DETROIT _ Joe Louis Arena will always hold a special place in Penguins' history as the site of their 2009 Stanley Cup victory.
Their final visit to the old building, though, wasn't quite as memorable.
The Penguins fell to the Red Wings, 6-3, Saturday night to lose their season-high third game in a row.
The last time the Penguins lost three consecutive games in regulation was last December, the beginning of coach Mike Sullivan's tenure, when they lost four in a row.
The Penguins had to play most of the night without top defenseman Kris Letang, who scored the opening goal but left later in the first period with an apparent leg injury.
They appeared poised to cruise to a victory after staking a 2-0 lead, but the last-place Red Wings battled back to tie the score, and scored three unanswered goals in the third period to claim the win.
Barring a miraculous second-half playoff push by the Red Wings, this will be the last time the Penguins play in Joe Louis Arena, and they'll leave on a bitter note.
Andreas Athanasiou gave the Red Wings the lead for good early in the third period with an individual, coast-to-coast goal that involved a deke past Penguins defensemen Justin Schultz and David Warsofsky. He finished it off with a high wrist shot past Marc-Andre Fleury to put Detroit up, 4-3, at 1:46 of the third period.
The Penguins appeared to tie the score at 5:09 of the third when Scott Wilson deflected a David Warsofsky shot past Coreau. The Red Wings challenged the goal, and referees ruled that Evgeni Malkin interfered with Coreau, disallowing the goal and keeping Detroit in front.
Mike Green and Henrik Zetterberg added insurance goals to close out a comeback win for the Red Wings.
The Penguins had jumped out to an early lead, with Letang putting them up 1-0 early in the first. He ripped a snap shot from just above the right circle that beat Detroit goalie Jared Coreau's blocker and nestled neatly into the top corner of the net.
The goal gave the Penguins a lead just 27 seconds into the game, certainly a positive development coming off their first back-to-back regulation losses of the season. It also marked the first time the Penguins had scored the opening goal of a game since Dec. 23 against the Devils, a span of six games where they had to try to come back from 1-0 deficits.
That was about the extent of Letang's contributions, though. At 3:21 of the first period, he got tangled up with Thomas Vanek trying to retrieve a puck in the Penguins' zone. He went down awkwardly and seemed to have trouble putting weight on his left leg coming off the ice. Letang went to the Penguins' dressing room, but surprisingly returned to the bench just a few minutes later.
He took one more shift _ which lasted 17 seconds _ at 12:30 of the period before returning to the Penguins' dressing room. He did not return for the rest of the night, finishing with just 2:06 of ice time.
The Penguins doubled their lead early in the second period courtesy of Evgeni Malkin. At 3:51 of the period, Malkin took a feed down low from Carl Hagelin, and beat Coreau five-hole.
At that point, the Penguins seemed poised to break the game open against the struggling Red Wings. Instead, Detroit clawed its way back into the game.
Midway through the second, Gustav Nyquist ripped a shot from the top of the right circle that deflected off a defenseman's skate and past Fleury to cut the Penguins' lead to 2-1 at 9:01 of the period.
The Red Wings tied the score just a few minutes later. Fleury couldn't clear the puck on a scramble in front of the net and Thomas Vanek was there to take advantage, pushing a wrist shot past Fleury at 13:28 of the second.
The Penguins briefly reclaimed the lead on Matt Cullen's power-play goal at 17:56 of the second period, but Frans Nielsen answered back less than two minutes later to even the score, 3-3, and send the teams into the second intermission tied.
The loss sends the Penguins to 8-9-3 away from PPG Paints Arena this season. They'll try to get back on track and snap the three-game losing streak Monday against Washington.
