored a power-play tally at 8:22 of the third period to snap a tie and lead the Detroit Red Wings to their fourth straight win Tuesday, a 2-1 triumph over the St. Louis Blues.

Henrik Zetterberg also tallied and fellow All-Star Chris Osgood stopped 17 shots for Detroit (51-20-6), which improved to 9-2-0 in its last 11 games and moved nine points ahead of San Jose (45-21-9) in the race for the Presidents' Trophy.

The Sharks are playing in Phoenix on Tuesday.

"It's like all games now this time of year - they're hard to win," Detroit coach Mike Babcock said. "(Osgood) was real good. Good effort from him, and he's been good all year. His save percentage and goals-against (average) speak for themselves."

The Red Wings continued their hot play thanks to Franzen, who notched his 11th goal in as many games.

It also was the second game-winner in three contests for Franzen, who also netted the decisive goal in a 6-3 win over Columbus on Thursday.

"You never know which one is going to be the game-winner," Franzen said. "I've been lucky that it's my goal to be the game-winner.

"Once it's starts rolling, the puck just keeps coming to you. That's how it happens. Every once in a while, you get lucky and everything starts going your way. I hope it stays that way as long as possible."

The fourth-year Swede snapped a 1-1 tie with his 23rd tally of the season as he buried the rebound of captain Nicklas Lidstrom's shot during a power play.

Lidstrom fired a shot from the bottom of the left faceoff circle that deflected off the mask of All-Star goaltender Manny Legace and caromed to Franzen, who poked it into the left side of the net.

"Playoff games are like this, too," Lidstrom said. "If you're up or down by a goal or a tie game, you have to respond as a team. And I think we did that in the third period. The power play came up big for us there in the end."

Andy McDonald scored the lone goal for St. Louis, which returned home after going 1-6-2 on a franchise-record nine-game road trip. The Blues struggled and were outshot, 32-18, managing just three shots in the third period.

"It's a 1-1 hockey game going into the third," McDonald said. "It's unfortunate. We played pretty hard and a pretty good game. It wasn't perfect. I thought it was a pretty good effort. We want to play hard in front of our fans. Certainly, they've been supportive of us throughout the course of the season."

Detroit took a 1-0 lead as Zetterberg notched his 41st goal of the season with 4:11 left the first period. He took a pass from Daniel Cleary, skated to the right side and unleashed a backhander that Legace was unable to stop from trickling across the goal line.

McDonald tied the game at 1-1 just 2:36 into the second on a breakaway as he deked Osgood from right to left and beat him to the stick side.

Legace stopped 30 shots for St. Louis, which has missed the playoffs for a franchise-record third straight season.

"They came out firing in the third period," Legace said. "They're a good hockey team and they work hard to maintain that every single night. (We) just didn't respond when we had three shots in the third period."