Dylan Larkin plays hero against the Habs.

The Detroit Red Wings are riding high at the moment, having gone 5 - 4 - 1 over their last 10 games, and suddenly they find themselves sitting in third place in the Atlantic Division ahead of teams like the Boston Bruins and the defending Stanley Cup Champion Tampa Bay Lightning.

On Saturday night the Red Wings picked up another big win, this time against a struggling Montreal Canadiens team, and they did so in large part thanks to the heroics of Red Wings' captain Dylan Larkin. Larkin provided the Red Wings with two goals in the contest but it was his heroics in the extra frame that fans will no doubt remember best.

Larkin would score the eventual game winner on Habs goaltender Samuel Montembeault, who was only in the game due to the fact that Habs veteran goaltender Jake Allen had been knocked out of the game when Larkin was sent crashing into the net by Habs defenseman Jeff Petry, and it would come off the back of a nifty bit of passing between him and rookie sensation Lucas Raymond.

Here's a second angle from the crowd that gives you a better idea of the fan reaction to the goal:

When Larkin was asked about the big win he made a comment that may hint at why the Red Wings have been a little up and down this season.

“We’ve been a good hockey team at home, we’ve played well on the road at times,” Larkin said as per Mlive.com. “Through a long season you’re going to go through tough stretches. Our response has been great. It’s something that in the past few years we haven’t had that response, where we weren’t able to dig ourselves out of holes where three games has gone to five or seven games. We came home and turned it around. We didn’t play as good as we wanted to against Washington (2-0 loss Thursday). We responded tonight. We played hard.”

There is obviously a big reason why the Red Wings won't be as strong in certain road games this season. It may be purely a coincidence, but it seems as though having Tyler Bertuzzi in the lineup makes the Red Wings are much more formidable squad, and not only due to his production. Head coach Jeff Blashill also hinted at something to this effect when he specifically praised Bertuzzi's play as part of the reason for why the team was able to get some momentum going again.

“We sat in Buffalo, and we talked on the ice in practice,” said Blashill. “We talked about the fact that the week prior, we had a ton of confidence. And then all of a sudden, we had not much confidence. I thought that third period in Buffalo was huge, the end of it, how good Tyler (Bertuzzi) played there. We’ve picked up steam from there.”

Bertuzzi is limited in how much he can play this season, already having missed 3 regular season games, but in the 13 appearances he does have for the Red Wings he has 9 goals and 7 assists for 16 points, well above a point per game pace. It should come as no surprise then that the Red Wings are a different team with him out on the ice.