There are some things that you just cannot simply expect in a hockey game. But one of those things definitely happened in the opening period of the game between the Detroit Red Wings and the New York Islanders on Sunday, March 29.

First the scoring got going rather quickly, as Tomas Tatar scored his 28th goal of the season just 39 seconds into the game. Just 67 seconds later, Drew Miller made that a 2-0 lead for Detroit as they were looking to run the Islanders out of the building quite early. That's not really a surprise considering how poor the Islanders have been playing this month, it really hasn't been their best hockey.

The Red Wings were up two goals so it didn't matter if they had a penalty this early, so Darren Helm got a 2 minute minor for hooking which led to the Islanders getting their first goal of the game just over 4 minutes into the game. Brock Nelson scored the goal and was assisted by both Lubomir Visnovsky and Travis Hamonic. Also, less than 2 minutes later, Ryan Strome scored his 16th goal of the season to tie the game up at 2 a piece.

Both teams scored a goal in the 9th minute of the game as well, as the Islanders got another one on another power play when Kyle Okposo put it between the bars as seen in the picture above. But then Niklas Kronwall tied it back up for the Red Wings in the same minute to give a combined 6 goals in the opening 10 minutes of the game. That is simply nothing normal for an NHL hockey game.

Frans Nielsen opened up the second period quickly with another Islander Power Play goal. It was just 16 seconds into the period when he was able to give them the lead. Cal Clutterbuck was able to add an unassisted and shorthanded goal at the 3:57 mark of the second period to give the Islanders a 5-3 lead, and that is what they would be able to hold onto for the rest of the game.

Pavel Datsyuk did score a Power Play goal of his own for the Red Wings later in the second period, but after that neither team had any goals or penalties over the majority of the end of the second period and all of the third period.

Jaroslav Halak gets the win between the pipes despite having a rough save percentage of 84%, but his team took better advantage of the power plays, scoring on 3 tries out of 4 attempts. Meanwhile the Red Wings were only 1-3 on power plays.

Next up for the New York Islanders (45-27-5, 95 pts) will be a road game on Thursday, April 2 against the Columbus Blue Jackets (36-35-4, 76 pts) at Nationwide Arena. The win puts them 6 points ahead of the 8th seeded Boston Bruins in the Eastern Conference with only 5 game remaining in the regular season.

Meanwhile the Detroit Red Wings (40-23-12, 92 pts) have another game this month as they will end March 31 back at Joe Louis Arena as they face the Ottawa Senators (37-26-12, 86 pts). The Senators are the top contender for a playoff spot behind Boston, only back 3 points, but the Red Wings are fighting for position in the playoffs, which means that will be an excellent game on Tuesday Night.