DETROIT — At one point during the onslaught that was the Detroit Red Wings’ three-goal, ice-tilting, two-points-snatching second period, a stickless Brandon Carlo hit the ice and threw his six-foot-five frame lengthwise across the slot.

Gassed and desperate toward the end of a marathon own-zone shift that lasted two minutes and 53 seconds, the Toronto Maple Leafs defenceman was doing all he could to prevent another cross-seam pass, another back-door tap-in for the opposition.

Carlo — heck, half of the visitors’ bench — could be seen hunched over in the middle frame, trying to catch wind in the face of a tornado.

“They took it to us in the second,” Morgan Rielly understated, after Toronto had watched a 2-0 first-period dissolve into a 6-3 defeat (with two empty-netters).

For Craig Berub

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