Here's the problem with crowning Emmitt Finnie the hero of Detroit's win over Florida: he scored once, into an empty net, with the game already decided. He got to the podium after someone else ran the race.
⚡ Upset:Red Wings had a 33% chance before puck drop and beat Panthers 5–3.
26%
The actual story of the third period is Justin Faulk. Florida had just tied it on a short-handed rebound goal off Aaron Ekblad's redirect, and the game was dead even heading into the final 20 minutes. Faulk ended that with a power-play one-timer, set up by Andrew Copp from the high slot, that put Detroit ahead for good. Forty-five seconds later, Michael Brandsegg-Nygard got loose in front off a feed from Lucas Raymond and made it 4-2. That's the sequence that actually broke Florida. Finnie's goal came with the clock inside its final three seconds, after Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Bennett had already pulled the Panthers back to 4-3 and Florida had pulled Jacob Markstrom a second time in a last gasp that went nowhere. Finnie closed it out after the outcome was already decided.
None of this knocks Finnie's season. He's been one of the only things Detroit can reliably count on offensively, riding a real stretch of production over his last several games dating back to early October. That's legitimate. It is a different claim than "he carried the team to this win," and conflating the two shortchanges the two guys who actually did: Faulk, who finished with a goal and an assist and scored the go-ahead goal, and Brandsegg-Nygard, who matched him point for point with the goal that actually mattered.
RatingThe idea that Detroit's defense "held the line" late needs a correction too. Florida's push in the final minutes happened with Markstrom pulled for an extra attacker. Detroit didn't hold the first one. The Panthers cut it to 4-3 with the extra skater on the ice before Florida pulled Markstrom again and came up empty the second time. Detroit merely survived that stretch.
This win doesn't erase Saturday's collapse against St. Louis, where Detroit blew two separate two-goal leads and lost 5-4. A team that can build a multi-goal cushion and still give it back twice in one period hasn't fixed anything structural, and one response game against Florida doesn't change that pattern. Daniil Tarasov making 23 saves against his old team and Markstrom returning from injury to stop 24 are both real, good performances. They don't retroactively make Saturday disappear.
What this win does prove is that Detroit can win a hockey game with Dylan Larkin nowhere near the lineup. Larkin is suspended without pay after telling the organization he won't play for them again while he waits out a trade, and the price Detroit is reportedly asking for him is enormous. Moritz Seider's comment that Larkin's exit "eliminates a little bit of noise" tells you how that room feels about the saga. A team that can beat a good opponent on the road while its captain is radioactive and absent doesn't need a jury-rigged Finnie-saved-the-day narrative to feel good about itself. The encouraging sign is Faulk, Brandsegg-Nygard, Carter Mazur getting his first NHL goal, and a bottom-six that showed up without the player who was supposedly indispensable.
Give Finnie his due for the season he's quietly putting together. But stop handing him credit for a game where he touched the puck once, after the outcome was already written.
