The Red Wings dominated the play for much of the third period and overtime in today’s second round game 2. And still, they skated off the ice with a loss after an opponent’s role player scored the winning goal.

I don’t know what the root cause is here, but I do know this: this is going to be a long series, unless the Wings’ stars continue to disappear. Anaheim is all over Zetterberg and Hossa and Datsyuk, but if we’re going to have a chance in this series, these are the players that have to get it done.

Yahoo! Sports:Ducks’ Marchant scores in 3rd OT to beat Red Wings

http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/recap?gid=2009050305

Here is a blurb from the game recap on Yahoo! Sports:

Henrik Zetterberg of the Detroit Red Wings scored two goals and the Wings dominated from start to finish Tuesday night to beat the Columbus Blue Jackets 4-1 and grab a 3-0 lead in their first-round series.

The first NHL playoff game at Nationwide Arena—in the Blue Jackets’ 659th game—was a mammoth letdown for a franchise-record crowd of 19,219.

Dan Cleary had a goal and two assists, Tomas HolmstromJohan scored 1:07 in and Franzen added two assists. The Red Wings can advance to the conference semifinals with a win Thursday night.

Chris Osgood’s shutout streak of 144 minutes, 27 seconds ended with 3:53 left when R.J. Umbergerdrive. scored on a backhander off a rebound of Rick Nash’s The goal was almost identical to the only other score the Blue Jackets have in the series, when Umberger scored late in the second period of Game 1.

via Red Wings take 3-0 series lead – NHL – Yahoo! Sports.