NHL Scores And More: Red Wings Set Franchise Mark, Bruins Win Shootout

Red Wings 5, Sabres 0

The Red Wings set a franchise record with their 15th straight home win on Monday, blanking the Sabres while scoring five goals. Buffalo is streaking in the opposite direction, dropping its eighth straight on the road. Over at Winging It In Motown, Amerinadian pontificates on the number 15:

Per Wikipedia, there are a lot of interesting facts about the number 15. It's the atomic number of phosphorus. It's the number of days in each of the 24 cycles of the Chinese Calendar. It's the number of guns in a gun salute to Army, Marine Corps, and Air Force Lieutenant Generals, and Navy and Coast Guard Vice Admirals. It's a Taylor Swift song. It's the number of our new deity, Tim Tebow.

It's also now the number of consecutive wins at home for the Red Wings, setting a franchise record. The Wings jumped all over the Buffalo Sabres in the first period and never looked back, en route to a fairly easy 5-0 win.

The Wings scored all of their goals by the five-minute mark of the second period, resulting in the Sabres pulling goalie Ryan Miller. From NHL.com:

Detroit scored four more goals on Miller in a span of 6:21 between the end of the first and start of the second to build a 5-0 lead and prompt Miller's early departure from the game in favor of backup Jhonas Enroth - leading the frustrated Miller to reportedly shatter his stick in the hallway between the bench and locker room.

"It's embarrassing," said Miller, whose younger brother, Drew Miller, is a Red Wings forward and set up the goal that ultimately got his brother pulled. "I got family, friends ... everybody came to watch Drew and I play and, you know, at least they got to watch Drew perform."

Bruins 3, Panthers 2 (SO)

The Bruins pulled out a win, but as Ryan Durling of Stanley Cup of Chowder notes, it easily could have gone the other way:

Good hockey teams don't always win games that they deserve to. Great hockey teams do.

So, too, do great hockey teams sometimes win games that they don't deserve to.

David Krejci followed up Patrice Bergeron's shootout marker with one of his own, and Tuukka Rask earned the two points in spite of a gaffe in the shootout that nearly cost Boston a point.

Rusk may have allowed an easy goal to Stephen Weiss in the shootout, but he still carried his weight in this game but successfully stopping four breakaways by the Panthers. In addition to his shootout goal, Bergeron scored both times for the Bruins in regulation.