Red Wings-Predators wrap-up and Red Wings-Blues set-up: perception is everything

The Detroit Red Wings flew back to Michigan around midnight with two very necessary points via what I thought was a relatively dominant 4-1 win over the Shea Weber-less Nashville Predators, allowing the Wings (minus Tomas Holmstrom, who suffered a groin injury) to face the St. Louis Blues tonight (7:30 PM EST, FSD/Versus/TSN2) still trailing the Blues by a single point in the Western Conference standings. The Wings were out-shot 32-22 thanks to a somewhat lackluster 3rd period in which the Wings gave up 15 shots, but the Wings also killed off 5 Predators power plays, received a 2-goal performance from Valtteri Filppula and did more than simply pounce on a Shea Weber-less Predators team, displaying improvement in leaps and bounds as compared to their shaky play last week and progressing toward the kind of hockey the Wings need to play to beat the Blues and Blackhawks and gain ground in the Central Division, The Predators viewed the game a little bit differently. As far as they were...