WTF Holland

http://babcocksdeathstare.wordpress.com/

2009-06-13T16:04:00.002-04:00

I've moved!

I hinted at some site news in the last post. I've been on Blogger almost two years now, but it still frustrates me. I looked into maybe moving on to something on WordPress. I didn't know much about it, but as soon as I read some of the features I decided it was something I must do. It's more complicated, but it offers a lot more at the same time. I've yet to read a really bad review from someone who has switched from Blogger to WordPress.

I debated waiting. I set it all up last week but I was going to wait a few weeks after the Finals for everything to blow over. I didn't really take into account how things would go if Detroit lost. I'm still feeling pretty miserable about it, but I'm forcing myself into offseason mode as quickly as possible. I'll have some offseason ideas up later today, over at the new place, so I figured for my own benefit I may as well get it out right now so I can tweak it over the next few weeks if there are problems.

Also, the name WTF Holland is done, the new blog title will be Babcock's Death Stare. For one, I was never sure how that name would be received, as I really doubted I would be able to keep a blog active and figured it would become another failed attempt. Somehow, it didn't. I never really got anything but compliments about the name, but I'm kind of going for a more professional look/feel so I figured I would eventually change it. Additionally, the blog was named for the way that people reacted to everything Ken Holland did from 2002-2008, even though we still won like crazy. After the Cup last year and the long contracts this year, he's getting more of the credit he deserves, so I figure to some new readers it might not make much sense. The new title, however, makes sense as soon as you watch a Wings' game.

It's still the same thing. Still just me blogging, not like I went and sold out or anything. Still the same long-winded rants and obscure prospects news as always. For one thing, cosemetically, I feel like it looks a lot better and it should be a little easier to read -- I got really sick of the red background here, I could never really get this blog to look the way I wanted it to so I just kept it simple after a while. Also, with the "pages" that WordPress provides it will be a lot easier for me to put prospect information at the top of the page so it can always be accessed, instead of having to sort through years of archives. I can do a lot of fun stuff with that, even like salary cap information and the like, so readers don't really have to leave the site

So update your bookmarks, RSS feeds, etc, because everything after this post will be at the new place. I imported all of the old posts and the comments but there's too much to go through and double-check, so I'm sure there are a few errors. For some reason, the first line in each post is at a smaller font size than the rest of the post. Some of the posts duplicated. I'm not sure whether or not all the comments got in there or not but the most recent ones are. Everything else looks pretty good. Most of the changes will be behind the scenes. It'll be a lot easier for me to post, so hopefully I can do so more frequently, and also it allows me to monitor traffic so I can actually see what posts interest people the most, and exactly how many readers I have.

So if you haven't already, click on over there. I'll welcome any comments about the name, layout, design, any errors or trouble viewing the site over here or over there, or you're always welcome to e-mail me.

The Ultimate Tease: Season Summed in 60 Minutes

2009-06-13T01:36:00.007-04:00

Devastated.. Can't say much else.

I believe in giving credit where credit is due. Pittsburgh played very well tonight. But Detroit only played well in the first and last 7/8 minutes. They were their own undoing. But again, Pittsburgh played well, you can't say Detroit would have won. Pittsburgh wouldn't have sat back so early in the game if Detroit wasn't having such problems bringing it over the blueline. But in terms of Game 7 urgency, only one team and Henrik Zetterberg showed any of it.

I'm very upset with a few players in particular. Johan Franzen was pretty bad all Finals long but I feel like he's even worse in person. He has no urgency away from the puck. He, and Dan Cleary each had the same thing happen. They had been either knocked down or held up in the Pittsburgh zone, while Pittsburgh went to dump it in and change. Then they slowly got up and made their way to the Detroit bench. However, the Detroit defenders moved the puck out of their own zone so quickly, that both Franzen and Cleary were still offsides when Detroit brought it back in. It's just that kind of urgency. You don't have to sprint to the bench, but you have to get off the ice at some point. At the very least make it an effort to clear the zone, then you can glide to the bench (you are on ice, you know).

Tomas Holmstrom was awful all playoff and even more tonight. At the same time, I've gotta frown at Babcock for putting this guy out there in the waning minutes. Yeah, he's still a good screen even when he isn't getting his stick on it, but he was just so stupid with the puck all playoff long. Obviously, he's never been a skilled guy but he can usually get rid of the puck if his linemate accidentally gave it to him, but all series long it was missed simple passes and turnovers. It's just brutal to watch. But what did he do deserving of ice time at the end of the game like that? Hossa can stand in front of the net if you tell him to. It's not like he was going to touch a puck either. Holmstrom's quickly falling into the doghouse now, I can't imagine next season will be too pleasent if he keeps scoring at his playoff rate.

Samuelsson was just retarded today. It's either going to be the perfect send off to the end of his tenure as a Red Wing or the perfect final picture of him from this season that's going to send me into a rage when he's re-signed.

Kronwall, Rafalski, and, to a lesser extent, Lebda, are all in the same boat. They can look like great defensemen capable of outstanding offensive totals and solid defensive play, or they can look lost as they spin around with a puck in between their feet. I don't know how the ice was, but it looked bad. I'm not really a scientist or smart person in the least but I know they always say that changes in humidity are what makes for bad ice, and it rained yesterday before being warm today, so I'm going to assume it was as bad as it looks. But all three of these guys had awful times keeping the puck in, keeping their passes flat, and just generally carrying it up ice without something terrible happening.

Datsyuk, Franzen, Filppula, Hudler, Hossa. File under: Too cute. You don't pass up open shots in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals. Specifically, Hossa. I tried, buddy. I pulled people's attention to the fact that even when you're not scoring, you're a good two-way player. But I just don't know what happened. Hossa just constantly got himself into trouble in the offensive zone. He flubbed like every strong shot he had. He ran into Datsyuk on a backcheck. He fell near the bench when no one was near him. He either tried to rag the puck through 4 people or he'd dump it in on a 3-on-2. Not happy. He looked like he'd explode offensively eventually. He didn't. I don't think he's too well-liked in Detroit right now. And I don't know if I want him back next season, he became too much of a rallying point and a distraction. He became a reason on his own for people to root against Detroit, and as we all know, there are no shortages of reasons to root against Detroit. But I don't know that I don't want him back either. More on that another day.

What else? I don't know. Zetterberg was the only guy busting his ass out there. Ericsson wasn't terrible I guess -- he tied for 6th on the team in playoff goals. Helm I didn't notice that much, so that's probably good and bad. Stuart had a giveaway that is making everyone call for his head, but they forget that he was levels above Kronwall and Rafalski for almost the entire playoffs.

It hasn't entirely set in yet. I keep using the wrong tense, i.e. "Holmstrom has been terrible all series" instead of "Holmstrom was terrible." I'm sure there's still a few errors, and I'm sure this will be much worse when I start using past tense without thinking about it. I won't go into too much detail about being there because it makes me feel awful. The first period was exciting and electric. The Wings dominated until the Stuart penalty. Life was good. But after the two goals in the second, the building was lifeless. I sat hunched forward with my chin resting on my hand for almost the whole time. I couldn't bring myself to do every chant. I felt hopeless, but at the same time, it was sad. A large group of Pens fans sat a few rows behind us. They started a bunch of Lets Go Pens chants. In the first period, those were easily drowned out with "Lets Go Wings". In the second, they started, but quickly died off as the Pens chant kept going. I doubt it sounded that loud on TV, but in the rink, it was disheartening. It didn't get loud until Ericsson scored.

Everyone stood for the last few minutes. Details are fuzzy now. Detroit had some good chances, Kronwall ringing it off the bar stands out. Although at the game, not having access to replays, I was surprised how quickly I'd forgotten about that and moved on to looking at the clock and seeing how much time Detroit had left. Fleury made a great save at the buzzer, and it was over. I made an abrupt decision. I left before the handshakes. Not something I'm really proud of after applauding how many Pens fans stayed for Game 6 last year when Detroit won. But at the same time, I think it's going to haunt me for a long time. Just thinking about it is miserable. All I see is Fleury making that last save, three zeroes on the clock, then a flash of white tearing towards the Pittsburgh net and a terrible sinking feeling in my stomach. Walking out, hearing the Penguins announced as 2009 Stanley Cup Champions -- I felt like collapsing. It felt like a dream, it felt like it shouldn't have been over yet.

It's not as though they don't deserve it. And it's not as though Crosby is as bad as everyone makes him out to be. I think with this playoff, Malkin is now the better player. I don't think Crosby is captain material, though there's not many standout candidates on Pittsburgh. I think he'll be great in five years, but he looked "very 21" a lot in this series. I didn't want to see him lift the Cup. And I didn't want to see the smug fucking look on Gary Bettman's face getting to hand the Cup to him, definitely more pleased than if Detroit won but not to the point where he rigged anything. The officiating was consistent. But I want to ask if anyone else feels they'd let a lot go if it was Detroit/Carolina. But anyway, I heard Bettman's weasel eyes lit up when he passed the Cup to Jesus H. Crosby. But I haven't seen it yet. I'm going to go as long as I can without seeing it. Not because I'm bitter (but I am), but because that's going to be the image in every single NHL/NBC/Versus ad for all of next season, and likely seasons beyond that even if Pittsburgh doesn't repeat. The Golden Boy won. What now? Are people going to watch hockey now, Gary? Or will fewer watch, because Crosby winning at 21 is like a movie ending in it's third scene?

But the tease. These problems that Detroit had, the small things like breaking the puck out, turning it over in the neutral zone, general defensive awareness and giving up odd man rushes, poor line changes, were things that were noticed all year long. No team is perfect, but this team was definitely frustrating and anyone can tell you that. After dominating most of last season without an issue, the addition of Hossa this season provided mouth-watering possibilities. Those levels were never reached. Sure they won 50 games and scored 270-some goals and won 15 playoff games. But there were very few A-game efforts. There were very few games that came close to the level of play we saw throughout the 2007-08 season. They would do it once, so you'd figure "hey, they must be rounding a corner." Then they drop three straight. They win two straight, with 20-minute efforts and you say "well, they could play better, but at least they're winning."

That feeling never went away. The playoffs, on average, saw a much higher level of play. But the Finals saw them outplayed in most games, but that having no effect on who actually won the game. This game would have been the imperfect capper to such an inconsistent season. A 20-minute effort in a Game 7. They tried it. Didn't work. Still a successful season, but its an additional reason to be bitter. This was my first full season blogging and really reading other blogs and paying attention to their comments. They won 50 games, but I think everyone will tell you this team was a hell of a lot different from the 2007-08 team, and it wasn't just because they didn't have Dallas Drake.

This one stings. I can't write much else about it right now. If I feel better in the morning (i.e. sometime around nightfall when I decide to get out of bed), I might. But this ended up being longer than I expected. I don't know how to deal with this. I'm proud of the team. But I'm soured by the fact that they could have played so much better. I can't forgive and move on to next year yet. Many of these problems were things that occurred all season and were never fixed.

Anyway, I didn't think I'd be able to write tonight. But it's helped me feel a little better. I think I would be much more torn up if they didn't win last year. I'm not entirely ready to look forward to next season yet, because we'll be weaker. But just slightly. Two out of three isn't bad. There's a lot to figure out before then. Sometime over the weekend I might throw together some offseason scenarios, but no promises. Some semi-insignificant site news coming in the future. Draft preview on the table. We'll see. Throw out other ideas for the offseason. Should be an interesting one, I hope to be able to keep this place pretty active.

Go Wings is a little hard to get out right now and a little cliche. The kicker to this post, should be one thing, and one thing only:

OZ-ZIE! OZ-ZIE! OZ-ZIE! OZ-ZIE!

I'm going to throw up at some point tonight

2009-06-12T17:05:00.003-04:00

Not sure when.

As possibly some of you may perhaps be presently and currently aware of, I have tickets to Game 7.

I am still going.

I am leaving in an hour.

I feel miserable. I have tremendous confidence that this team will get it done. But I don't expect Pittsburgh to go quietly. No 5-0s, though I would enjoy it. I'm going to be wrapped up into this one, and before I can blink, either Nicklas Lidstrom or Sidney Crosby will be lifting the Cup. One of those options is just much more nauseating than the other.

No screw ups tonight. Cannot afford it. Game 7s are all about those game-changing mistakes.

And whoever the first player to knock Crosby on his ass is will be my new favorite player. Even if it's Mikael Samuelsson. No jokes.

If I get thrown in jail, killed in a riot, or shanked by a "6'3, 3 bills" Penguins fan, I just want you all to know: it's been a pleasure to have some great activity and discussion during these playoffs. It's been real.

See you on the other side, gentlemen.

One more.

2009-06-07T03:07:00.003-04:00

Wow.

What an experience. I got downtown really early to scope out the atmosphere, deciding along the way I was going to be hostile to any Pens fans I happened across, the first being one wearing an Ulf Samuelsson jersey. I wasn't out to start a fight, and I'm all for visiting fans coming out to make something interesting, but I was amped up for this game and I wasn't about to let a sea of Crosby and Malkin jerseys make me any more nervous before the beginning of this one.

Ended up eating at some dive bar that was crawling with them. The meal was interrupted frequently by fans of both sides starting chants before the game. Hours before the game. With a few TVs playing Game 7 from 2002 Detroit/Colorado. Wings fans cheered every goal as if they'd just happened. A few pre-game drunks made violent passes at each other. Nothing big, but it got me going.

We made our way to our seats and our section was crawling with Pens fans. It was over an hour before the puck drop, but in the upper bowl in our corner, Pens fans nearly outnumbered Wings fans. I was worried, I don't like being near the enemy. But I figured since they were coming for Pittsburgh, they would be there early, and Wings fans would filter into the empty seats. They did. Not before a few "Let's go Pens" chants from the early-arrivers, and their subsequent criticism of Wings fans for not chanting back. "Get it all out before the game, because Datsyuk's playing today," I warned.

The warmup freaked me out a bit. As usual, I watched the 3-on-2 drills to figure out Detroit's line combos. Datsyuk was in but the lines weren't too consistent, Cleary rotated in on a bunch of lines. Cleary and Datsyuk left the practice early, and for some reason I didn't see Rafalski out there at all. Leino and Abdelkader were, and Chelios too, for the last couple drills, so I was terrified at the thought of that lineup going into the game today. I guess my eyes just weren't sharp enough, because all three players in question played, and ironically, all picked up a point on the first goal.

After having a beer spilled all over my leg by this guy, who I had seen days before on Puck Daddy's Jersey Fouls, but he turned out to be a stand up guy and knowledgeable fan, unlike the degenerates in the section over who tried to start "Red Wings suck" chants all game. I didn't approve of the "Crosby sucks" chants later in the game, but the taste of dejection floating my way filled up my self-satisfaction meter to dangerous levels.

They went quiet pretty quickly. They all left early. I wished them a safe drive. Or maybe I laughed in their faces. It's all so hazy. Nah, I kept it classy, but on the inside I was standing up on the row in front of them and screaming in their faces.

On to the game.

Pavel Datsyuk.. you tease. How dare you? Why would you put everyone through this? It was obvious in the warmup which foot he was favoring, and he stumbled on it several times throughout the game as well. He couldn't accelerate like he wanted to. But this is a guy who is still the best player on the ice almost every shift. He controlled the play, did magical things with the puck, threw his weight around, and made some hilariously easy-looking steals. He is the reason I am actually confident Detroit can wrap this up in six.

Everyone was much better tonight, I can't single out any stars. But Chris Osgood once again silencing doubters which a shutout in possibly the most crucial game of the playoffs.. well, it feels good. He really only saw difficult shots in the first period, but at some point in the second I decided there was no way he was letting up a goal today. Because that's how he rolls.

Hossa was better tonight. He needs to handle the puck less along the boards, because he's started to get himself trapped. I would not be surprised to learn that he has a hand/wrist injury. Something's wrong with his release and he's been pushing the puck ahead of him a lot more often than handling it. But he hit a post tonight and had his best chance of the series in the third only to find himself makin a move too close to the net. Oh well. I have faith that he'll show up for Game 6. Even if he doesn't score, what better feeling for him than lifting the Cup in front of everyone that's been booing him.

I could see a lot of Pittsburgh fans writing this one off and complaining about the officiating. But honestly, those weren't even borderline calls -- those were stupid. Kunitz's goalie interference was weak, but that's a call that would certainly go both ways. Everything else was stupid. Kunitz trying to fight Darren Helm of all people, Malkin going high on Franzen, Crosby two-handing Zetterberg, Talbot obstructing/tripping/slashing on Datsyuk, conveniently, on the bad foot. It's a lack of discipline and a sign of inexperience. They're going to want to come out physical or Game 6, but if they continue with this stuff, it's going to be a quick game.

Malkin absolutely took the night off. Six penalty minutes and one shot. It wasn't even Datsyuk -- he went against Hossa/Filppula all night again (with Cleary/Franzen rotating in and out). He seemed preoccupied with starting stuff after the whistle, mostly on Filppula. I don't know why teams think this type of thing works on Detroit. Overall, this series has made me feel like he's a better player than Crosby, because the best players don't get shut down. But he's worse when he takes the night off. Crosby is just too easy to frustrate. Pittsburgh doesn't have the depth for these two to take the night off and it showed. And they don't have the leadership to win this series if both their stars, wearing the C and the A, are more worried about the post-whistle junk than commanding the team. Lead by example.

No Game 7. I have the ticket, and I'd love the thrill, but just win the thing. This team is too good to look good losing. A loss will only upset me to the point of no return. I don't think I'd survive the drive to the Joe.

If Detroit plays like this on Tuesday, we'll be seeing #12. One more for one more. Go Wings.

Clarity

2009-06-06T16:19:00.002-04:00

I am headed out the door within an hour for my first ever Stanley Cup Finals game.

And I'm at peace. When I'm too pissed off to make fun of bad players like Rafalski, you know the loss hurt. But it's 2-2. It's a best-of-three series and, worst case scenario, the Wings have two games at home.

I listened to Mike Babcock's off-day comments last night, and I couldn't have felt any better. The guy knows what he's doing. He picked up on some brilliant things and said most of the team reviewed some video/photos of when they're forcing passes. That's the biggest thing to me. This team is too skilled to have to saucer a pass through four sets of legs. There's gotta be someone else open. Patience.

Very few Wings skated yesterday. Tired? Fatigued? Please, tell me that the Pens aren't. I'm sure they're tired, but they're not burnt. The media is having a field day. Crosby's closer to the Cup right now than he'll be for the rest of the series. Everyone thinks the Staal goal changed the series. How do you know that? It's just mindless predictions. Detroit is too veteran of a team to dwell on that. It takes a few minutes to shake off, which is why that goal set off an onslaught of three. How often does that happen to Detroit? It won't happen again.

Pittsburgh thinks they've worn Detroit down. They think they've finally proven to themselves that Detroit is beatable. Really? You didn't believe that going in? It's just part of the mind-games that go on. For their sake though, a team with still very little experience, they shouldn't dwell on what they've accomplished too much because as of right now, both teams have accomplished the exact same thing. Pittsburgh just did it more recently, in their own building.

Babcock is confident. I can't find a link to the presser anymore because NHL.com sucks, but if you'd care to, search for the "Off-Day Interview." The man is brilliant. He's confident with a smirk that slaps you in the face with smug. But he's right. He believes that this team can do it and he has no reason not to. "I'm a big believer in us," he says.

Me too. This is it. Wings fans are spoiled. The ones calling for Hossa's head in the offseason and writing the team off -- fuck 'em. We've been blessed with four Stanley Cups in recent history and we've been fortunate that they've come 4-0, 4-0, 4-1, and 4-2. In those series, we've only had a series tie once, which was the 1-1 tie after the first two games of the '02 Carolina series. 2-2 seems unfamiliar. It seems like it's the worst we've ever done. It's fine. We just have to pick our game up to the next level.

Datsyuk's coming back. Pavel Datsyuk. Hart Trophy candidate. We'd watching the parade right now if Pittsburgh didn't have their Hart Trophy candidate. Absolutely, Malkin has completely outplayed the field all playoffs long. Datsyuk doesn't have much to show for his effort. But that's a hell of a hole in the lineup. Like Babcock says, that's a guy that's going to have the puck for the majority of his 21 minutes. He slows the game down and forces everyone to play at his pace. Unlike Hossa, he can get stuff done along the boards without moving his feet.

He's ready. He's hungry. He's pissed. He's pissed that he was held out of Game 4. He's pissed that it's the playoffs and the doctors wouldn't let him play through it. This is his team. He's part of the elite group of players on one of the elite franchises in NHL history. This relfects on him. He doesn't want to be part of the group that gave Sidney his first Cup. People will look back, "Wow, Crosby beat that Detroit team when he was 21," they'll say, "that team was stacked." Not gonna happen, not if Pavel has anything to do with it.

He won't be 100%. But he'll be a lot better than most of the players on the ice. He'll pick Malkin's pocket the next time he oafs his way over Detroit's blueline. He'll give Crosby the shoulder right in the chops if he's going to continue to drape himself all over a Wing in the defensive zone. Datsyuk will find something for Crosby to complain about.

Osgood is about to play the game of his life. After the media verbally fellated him following the first two games, talking HOF and Canada 2010, Pittsburgh didn't have too much trouble putting it past him. He doesn't care, he doesn't dwell on those things anymore. These are the games where he shines the brightest. As if to say "you shut your whore mouth", in his usual polite yet honest tone, to the media and each and every fan out there doubting him after he was the Wings' greatest thing going after the first three rounds.

I believe in this team. People will look back in ten years and say, "well, of course they won the Cup with that lineup." Even over Pittsburgh. They just don't have this depth. They don't have this skill, and they don't have this drive. And they don't have the players who lost a series they should have won. Detroit has that. It's going to be all business tonight.

Go Wings.

Guess what, Pavs?

2009-06-04T22:54:00.002-04:00

Executive decision -- suck it up, you're coming to the Joe with me on Saturday and you're going to play. Sorry, that's just the way it is.

Be proud Pittsburgh. You fought your way back in. Be proud of Crosby, too, for laying on the ice like a dead fish. Face of the franchise -- class.

Holmstrom, Rafalski, Kronwall, Samuelsson, Hudler, Franzen, Draper, Leino, Rafalski again, Holmstrom three more times. We didn't win anything after Game 2. Why did you all stop playing?

No other thoughts right now. Maybe tomorrow. Probably not.

How bad do you want it, Hossa?

2009-06-03T15:30:00.003-04:00

Well?

There were some mumblings pre-game, which I traced back to Sports Illustrated's Michael Farber -- author of the recent great piece on Detroit's 1989 Draft -- who says, with confidence, that Marian Hossa had essentially signed a 7-year deal prior to the playoffs, but that deal is said to be on hold until after the playoffs. Ken Holland denied it, but I don't know. Maybe it's just what I want to believe, but, considering the source, there has to be some level of truth to it.

We'll see what happens when the time comes. It's been the question on my mind all season long. I've flipped back and forth as to whether or not I want that. I think for most of the season I preferred they keep Hossa over Franzen. Then Franzen got hot, and signed an 11-year deal with money that can't even be considered in Hossa's ballpark. Then Hossa didn't score in the playoffs like he did in the regular season. Meanwhile, guys like Mikael Samuelsson, Valtteri Filppula, Dan Cleary, and Jiri Hudler, a group which the Wings would seemingly have to get rid of at least two of to keep Hossa, have stepped up with some timely goals and depth scoring. That depth has clearly been the strength of Detroit this season. It's too tough of a call to decide whether you want to keep the super-depth on the top two lines or balanced depth all throughout the roster. But so many long contracts on some not-so-young guys makes me a little nervous.

More on that later. I can't imagine anything more is revealed until the playoffs are over. And I can't even begin to imagine how it will work, so I won't throw out any scenarios, yet.

As for the here and now, I'm calling out Marian Hossa over any other player to step up for Game 4. Game 4s, as you might recall, have been Hossa's best game in all three series so far, but that doesn't automatically mean he's going to step up tomorrow. It's tough to knock the guy, because I believe he's played well. However, this guy is a marquee name in the league and he hasn't played like it. Zetterberg has. Malkin certainly has. Crosby has been dangerous every time Zetterberg isn't on him. Hossa's been merely above average, and right now, it isn't good enough.

Right now I feel like he's taking too much flak. I think last night was his worst game of the series, but it wasn't bad. He missed the far side post twice. He had two glorious scrambles where he got in too close and the puck sat out behind him for a matter of seconds. It's just bad luck, and maybe even wanting it a little too much. The regular season Hossa cruised the slot and picked up those pucks. The playoffs Hossa has been driving right to the crease and several times he's had the puck roll in between his legs and sit idly in the slot for a few seconds. It happens. He's been doing the right things. Eventually he's going to explode, and how magical would it be to see him do it in Pittsburgh.

But I think I would like to see him carry the puck around the zone less. I liked it when I saw it against Chicago, but against Pittsburgh there are often two defenders on him and Hossa seems content to protect the puck and wait for an open lane. Meanwhile, as he skates towards the point, Detroit's defensemen get on their heels because they don't know where he's going with it. They don't want his pocked picked by two defenders who are ready to go the other way with it, so they often start moving backwards and Hossa loses even more options to pass it to.

One solution to this particular problem is to get Pavel Datsyuk back on his line. Pengwhine fans (note that this term does not refer to all Pens fans, just the ones I've already established I don't like) seem to think that Pittsburgh is in control of this series because they outplayed Detroit in all three games. I disagree with that completely. They outshot Detroit in Detroit, but Detroit outpossessed them and shut down their offense completely both of those games. Detroit was even better than Pittsburgh last night. They outshot, outchanced, and outpossessed them. But they didn't finish, and Pittsburgh had the benefit of a few powerplays at choice times. They clearly need the powerplay to get any offense going.

The turnovers need to stop. I'm tired of every player on the team thinking they can do a drop pass inside their own zone. That's reserved for the Zetterbergs, Datsyuks, and Rafalskis who are always automatic with the puck. I don't want to see a guy like Darren Helm tossing the puck out the middle right now. Helm has good instincts, but he's a successful player when he doesn't take risks and plays the game in its simplest form. And in that scenario, it would be tossing the puck off the glass, not blindly throwing it out the middle.

Regarding complaining about the officiating, I've noticed that at that certain Pens site they seem to have forgotten how quickly the waterworks came on after the first two games, only to instantly turn it around and accuse Wings fans of whining after this one. Who's whining, exactly? I haven't seen any blogger blame anything except the Wings lack of execution. The officiating contributed, but it was similar to that of the first two games. To me, that just shows that Penguins fans knew Pittsburgh got away with a lot and instantly went on the offensive. I think the whole "blaming the officiating," and more specifically "accusing the other teams fans for whining about officiating" is childish. One team is going to take more penalties than the other team pretty much every night. Both teams will get hosed on calls (especially in the NHL) every night, and even if the other team got hosed more, as a fan you still wish your calls were made because it would have changed the way the game went. But these fans that can act like the world is ending one night and then the next night act like the officiating was perfect and their team dominated just blow my mind.

But that doesn't mean that things wouldn't have gone differently. Detroit ran their little interference and got caught on it a few times. That Cleary call was late and called by the far ref because of the crowd reaction. He got his hand out, but it wasn't the worst thing Detroit did all night. Craig Adams clearly dove on the Franzen call, the stick was touching his back leg and Adams just went limp, and again, the crowd helped. The Ericsson call was pretty blatant, but I was surprised they called it that time when they let it go on Hal Gill roughly 20 times. But I don't know how you don't call Cooke hitting high and late on Helm, Stuart being ripped to the ice to create the Talbot empty netter, and pretty much a penalty a shift on Brooks Orpik, even if you're being lenient. I don't know if this is whining by Pens fans standards or not, but the fact that they supported the great officiating so quickly shows me that they know they got lucky tonight. Again, I don't feel the officiating was any different than what was called in Game 1/2, save for the Ericsson interference which has been let go up until that point, but I felt the two most blatant calls of the series thus far went uncalled.

But the 6-on-5. I can't even comprehend how Ed Olczyk was the only person in the building who noticed. The Penguins had four players on the puck, one defenseman in the high slot, and one on the point supporting the cycle in the corner. It just didn't look right. Four players on the puck should be a dead giveaway. You couldn't see Mark Eaton in the frame for most of it, but the location of the other four players indicated that there would have definitely been a player on the point. I picked up on the extra guy even before Olczyk did. To make matters worse, some fans are suggesting linesman told a Penguins player to get off the ice because Eaton didn't get off the ice until the linesman skated near him. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest, how can you blame the NHL for having its own agenda?

Osgood should have been better. You could tell instantly he wanted that Letang goal back. The Gonchar goal may have deflected twice, no big problem with that one. The Talbot goal was questionable, but not many NHLers miss when they're wide open in the slot. I didn't get a chance to see what forward line was out there and who let him go. But he's made that save all playoff. It's a bummer for Osgood, but he'll come back strong next game.

As I alluded to earlier, it looks like Pavel Datsyuk will be back, as he skated with Filppula and Hossa at practice and looked good, according to Bruce MacLeod. That should take some of the puck possession pressure of Hossa. Going back to Penguins fans thinking they're the better team here, I'd really like to see how that game would have gone if Malkin was justly suspened and Pittsburgh had to play without their Hart Trophy nominee. Yikes, right?

I wasn't feeling too great about this game last night, but this Datsyuk news cheers me up. Detroit has been the better team and will get getting their best forward back. He didn't do much in the first two rounds, but I think the time off will do him some good and he'll come back with fresh legs, crucial for a game that will be both team's fourth in six nights. Also, Filppula/Datsyuk/Hossa against Malkin sounds a hell of a lot better than Holmstrom/Filppula/Hossa.

It sounds like Draper may step in too, likely for Justin Abdelkader. That means Datsyuk would likely step in for Ville Leino. It's a shame on both accounts. Tomas Holmstrom has been completely ineffective and an absolute liability. It's clear he's going to play on the fourth line with Datsyuk back in, but why even dress him at all? Abdelkader has two goals and has dominated in the faceoff circle. Leino made a great, confident play on the Zetterberg goal by driving the open lane to the net instead of feeding Zetterberg, who was open. The play took the Pittsburgh defenders by surprise, because rookies don't make that play, and Zetterberg had nobody near him for the rebound. Holmstrom, Maltby, and Samuelsson (in that order) have been Detroit's most worthless forwards. I realize these guys are veterans, but Leino and Abdelkader both have multiple points in the Finals. It hurts the team to bring them out.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I managed to buy Game 5 (and 7) tickets, so this win assures that I will be at the Joe on Saturday. For the second year in a row, the Wings lost on my birthday (last year being the triple OT game). They can make it up to me tomorrow, making my first ever Stanley Cup Finals game a potential Cup-clincher. Get it done, fellas.

Two more.

Torquato and Cameron no longer Detroit property

2009-06-01T21:53:00.003-04:00

Taking a quick break from Finals action for some prospects news.

June 1st is the deadline to sign most 2007 draft picks. You have two years to sign major junior and European draft picks after you draft them, and for college-bound players you have until they graduate. Because of the lack of transfer agreement between the NHL and International Ice Hockey Federation, European players don't have to sign by this deadline; their deadline is extended indefinitely.

So of the five players Detroit drafted in 2007, only 5th round pick Randy Cameron and 6th round pick Zack Torquato needed to be signed by today, and, as Red Wings Central confirms, Detroit elected to let them both go.

Cameron was not on the radar of really any scouting service during his draft year, but Detroit made him their third selection in 2007. Detroit saw him as more of an energy line, checking type of player and compared him to Ottawa's Mike Fisher. The following season, his second in the QMJHL, he equaled his point total from his rookie season on the lowly Moncton Wildcats. This season, Moncton was one of the top teams in the league, but the 51 points put forth by Cameron weren't enough of an improvement for Detroit, and today he was let go. He finishes 34th on my latest edition of the team's prospect rankings.

Torquato was on the other end of things. A year before the draft he looked like he could be a potential late 1st round pick. Off-ice issues with the OHL's Saginaw Spirit and strong-but-not-excellent offensive production had him slip all the way to the 6th round, where Detroit took a flyer on him. His draft season also saw him dealt to the Erie Otters, where he got a lot of ice time but wasn't surrounded with the most talented players. His offensive totals never surpassed those of his draft year at 69 points, while Detroit expected he might have the ability to be one of the league's top scorers. However, his off-ice issue was never a concern and he captained Erie this season. His defensive game was remarkably better, going from one of the worst +/- ratings in the league last season to among team leaders this season. I felt he might be given a shot by Detroit despite his offensive totals because of the work he did on becoming a more complete player. He finished his life as a Detroit prospect at #21.

Both of them have the option of returning to their respective clubs for over-age seasons, which is the likely course of action. Cameron's Moncton club will likely be among the top in the QMJHL. Torquato's Erie team made the playoffs for the first time in his tenure there and will build off that season, although someone like Torquato might make a useful asset to a contending team at the trade deadline.

Detroit is left with forward Joakim Andersson (no signing deadline) and defensemen Wisconsin's Brendan Smith and Clarkson's Bryan Rufenach (two more years) to meet the benchmark "two solid players" Detroit likes to get out of every draft.

I'll be keeping tabs on Cameron and Torquato, especially, if any other team makes a play for them or if either have a monster year. It's probably more of a blow to Torquato who always looked like he was on the right track, but Detroit never abandons a prospect completely and will likely still monitor him if he returns to the OHL.

Lastly, since its prospects news, Hockey's Future put out their Organizational Rankings and Detroit finds themselves at #11, the highest I've ever seen them. It's a great compliment because Detroit doesn't have many high end players, but they do have great depth at every position. And on a personal note assures me that I'm not crazy when I think Detroit's current core of prospects is a lot better than people give them credit for (although guys like Leino, Helm, and Abdelkader are doing a lot to change that right now).

Abdelkation!

2009-06-01T12:51:00.004-04:00

Two games changes a tune awfully quick.

I went back on what I said in my series preview. Morbid curiosity and my general sore winner approach to blogging led me back to the hilarious Vlad jokes at that Pens site. The bitterness just perks me right up this morning. Apparently "this isn't even hockey" because not every call is going the Penguins way, as some of them believe it did in the regular season. Not every Pens fan feels this way, and I applaud the ones that don't. It just delights me that the same tough guys that can trash the city of Detroit and make jokes about pure hockey tragedy can get so emotional over this, which they've deemed is a clear hook. I'm not even joking there. Apparently, in the regular season you weren't allowed to tie up Crosby's stick.

If you're going to complain about officiating, do it right. The most frustrating thing about NHL officiating is the inconsistency from day to day. This game was called exactly like Game 1. They're letting the two teams play. Both teams are getting away with a lot. I felt like Detroit got away with more yesterday, but Pittsburgh got away with more in Game 1. The bottom line is its clear they're not calling the interference. You can sit back and cry about it, or you can hire a coach that recognizes it and tells his guys to go out and do it right back.

And its great that they're just complaining about the "subtle" stuff Detroit runs, because they heard Ed Olczyk mention it once during game play. Because, you know, NBC announcers are competent now. CBC plasters the Wings constantly for running interference and even they are applauding the NHL for letting two skilled teams play. Detroit is hardly thugging it up. They run a lot of screen-type interference along the boards when they cycle. They bump in front of the net. Brook Orpik plasters Marian Hossa at center ice while his head is turned. Matt Cooke decks Tomas Holmstrom three seconds after a whistle. Evgeni Malkin trips Niklas Kronwall at the blueline and goes in for a gamechanging breakaway. What has a greater impact on the game?

Normally since Detroit won, I would just chalk up this type of behavior to bitterness. You can't blame Crosby for being completely ineffective, after all. But this class of fan has earned a certain level of respect from me. Car crashes resulting in comas and paralysis = hilarious. Crosby getting his stick pinned in front of the net = the end of the world.

Some Pengwhines are even complaining about the back-to-back now. The younger team, that had an extra day off, and that had no injuries let alone injuries to star players things the back-to-backs were unfair. Suck it up and take your lumps and have some faith in your team. The series is going back to Pittsburgh now. They say Pittsburgh was the more talented team in the first two games, but they have no faith that their team can get it done in their own barn.

I do want to address the Malkin incident, finally. The NHL just doesn't get it. I'm going to first and foremost say that I completely disagree with the rule itself, but the NHL's dismissal of it exemplifies completely why they should get rid of it. Basically, if a player is awarded an instigator penalty in the last five minutes of the game, an automatic suspension is already applied. Malkin was given the instigator in the Zetterberg prance (not calling it a fight, and just because this picture looks menacing does not mean Malkin actually landed anything close to a punch), and the NHL took it away within forty-five minutes of the game's conclusion. The league that was so adamant in standing behind its referees decisions in Watsongate and the Kronwall hit took away an automatic suspension almost as fast as it was given. How's that for irony?

But the bottom line is its a stupid rule. If you're not going to enforce it for all of the league's players, get rid of it -- this is why the NHL is so second rate. There's nothing wrong with a player showing emotion and trying to send a message at the end of a game, especially in a playoff series. What the NHL wanted to get rid of, were Joel Quenneville-type moves where a coach would send out his goons in the waning minutes of an all-but-decided game to start a meaningless fight or try to goad a star player into making a bad decision. Instead, the rule has resulted in a lot of decent and passionate players sitting out a game for letting their emotions get the best of them and trying to settle a score late in the game. Unless your name is Malkin (and I'm sure Crosby would receive the same treatment).

Again, I agree with the decision but I just hope they will start revoking the suspension with more players in the future. There's nothing wrong with that play in my book, but all players should receive the same treatment and that suspension should always be taken away in the future.

Five stars for this game. Osgood, Zetterberg, Abdelkader, Hossa, and Franzen. They will all be rewarded with one complimentary complimentary paragraph. (Ah, cunning wordplay).

Osgood got a few breaks from his post tonight, but was sensational overall. Detroit was outshot, somehow. He came up with some huge saves and was patient until Detroit was finally able to get that insurance goal. Some media people, and Pens fans too, still don't get it. Sure, it would be nice to have a great technique and no limits to flexibility like Marc-Andre Fleury. He could. He doesn't always have great rebound control. He doesn't always make it look pretty. But if the point of hockey is to win a Stanley Cup, and one goalie wins in the playoffs, while the one with the technique doesn't, who's the better goalie? Osgood is completely immune to pressure at this point in his career. You don't need to give him credit, but you can't knock him when he's two wins away from a 4th Stanley Cup.

Fleury's in this boat too. I watched some Game 1 post-game interview. They asked Osgood how he deals with the boards at the Joe. He says its a nightmare for goalies, but you always have to be aware that you need to get back to your post as quickly as possible. Then they asked Fleury how he thinks Osgood deals with the boards at the Joe. He said, "I don't know, dumb luck?" Goalies typically watch other goalies for technique advice. I can't imagine a guy like Fleury, trained on the butterfly since birth, would make a point to watch Osgood, who essentially taught himself a hybrid style over the course of two years. But the response is pretty arrogant, you think a veteran like Osgood would perhaps have been able to pick up a trick or two in the 18 years he's been drafted. You don't have to hold the guy on a pedestal, but Fleury certainly would have fared better on two of Detroit's goals in Game 1 if he got right back to his post.

Zetterberg couldn't possibly come closer to scoring right now. But here's the stat line that matters to him right now: 0 points, -1, 7 shots. That's all Crosby, who was carrying a 6 game point streak into the Finals, has to show for his efforts in the first two games. I read a great quote somewhere that I can't remember so I can't properly attribute it, but it said something along the lines of "Zetterberg looks to shut down Crosby first and create offense second. Crosby is doing it the other way around." Zetterberg's awareness to get down on the goal line shows what a tremendous team player he has become. He didn't even come close to putting his hand on it, as some would make you believe. And kudos for at least swinging back against Malkin, I've never seen Zetterberg get upset but I think he realized Malkin wasn't much of a fighter either so this was his chance to get a few shots in while Malkin was stumbling around firing punches towards the rafters.

Confidence. The same applies to Helm, but I've written so many nice things about him in the playoffs so far that I can't think of anything else to right. But right now, Justin Abdelkader is the one with the breakout game. He had the biggest hit of the game when he laid out a Pittsburgh defender just inside their zone, and then scored a spectacular goal where he went 1 on 3 as Detroit changed, made a little move but got it swept away, but persisted with the puck and beat Fleury over the glove. Fleury makes that save 99% of the time, but Abdelkader probably doesn't take that shot if he didn't score on Saturday. He feels like he belongs in the league now. He's got two more goals than Sidney Crosby in the Finals, and he's the only player on either team that can say that. He's only going to get better. On a side note, one can hope Ericsson will only get more confident in his big slapshot after scoring a slapshot goal.

Hossa finally found the scoresheet with two (second) assists. But he seems to be having a blast out there picking his ex-teammates' pockets and sensing their displeasure as he tears down the ice in the opposite direction as they turn around. He couldn't be trying any harder to score, and while he's not scoring he's being an elite defensive player making life miserable at the Detroit blueline.

Franzen's in the same boat. He only had one goal in the Chicago series but he's had three or four great chances per game. The regular season Franzen only needs three or four chances to pot two goals. I just can't imagine Zetterberg, Franzen, and Hossa all held out of the goal column for another game if they keep up their pace.

Overall, Detroit didn't play as well as they could have in these first two games, but a 2-0 lead looks really comfortable going into Pittsburgh. They need to at least split the series, they can't afford to have this series tied up.

Two more.

Abdelkaded!

2009-05-31T00:35:00.003-04:00

See what I did there?

"Kirk was doing what he does, he was giving guys lip service and stuff like that and so I two-handed him on top of the foot, he felt like it was necessary to keep talking after the game and I felt I'd whack him and that was it." - Sidney.

Something tells me if Sidney Crosby is worried about what Kirk Maltby is doing, Pittsburgh might be in trouble.

It wasn't a great performance, but the right things happened and Detroit won. Chris Osgood was more spectacular than he should have needed to be, but the team kept Crosby and Evgeni Malkin tame, for the most part. Malkin picked up an assist on the Fedotenko goal, but he was fairly silent after Osgood's big glove save on him in the second.

Gamechangers? Yeah, Osgood's save there was absolutely huge. There's some kind of momentum that comes with scoring a goal on a clear breakaway from center ice. Wings fans had a whole minute to curse and scream and pout because frankly, even Osgood supporters will tell you that he's not always the goalie you want facing a breakaway. But he is the goalie you want in a clutch situation, and that managed to override his breakaway issue. Great save.

That came after the strongest Penguin flurry of the game. Detroit was on their heels for most of the beginning of the second. They had two shots in the first several minutes of the second, and neither were great. The penalty kills were huge, and Detroit definitely had a burst after that.

On a side note, it's time to celebrate! The NHL for years has tried to crack down on interference, and with tonight's game, they finally did it! The NHL learned that they don't need to crack down on interference if they just ignore it completely. I'm not complaining here, yet. All I want is for the officiating to be consistent from game to game. There was a lot of interference, both ways, that went overlooked. Some of it was obvious stuff that's always been called, but most of it was that borderline stuff that nobody really likes, but the NHL calls anyway. If they leave it alone completely, fine, I'm ready for a great series. The pace of this game was tremendous. But the NHL likes to do this kind of thing, then paste both teams with interference calls in the next game. The players don't know what they can and can't do.

Crosby was awfully feisty tonight, but he didn't really look dominant for any length of time. Detroit had him against Zetterberg and Lidstrom/Rafalski for most of the game, and they did a great job. He was giving it to Zetterberg in the beginning of the game but Zetterberg shrugged it off. You've got to wonder when exactly in the game Crosby became thrown off by Maltby, because he wasn't as physical with Zetterberg in the second and third.

On the other end of things, I really liked the Stuart/Kronwall matchup against Malkin. He played against the Filppula line, too, but in the beginning of the game that line wasn't giving Malkin much trouble. I think a lot changed once Kronwall went head-hunting on Malkin. He missed, but Malkin was rattled. The impact was there. Malkin was looking over his shoulder for the rest of the game.

On the Detroit end of things, Osgood was clearly the MVP, but confidence appears to be the key for Detroit. Every player who's been playing strong lately picked right up where they left off this game. Dan Cleary was more creative than I'd ever seen him. Even when he's on a scoring line, his role usually just allows him to dump it in the zone and see Franzen or Zetterberg dig it out. But today he pulled up at the line several times, the most notable instance resulting on a one-timer to Zetterberg that beat Fleury cleanly and rang the post.

Darren Helm is on the fast track to becoming a star player, but more in the "top shutdown guy" mode. He played 17 minutes tonight, high for even him in the playoffs. He's still on the third line a lot, but Babcock throws him out there in a lot of different situations and everyone knows when he's on the ice. He's out there a lot when Babcock wants a second centerman, and for good reason, because he went 11-4 (Zetterberg was 15-5). He threw him out there a lot of Dan Byslma managed to catch Zetterberg tired and get Crosby a Z-free shift. Helm isn't quite at the level Zetterberg is defensively, but he's quick enough to take space away from Crosby for 30 seconds or so. Great stuff from him tonight, it's too bad he still Draper'd his breakaway.. well, at least Draper would have hit the goalie's chest.

Detroit got some great minutes from the 4th line tonight. Abdelkader's goal was great, he's been playing well but he was brimming with confidence after he potted that. He only had a few shifts following his goal, but he was constantly calling for the puck. Its his first game in the Finals, you better believe his parents and family were probably there. He's been playing well, but that first NHL goal offers you some sense of belonging; you can contribute in this league. If you want to see fresh legs tomorrow, look no further than #8. Babcock said in his post-game interview that he told Abdelkader since Pittsburgh didn't have a 4th line he might not see a shift. Abdelkader played a little less than Leino (who rotated onto Filppula/Hossa's line for a few shifts) and Maltby (who rotated onto Helm/Samuelsson's line for a few shifts). But having the 4th line definitely made a difference for Detroit toinight.

Hossa also picked up where he left off in the Chicago series, for the most part. He probably passed up on a couple shots that he should have taken. I know they weren't effective when they were together earlier in the playoffs, but you've got to think putting Datsyuk back on that line will help Hossa out a lot. He's a goalscorer for sure, but Filppula isn't the finisher that Hossa needs. He needs one guy he can get the puck too if he's at an angle that he doesn't like. However, Filppula's been great, so I think I'd like to see Datsyuk come in for Holmstrom if he ever comes back. Its hard to pick out when Holmstrom's slumping because he's just not a good player (skillwise) even when he is scoring, and the bottom line right now is he's not getting his stick on the puck. I just pray that Datsyuk can even handle 12 minutes tomorrow and maybe he rotates on and off of that line with Holmstrom.

We'll see. It's hard to say how much of a difference 24 hours will make.

Three more. I guess the benefit of playing back-to-back is that I don't have to kill a day thinking about this now. However, if Detroit loses, I full expect I will complain about it. Because that's how it works.

Three.

Here's some words for ya

2009-05-30T13:36:00.001-04:00

Just because I love embedding things now. I'm all about advancing the blogging world. I wish Dish would carry CBC so I could listen to Jim Hughson. What a great call on that goal.

Game previews aren't really my bag, because I sleep deep into the afternoon and wake up to see every other blog has already done a better job than I would, but tonight I feel like writing.

Mostly because I'm restless. These playoffs have absolutely flown by. I feel like Game 5 was three hours ago. That could have something to do with the fact that I just watched my 3rd period/OT DVR of the game three hours ago. Who knows? Anaheim Game 7 was what, three, four days ago?It was just two weeks ago that I was freaking out because the team couldn't stop letting in three goals every night. Yet somehow the Columbus seems like it was months ago. As you can tell, I keep a very poor concept of time.

What's the buzz today? I worked an eight-hour day last night that saw me checking the blogs every 19 minutes. Here's what I learned:

Datsyuk - Possible
Lilja - IN
Lidstrom - IN
Ericsson - IN
Hossa - Remember when he signed in Detroit FROM Pittsburgh to win a Cup? Hey, now Detroit is PLAYING Pittsburgh. I'm a journalist; I'm going to write an article about how Hossa might be feeling some pressure !!
Lilja - Huh???
Datsyuk - GTD, Probable Game 2
Draper - Doubtful
Chelios - Terrible
Datsyuk - Doubtful, Probable Game 3

That seems to be the situation. Apparently yesterday morning Lilja skated on a line with Lebda as if he were playing. However, Lidstrom is in and Ericsson is very highly likely probably in. Because an appendix is not an essential organ for hockey. Lilja didn't miss any time when it happened to him earlier. Crazy Swedes and their snus. Lilja probably won't go but it sounds like maybe he would come in instead of Chris Chelios.

The Datsyuk situation is very strange. There were multiple reports Thursday night that Datsyuk was at an Outback Steakhouse in my residence of Novi, Michigan. He was not wearing a foot brace and told staff and restaurant patrons that he thinks he can play. Yesterday morning, he was ruled as a gametime decision. He was at the morning skate but was skating around very slowly working on his stickhandling. This is likely practice for what it will take to get around Hal Gill. Later in the afternoon, he told CBC's Elliotte Friedman that he thinks he will go Game 3. He'll go when Mike Babcock tells him to go.

And, uh, some team in basketball lost last night (I could not tell you who, I've heard it twice now but it just doesn't stick), so Game 2 will be an 8 PM start. But nope, people still continue to blame Conan O'Brien for the stupid schedule and not the NHL's willingness to bend over to the NBA.

Detroit has the opportunity to start something incredible today. Honestly, I've read more series previews than I'd care to admit. I feel like it's just easier to pick Pittsburgh. Sure, Detroit is still the favorite. But they were the favorite last year, too, and Pittsburgh put up a fight. Will the NHL's Golden Boy really lose two consecutive Finals? The story is just better if Crosby loses most of his supporting cast (but still adds some pretty solid players near the deadline), but then carries the team on his back to get revenge on the first team to best him. But if he loses two years in a row? That's just tough. I feel like the mainstream media is hesitant to take Detroit.

But that's perfectly fine with me.

The only series preview I recommend reading is over at PuckDaddy, featuring a coalition of Red Wings bloggers, such as Matt from OnTheWings, Chief from A2Y, Tyler from TheTripleDeke, and George the Czar of Information at Snapshots.

I meant to make this longer, but I figure I've said all I need to say. I was going to go more into detail, but I don't really have any information of substance. It would have mostly been gushing over how Detroit would solidify themselves as a dynasty and Osgood would solidify himself as an elite goaltender. But you could talk all day about that kind of thing. The bottom line: Detroit has to go out and prove it. Win Game 1.

Just hours to go now..

One last word on the schedule

2009-05-28T18:27:00.002-04:00

First off, I neglected to mention in the last post that after my Game 5 endeavor, I managed to get in line pretty early for Stanley Cup Finals tickets. I scored Game 5 and Game 7. Here's to hoping I'll never have to use them.

Secondly, two of my greatest loves have come together in conflict -- the NHL and Conan O'Brien. Deadspin has posted an article about how NBC not wanting to interrupt Conan's Tonight Show debut on June 1st led to the bonkers schedule. This could not be any more of a poor excuse. If that were the case, why not just start the series on Sunday and go Sun/Tue/Thu/Sat ? Two weekend games, just as in this scenario. The real reason, entirely, is because the NHL is choosing to take a back seat to the NBA.

The NHL made great strides this offseason. An entertaining playoff from them and, from what I'm told from friends who watch, because I don't, a controversial and boring NBA playoff, has shifted a lot of positive attention on to the NHL. A lot of people are watching, and they've been treated to some pretty entertaining games. The NHL to ESPN rumors have resurfaced as strong as ever, and the NHL is making a smart move in rejecting ESPN's exclusive demands, so that they could somehow remain Versus and add a game or two on ESPN.

However, the NHL will continue to be second rate if it accommodates the needs of other leagues as it does so often. They try so hard to get new fans that they alienate the ones they already have. If interest is really as strong as it's said to be, just run the NHL against the NBA and force people to make a decision. A strong NHL playoff against a mediocre NBA playoff. Diehards will watch one over the other anyway. I understand that it's a smart business move to schedule the games on opposite days, but if you're forcing teams to play back-to-back, and three games in four nights, then you're cheating the diehard fans out of a good product. Fatigue will be a factor. No one's going to want to watch a tired, diluted product. What if Game 1 goes into triple overtime? And then any fan who is interested has to wait six days between Game 5 and Game 7. They should have scheduled it every other day like always, taken a slight hit in ratings from casual fans who still prefer the NBA, and come back with a stronger playoff next year. Make people want the NHL. Play a little hard to get for once, you dirty, dirty slut.

Lastly, I just learned from Ken Holland via the CBC via OnTheWings that Nick Lidstrom is in for Game 1. Ericsson sounds like he's expected to play, Datsyuk is mysterious (probably out) and Draper doesn't sound likely.

Here we go again, again

2009-05-28T14:13:00.005-04:00

Part of me has suspected for some time that the NHL is scripted. If it is, then this series could not be any more obvious. Last year, the NHL's golden boy and some talented yet ignored Russian took on the all-powerful Detroit Red Wings. They put up a good fight, but in the end they were bested in six games. So now this year, Pittsburgh loses a lot of key players and starts the year pretty averagely before getting hot around midseason and storming through the playoffs. Crosby and Malkin are running up NHL playoff scoring records, and now they get a second chance at the Cup against the team that beat them last year. Revenge? Yawn.

This year, hockey media types just keeps discussing the long-living unwritten hockey rule that "you have to lose before you can win." It's relevant to Pittsburgh who lost last year, to Washington who were a game away from going deep in the playoffs this year, to Chicago who appeared to be the anomaly to this rule, and to Detroit, who lost in 1995 and endured several years of tough losses before exploding for multiple Cups within a decade.

Anyway, before we get into this I have something I don't want to bring up but I have to anyway. Like in every other series, I went to check out some opposition blogs, just to see what's being said. The first link I click is PensBlog, and at the very top of the page.. is this:

Class, redefined.

I don't want to go too deep into it, but yeah, that's definitely the first and last time I click that link.

I shuffled through the comments. Later in the same post is a comment that was submitted to the blogger about how some Pens fan beat the hell out of a 'Canes fan who was pestering him after the Pens were swept. The Pens fan held back his initial rage, having gloated about how many fights he's won in the past and how the younger him would have decked him then and there, and it wasn't until the 'Canes fan (who the Pens fan lists at 5'8, 145) brushed him with an elbow that he felt the need to beat him senseless. This behavior is applauded.

But it's not that so much that bothers me as the Vladdy comments. It seems to be a theme that they apparently started last year to make Vladdy/wheelchair jokes. But this is perfectly justified by the fans there who say that first of all, Detroit fans have no class, and secondly Detroit fans make fun of Pittsburgh for having gone through financial trouble years ago and the joke is that the Pens have no fans, evidenced by their low attendance through the years they struggled. Apparently the Vladdy jokes make that "even," despite the fact that most of them have no trouble making jokes about Detroit's economy.

After I finish wherever I'm going with this, I'm not going to revisit it. It's obviously intended to be hateful and inciting, and I'm not going to get caught up it. The commenters on that site say things like "we're knowledgable, but not respectful. If you don't know that you've clearly never been here before." Cleary, the latter applies to me, but I'd argue that in knowledge and respect, they have neither. There's a slight chance that what I write here could get back to that blog, where I'm sure I'd be ripped and the Vlad jokes would intensify. Whatever, I can take it.

The playoffs get heated, I understand that. I'm quite certain I said some terrible things about certain Anaheim Ducks on this very blog that could easily be dug up and used against me, and I'll admit I said much, much worse than that to my friends while I was watching those games, but there are lines to be crossed. One of the greatest things about hockey is that after every series, where harsher battles than verbal ones have been fought, there is a handshake. 99% of all hard feelings are absolved, and the handshake shows that both teams respect one another as adversaries and friends.

But that doesn't at all mean fans can't still sling insults. Hate Holmstrom for being the annoying presence that he is. Hate Hossa for being a traitor (which, surprisingly, most Pens fans don't seem interested in, but I'd wager he still gets booed in Pittsburgh). Hate Chelios for being an asshole. Hate Osgood for being terrible (but don't blink, because he might just beat you again). Hate Samuelsson, Maltby, Franzen, and so on and so forth for being shit-distrubers, trash-talkers, and general malcontents who have their gloves sown to their jerseys and back up nothing that they start. Hate Datsyuk for looking like a freakish alien. Doesn't bother me.

But Konstantinov crosses the line. This is a guy who was a rising star in this league and had not just his career, but his life drastically altered 12 years ago in a terrible limo accident. Nothing that happened was in his control. Nothing was his fault. His wife, his kids, and his family had to pick up the burden of living their life knowing that Vlad may never walk again. The Detroit organization lost a tremendous player and a tremendous person. The city of Detroit rallied behind him in 1998 for the big Stanley Cup win.

Now, it's past. There's only a handful of players left on this team who played with him. But everyone knows him. He still shows up to the locker room every once in a while, but for the most part, everyone's moved on. When they won that Cup in '98 for him nothing changed. He was still confined to a wheelchair. He still had massive brain damage. It wasn't going to make it any easier on his family to have to care for him for the rest of his life.

It's just too much. I, personally, don't really make fun of Pittsburgh's past financial issues and I like them as a whole, despite slight national overexposure (but justifiably so). I'm aware there are some fans that do. In my opinion, the whole situation was tremendously complicated. I think Penguins fans have a better grasp on it than Wings fans do, but overall there was a lot behind the scenes that went on where really, no one knows all the details. I can't imagine what that would have been like to go through, but all I can tell Pens fans to do is just to be proud. The team has had a tremendous turn around, and there are not many teams that are built with such a strong foundation for the future. You'll see Stanley again, eventually. I just happen to believe it's not this year. You'd disagree. It happens.

It's not going to stop. There's a whole group over there who find this whole thing hilarious and obey whatever-that-blogger's name is like it's the gospel. They have their own justifications for doing it. But I'd expect better from an organization that had to go through the unthinkable when Mario Lemieux almost lost his career and his life to cancer. Nothing that happened to him was in his control. It's terrible that it happened to him.

It's not about whose fans are more classless. Although, if I were in Pittsburgh's boat and Detroit fans were busy making "the Pens have no real fans, Bettman wants Crosby's dick" jokes, and generally being very classless, I wouldn't stoop down to their level. But I digress, because again, you'll find that I'm not moral authority. But there are lines, and this crosses it. It's about being a decent person, and treating those in need with respect. It's about how, despite some of the worst tragedies in the sporting world, hockey fans band together and lend a helping hand.

There are a few Pittsburgh fans on there who acknowledge it's a little much even for their taste. I salute these people; you are good men and women. I'm not generalizing. But I ask that Pittsburgh fans not generalize either. Not all Detroit fans are classless. Certainly no angels, but c'mon. Respect the boundaries of general human decency.

-----

Alright, enough of that hopefully. I don't intend to argue about it, I just wanted to plea with whoever was willing to read it. If you skipped it, fine. But just for the record, I wanted to post this when I first saw it, but I forgot. A beautiful ESPN feature on Konstantinov. He is walking again, after they told him he never would. Here's where the actual series preview starts.

This series may be considered a rematch, but it couldn't be any more different. Pittsburgh lost a lot of their big guns. Not their biggest, to be certain, but they lost enough. I think that Pittsburgh isn't as deep as last year, but I think they're a better team. Mainly, because of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Marc-Andre Fleury.

Crosby and Malkin have that "we're not letting this happen again" look to them and honestly, it scares me a little. Detroit has the tools to shut down Crosby and Malkin like they, for the most part, did last year. But if the hockey gods want Crosby to win his Cup, then dammit, he's going to go win that Cup.

I'll break it down line by line, same as the Chicago series.

Chris Kunitz | Sidney Crosby | Bill Guerin
Crosby's rotating door of wingers now has him playing with two quick, gritty, go-to-the net types that both have Cup rings. Kunitz was acquired in the deal that sent Ryan Whitney to Anaheim, in a deal that looks like it's paid off better for Pittsburgh so far. He only has one playoff goal, but he has 12 points and has really raised some hell with some big checks and crease crashing antics (he's not a goalie runner, but he did deliberately cross check Simeon Varlamov in the throat). Guerin has proved me wrong in that he still has a lot of gas left in the tank. He has seven playoff goals, and I would be surprised if any weren't assisted by Crosby. He's still pretty quick, and he's a natural finisher. Probably a better right wing for Crosby than Pascal Dupuis was last spring. And Crosby.. what can you say? 28 points in 17 playoff games. He wants to win.

Ruslan Fedotenko | Evgeni Malkin | Maxime Talbot
Malkin is going to be an interesting variable, in that he didn't really show up for last year's Finals, but this year he's tied for the lead in playoff scoring. He's scoring spectacular goals and has the puck for at least half the time he's on the ice. He boasts two servicable wingers. Fedotenko developed a reputation for scoring clutch playoff goals in the 2004 playoff run for Tampa Bay. He then underachieved for two seasons in Tampa Bay, and one on Long Island. Pittsburgh gave him a contract this season, and he looked like he was disappointing there too, not providing the offense everyone thought he could, and I believe he was a healthy scratch for a stretch. But he's come alive in the playoffs again with six goals. Talbot is still one of the heart and soul players in Pittsburgh, and is getting more minutes than he did last year when he scored that awful Game 5 goal to send into overtime. If Detroit can't shut down either of these two big lines, they might be in trouble.

Matt Cooke | Jordan Staal | Tyler Kennedy
The combination shutdown/energy line. Centered by Jordan Staal, who was faced with the task of shutting down his brother Eric in the last series. He did, but some questioned if Eric was really as rugged as he could have been to his brother. He can score too. He had a hat trick in the regular season against Detroit and was drafted as a power forward, but has since adjusted to more of a defensive role. Cooke's a fierce competitor who's in his first Stanley Cup Final, and will finish his checks, agitate, and provide some offense. Tyler Kennedy rebounded from a long playoff run as a rookie with an impressive sophomore season that saw him emerge as a great energy line player and someone who can chip in a few goals. It's a good shut down line, but it will be interesting to see what line they actually go head-to-head with.

Miroslav Satan | Craig Adams
Pittsburgh has played the majority of it's recent games with eleven forwards and seven defensemen, so these two tend to rotate onto other lines, or Crosby and Malkin tend to rotate onto their line. Satan was a disappointment when Pittsburgh brought him in this year and was even waived and demoted to the AHL for some time, but has since worked his way back into the lineup. Craig Adams was a waiver pickup at the deadline who has done a great job for Pittsburgh in a minor role. He's another guy who has a ring.

Depth?
Yes, unlike Chicago. Last year's regulars like Petr Sykora and Pascal Dupuis are healthy, and aren't even in the lineup right now. Satan is a much better player than he was in the regular season, but with only one goal, you've got to wonder when Sykora steps in. Beyond that, Chris Minard, Tim Wallace, Bill Thomas, and Jeff Taffe are minor league journeymen types with NHL experience this season under their belts, while Dustin Jeffrey, Janne Pesonen, and Luca Caputi are their most NHL ready prospects, and they all saw NHL action this season.

Brooks Orpik | Sergei Gonchar
The two biggest minute eaters on Pittsburgh. Orpik is physical, and was among league leaders in hits and shot blocks during the regular season. He's come a long way defensively in the past few years. Gonchar has turned into one of the best all-around defensemen in the game, as he puts up points but is pretty good positionally, unlike Brian Campbell. He's physical, but doesn't go out of his way to make a hit. Gonchar will quarterback the powerplay with either Malkin or Kris Letang.

Hal Gill | Rob Scuderi
Pittsburgh's top shutdown tandem. Scuderi was assigned to Alex Ovechkin in the second round, and while he didn't shut him down completely, he contained him enough. Gill probably knocked a full season off Holmstrom's career with the stickwork he gave to his back last offseason, and will definitely be looking to give him more.

Mark Eaton | Kris Letang | Phillippe Boucher
Eaton and Letang are the more constant defenders here, they log more minutes than Boucher but slightly less than Gill and Scuderi. Letang is an offensive defenseman more in the Campbell mode, in that everyone thinks he's good if he's scoring, but I believe he can be exploited defensively. Eaton was hurt for last year's playoff run and is a pretty good bottom pairing guy. He's actually tied for 5th on the Penguins in playoff goals with 4, but to be fair he did score some of those on Varlamov after Varlamov had fallen apart. Boucher is a well traveled veteran who still has something to give. He's only two season removed from his all star 19-goal, 51-point campaign with Dallas, but was acquired this year midseason for Daryl Sydor.

Depth?
Not as much as up front. My gut tells me that the 7 defenseman system will not last if Pittsburgh drops Game 1, but that's just me because I don't like the idea of 7 defensemen. So Boucher would be the first guy out, and the first guy in in case of injury. Alex Goligoski had a pretty solid rookie year with 20 points in 45 games but was only needed for powerplay purposes when Gonchar was out of the lineup at the beginning of the season. Ben Lovejoy and Paul Bissonnette are the only other defensemen that saw NHL time this season, but I'm not sure Bissonnette wasn't a forward for all or most of those games, because I remember him starting the season as a forward.

Marc-Andre Fleury | Mathieu Garon | John Curry
Fleury is the guy obviously, and he was tremendous in last year's Finals so I don't expect anything less. In fact I expect he'll have something to prove. He started last years Finals about as poorly as you can when he ran out onto the ice for Game 1, his pad caught the bench, and he tripped. But he was great other than that. Garon was acquired during the year from Edmonton, and, while Pittsburgh hopes he'll never get there, if he had to step in he would at least be better than Cristobal Huet. Sabourin is great goalie as well, EDIT: but Pittsburgh doesn't have Sabourin anymore so that's not important. John Curry is third in line.

You can't predict what's going to happen based on the team's two regular season matches. Detroit lost the first 7-6 in one of the ugliest played defensive games ever, but then shut them out 3-0 in Pittsburgh. The bad news on that one was that Conklin was in net, not Osgood. Those games couldn't have gone any differently, can't really bring anything out of either of them into the Finals. Pittsburgh didn't have Guerin or Kunitz for one, and Detroit didn't have any of their AHL All-Stars up.

To me, this series will come down to coaching. Dan Bylsma is only a few seasons removed from his playing days and was announced as the interim head coach during the season, having the tag removed after some playoff success. He'll have to prove that his coaching decisions go deeper than having to decide whether to send out Crosby or Malkin. Line matchups will be huge, I'm sure Babcock will be all over getting the Zetterberg line against Crosby, and I'm assuming the Filppula line against Malkin. I'm not even sure where Datsyuk fits in to all that, should he come back as expected.

Fatigue is a factor as well. Because the NHL is everyone else's bitch, they don't want to go head-to-head with the NBA playoffs. For that reason, Game 1 and 2 are back to back, yet there are six days separating Game 5 and 7. Detroit only has one less day of rest than Pittsburgh, but Pittsburgh has had two longer series against Philadelphia then Washington, while Detroit only had the Anaheim seven-game series. It's going to be hard for either team to come out with an advantage when they will both play three games in four nights. Some would say younger legs will prevail, but others will say Detroit has Darren Helm. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Longest post ever? Hopefully.

Darren Helm is the cat's meow

2009-05-28T12:36:00.002-04:00

Watch this as many times as you can. It's beautiful. Watch it at least one time to watch Brian Campbell "defend." Campbell alone makes Helm look great on that play. But full credit to Helm, I think Campbell definitely underestimated what Helm was going to do. A lot of players will just leave it behind the net and get off, or try to pin it along the boards. Helm stuck with it and kept moving his feet and made Campbell look terrible about a half dozen different times.

That was easily the best sporting even I've ever seen live. Both teams played well. Chicago took a lot of chances but their defense bailed them out. That defense let up 40-something shots, but they did a good job at preventing a lot of rebound chances. Huet let up some strange rebounds. He was very good last night, better than I imagined he could be, but not flawless. But I have to point out, on that Franzen save with 30 seconds to go. Why did he put his pad up? Franzen wasn't really looking and I suppose the instinct of the shooter and the goalie is that he's going to go high, but if Franzen were to have glanced at him and gone low Huet would have looked terrible. Woulda, shoulda, coulda. Still a brilliant save, I'd chalk it up to "when you're in the zone, you're in the zone." Those are the kind of saves you make.

Osgood, on the other hand, was flawless. That Kane goal was a magnificent shot even a guy like him will only hit once in a blue moon. Osgood played it right, Kane was at a tight angle so he came out and took out everything down low, but Kane found the hole above the shoulder. I suppose that's what Osgood gets for being the smallest starting goalie in the league.

Everyone stepped up tonight. Helm, Osgood, Hossa, Filppula, and Lebda stood out the most in my eyes.

Hossa was probably the most finesse that I've ever seen him as a Red Wing. Countless dangles in between a pair of skates, and that beautiful little spin in between two defenders along the boards. That's how I want him to play in the Finals. He used his speed down the wing to create a lot of chances, but he didn't force any bad plays. He held on to the puck if he didn't have anything. No points, but he looked better than in any other playoff game, in my opinion.

Filppula had an arsenal of moves as well. The 'Hawks were trapping in the beginning of the game and it worked until Filppula stickhandled through them a few times. He usually pulls off a good move and loses it, or somehow loses an edge and hits the ice. But not yesterday, and he was still very responsible in his own zone.

Lebda was an interesting story. As usual Detroit had to make things as hard as they can on themselves so I was in quite a panic when I noticed that both Derek Meech and Chris Chelios were in the warmup but Jonathan Ericsson was not. I didn't hear until after the game that he'd had surgery that morning. Lebda was forced to play 25 minutes after being in the 10-15 range for the entire playoffs. He looked good, he was very confident and had some really nice rushes with the puck. Picked up assists on both of Detroit's goals, too. It's nice to know he can still be relied on.

Unlike Chelios. Bad things happened every time Chelios was on the ice. Not even minor things. Things like calling for the puck at the point and then having the puck slide under his stick. Or facing a battle with the back of the net and losing, banking the puck out front for an incredible Chicago scoring chance. I assumed he'd be benched the rest of the night for that, but he didn't miss a shift. I can't help but wonder what adjectives I'd be throwing Kyle Quincey's way if he was in Detroit's lineup right now. I guarantee "terrifying" and "mistake-prone" would not be among them. Although, Chelios' rush up the ice and drive to the net in overtime was one of Detroit's best chances of the game. The general sentiment I got from the rest of section 227A and a few neighboring sections was that Chelios should retire.

Meanwhile, Meech only played 4 minutes. In those 4 minutes, he saw some powerplay time where he wired two shots from the point that hit everything and anything on their way to the net and created two pretty good scoring chances. Yet, somehow Babcock was more satisfied with Chelios out there, and Chelios played closer to 10 minutes. I just don't see it. Meech is not very strong in his own end, but he fits with Detroit's system much better than Chelios does. He moves the puck well and has the speed to make up for any mistakes he might make. Chelios got bailed out more times than I'd care to mention.

Rafalski also redeemed himself in my book. I haven't completely forgiven him since the Columbus fiasco. Since then I've been a lot less lenient on his defensive mistakes and I found myself wondering if he was becoming a complete liability against stronger forwards. He was brilliant tonight. He was taking the hit to make the play and doled out some of the nicer body checks I've ever seen from him. He's only effective when he's playing with that kind of composure, and he definitely was not during the later parts of the regular season.

But Helm. Helm was the best player all night. Right after that brilliant shift I decided that he is my new favorite Red Wing. He seemed to be on the ice every other shift. He was hitting everything in sight and seemed to constantly be open. No matter what line he was on he was taking shots from everywhere. I noticed that even in situations where he doesn't line a guy properly he really adjusts himself to make an impact on him. In a few situations that required him pretty much making an ass-check, going into a guy backwards. He doesn't leave any chance for the opponent to stand him up, he's better at just making contact than most guys in the league. Jim Nill said recently that Darren Helm will not play another game in Grand Rapids, and I couldn't be happier about that. I'm going to get a Helm jersey when I can confirm that he'll always be #43 (that was just assigned to him in training camp, he's worn #15 everywhere else and that's been open on Detroit for a while now).

Mad props to Chicago for the series. I only really lost respect for Brian Campbell, Ben Eager, and Adam Burish. I'm glad that Chicago hockey is back and I can only imagine how much I'm going to hate them in a few years when Detroit loses a few key cogs and Chicago's young guys become legit superstars. I can't think of a team I would rather have played in the Conference Finals.

And the best part of the whole night -- I snagged tickets to Game 5 and 7 for the Finals while they were on pre-sale at the box office. I may never eat anything but Ramen Noodles and Hot-n-Readys for the rest of my life, but I'm just hoping it'll be worth my while.

A little pre-Game 5 news

2009-05-27T15:24:00.003-04:00

No Datsyuk and no Lidstrom tonight, already confirmed. It's frustrating, because part of me thinks they probably can go and Detroit might be too confident in acting like it's just precautionary. Because Lidstrom at 10% is still better than Chelios. Chelios at anything less than 10 minutes a night hurts the rest of the defensive corps. Obviously, like everyone else I have no idea what's wrong with either of them. Nor am I at all medically coherent, so even if I did I wouldn't be able to say whether they could go or not. But I think a lot of fans feel the frustration of missing two star players, especially when they both finished the last games they played. Datsyuk was hurting a little, but Lidstrom looked god-like as usual. It just sucks to be strung along with the "day-to-days" and the excruciatingly nonspecific details so we have no idea whether they'd even be close to going for a potential Game 6, Game 1 of the Finals, or even Game 7 of the Finals.

Draper seems to be out a while, I think he's done regardless of what happens through the remainder of this series. Andreas Lilja is nowhere near ready either, at this point I don't think they'll clear him for the Finals even if he gets healthy as the concern is shifting more towards his career, and not just his season.

We need Hossa. We need Zetterberg. We need Franzen. None of them can take the night off. And it would help if Leino had an ungodly good game, because he has all the skill to succeed against these Chicago forwards.

On the bright side, no Havlat and no Khabibulin for Chicago. Chicago missing two of their best players definitely hurts them more than Detroit missing two of their best. Havlat should not have played in Game 5. I mean, I just talked about playing through injuries, but the guy was knocked out cold and stepped on after that. If all it took was a jarring-but-not-quite-demolishing hit from Stuart, to the chest, then a big thumbs down for Chicago's medical staff for endangering his career like that.

Huet starts. Hahahahahahahahahhaha.

He didn't practice yesterday, because, you know, he doesn't need it.

Off to Detroit in an hour or so! Plenty of thoughts after the game, hopefully.

Go Wings!

Montreal signs Mikael Johansson

2009-05-25T01:20:00.002-04:00

I always feel weird sticking this stuff in between big Conference Finals news, because nobody will care about this, but I like throwing it out there. Plus, I don't want it all to pile up.

The Montreal Canadiens signed former Detroit's 2003 9th round pick, center Mikael Johansson. Johansson is a small, skilled forward that Detroit didn't sign three years ago, so he became a free agent. Last year, he had a tremendous year in the SEL and really emerged as a guy to get a contract from an NHL team. He played in the SEL before that, but it was always the case of him not producing in the SEL, but it being impressive overall that he was a regular in that league at such a young age.

I've mentioned him a few times in this blog, because last year when Detroit was courting Fabian Brunnstrom (and Ville Leino), they said Johansson was also one of the guys they were looking at. Johansson had another big year for Farjestad, so I wouldn't doubt that he sees some NHL action next season. Montreal has very few players under contract for next season and it's very likely they're going to blow up what they have and rebuild. So Johansson's NHL chances rest mainly on how many free agents they bring in. He could end up as anything from an injury callup to a regular, if he can translate well to the North American style.

In other prospect news, Detroit has until June 1st to sign Zack Torquato and Randy Cameron, or they will both become free agents. Torquato was once considered a 1st round pick for the 2007 draft but slipped a long, long, way. It was expected he would probably be signed because he has been a pretty good player on an awful team for his whole career. However, as of today, Torquato says there has been no offer. Randy Cameron is a long shot.

Finally, just wanted to pass on that I'm now also writing for the prospects website Hockey's Future. I am covering the Phoenix Coyotes. Detroit would have been nice because that's what I do here, but they put me on Phoenix and I'm more than happy to cover them because I've followed some of their prospects for some time now. My first article was a 2004 Draft Evaluation for Phoenix. Obviously, this won't change anything I'm doing here, just figured I'd put it out there.

Oh yeah, we have Hossa

2009-05-24T23:29:00.002-04:00

I bought tickets to Game 5 yesterday. It was food money, but I'll live.

So I was really, really hoping Detroit would show up today. I want to see a good game, but the stress levels of a 2-2 and 3-1 series before a home game are two entirely different things. So I'm crossing my fingers before turning on the game that Pavel Datsyuk is playing. I find out that not only is he still out, increasing the likelihood that his foot is broken, but Nicklas Lidstrom is out. And Chris Chelios is in. What?

I thought it was a joke. Mike Babcock has taken time to delicately play mind games with Joel Quenneville whenever possible. I didn't think there was any way this was real, the only explanation was that Lidstrom would skate out with the team before the game, and Babcock held him out for the hell of it. But, Chelios started the game. Wearing the 'A' and everything. Sick.

But then: hope. In the form of zee Frenchmen. Cristobal Huet had to start for Chicago, and he did about as good as you could expect him to. Which was terrible. Oooh, burn.

And yeah, everyone who was panicking forgot the same thing I did; we have Marian Hossa. I haven't thought he's been invisible, but he definitely kicked his game up to a new level today, a level that I'm going to be upset at him for if he doesn't deliver it again on Wednesday. He was a force at both ends of the ice, and started creating things with his speed for the first time in the playoffs.

It helps that Huet was as terrible as he was. In addition to most of the goals he let up being questionable, he had a lot of problems controlling pretty basic rebounds once again. Corey Crawford didn't look much better, the first three shots he faced were a lobber from Samuelsson, the Kronwall double-poster, and the Zetterberg goal. If Khabibulin can't go for Game 5, Qunneville faces a tough decision as to whether to go with Huet again or just go with six skaters.

The game itself was just.. well, I guess the word I'm looking for is "adorable." Chicago was just adorable out there. They spent so much time trying to get back at Kronwall and/or "be tough" that they kept going right to the box. The officials finally got it right. They couldn't figure it out against Anaheim, but when a team starts thugging it up like that, you send one of them to the box, not just even it out. Some of those calls were questionable, but honestly, Kris Versteeg, if you're going to shove from behind like you did to Hudler today, in the playoffs, you belong in the box. It helps that people like Ben Eager were just obvious about their intentions on the ice, but overall the refs did all they could to calm Chicago down. They just chose not to.

Brian Campbell, however, takes the gold medal. He was on the ice for four of Detroit's goals and he was directly responsible for three of them. Between Huet and Campbell, that was $12.8 million of players that were working against the Hawks today. Campbell got caught on Hossa's first goal, screened Huet on the second, and jumped out on Filppula on a 2-on-3, missed, made it a 2-on-2, and then didn't stick with Filppula as he drove the net. This is a guy who makes a few sheckles less than Nick Lidstrom. Plus, he fired Detroit up by saying he was going to "get" Kronwall. All this from a guy with bright red hair and freckles. Awww...

Patrick Kane, too, who may or may not actually be fourteen. Poked at Conklin's pads for no reason after a whistle, he was spearing Franzen during that scrum at the end of the second. Not sure what it is with these guys. It reminds me of a lot of the kind of shenanigans you see in an OHL game, with a bunch of rowdy teenagers. It makes sense, because Kane is two years removed from the OHL. Most of their players are only three or four years removed from junior hockey.

It helps that their coach shares their bush league attitude. Quenneville was seen screaming on the bench at a ref after a penalty. Do you ever see Mike Babcock do that? Would Mike Babcock give Kris Versteeg a shift after two straight dumb penalties, one that put his team down 5-on-3 for a full two minutes? Absolutely not. Outcoached, outclassed.

As usual the Wings featured an odd moment when Chris Osgood didn't return to the game in the 3rd period. Ty Conklin started and Jimmy Howard put on his pads and got a better seat. Babcock said that Osgood was suffering from "slight dehydration" which sounds like something a glass of whatever will fix. Let's hope so. Conks didn't look good. On one of his first shots, he reached up with his glove and snapped it like he had caught the puck. Only the puck had gone right over the net. But he didn't make any big mistakes.

The Wings were just beautiful all game long. No misfired passes at all. Nobody can compete with that skill level if that's how they chose to play.

And if they get Datsyuk and Lidstrom back. Babcock guessed that he expects both to be back for Wednesday. But he sounded more sure on Lidstrom. I wish we had an injury report in the playoffs. Ugh.

But in 40-some hours I will be at the Joe. Screaming my head off. Starving to death. But hopefully, loving life.

Heh, right

2009-05-22T23:33:00.002-04:00

My least favorite part about blogging is starting a post like this. A recap of a game where the pace was destroyed by officiating, Detroit rebounded and did everything right, and didn't pull it out in the end.

It's hard to put my emotions into words. This isn't anything like the Anaheim series when I was furious after Game 3 and Game 6. No anger at all. The officiating was terrible and it made the difference in the game. But Detroit came back. Got a few weak calls of their own, really took control of the last two periods. I literally sat down, ran my fingers over my keyboard a few times as if the words would just start coming to me, sat back in my chair, shrugged, and gave a little smirking laugh.

That's about all you can do. Credit to Chicago and all that, but I'm not here to talk about what they did right. I am absolutely certain that Kronwall penalty was absolutely and undoubtedly, the wrong call. I flipped out when he made that hit because that's the kind of hit that changes a game. Correctly left uncalled, that immediately tips the momentum into Detroit's favor.

Versus "astutely" (what's the opposite of astutely?) points out that the penalty "had no impact" because Chicago didn't score on it or maintain any consistent pressure. Wrong. If that's no call -- and the wishful thinker in me sees Dustin Byfuglien as the only real penalty because he went after Kronwall and Franzen stepped in and held him back -- but even as no call, Detroit's bench is fired up and I guarantee they buzz around Chicago's net for at least a few minutes. Does that mean they score? I don't know. Does that mean Chicago doesn't score minutes into the second? I don't know, but it changes the game in the direction it should have been changed.

This isn't even a case like Watsongate where it was like, "well, Detroit should have scored earlier anyway." This game was completely because of that one call. Detroit looked a little flat in the first few minutes, but I think a lot of people are going to say they took the whole first off. I disagree. They didn't get any sustained momentum in the first because they were killing penalties the whole time. They didn't come out firing in the second, but they were getting chances and gradually building pressure towards the end of the second -- pressure that should have been building starting with the Kronwall hit and not after it.

The league just doesn't understand officiating. They claim they call the playoffs with the same standard that they call the regular season. But they pound on Detroit in the first and put them shorthanded for eleven minutes in the first period, five of which were absolutely terrible, four were eh (Cleary's stick was there but Versus never showed if Toews was cut. And on that note, I thought a player that got cut couldn't start the powerplay -- Toews did), and two of which I was told were terrible but, again, no Versus replay. Then three kinda borderline calls on Chicago in the second (stuff that is probably a penalty, but they could call a lot more just like it if they looked for it, and nothing in the third). What's most frustrating about NHL officiating is the inconsistency from period to period, let alone from game to game. Detroit and Chicago definitely each had a few "must-calls" in the third that were let go, due to all referee's fears of making a call that dictates the end of a game (aka, doing their job).

Back to the hit. Kronwall can be dirty. I feel like he gets his elbow up more often than anyone else. He leaves his feet occassionally, but not as much as some say. Many people who have never played hockey don't understand when you step up and make a hit like that, if you don't want to get run over yourself you need to sort of "explode" up and into the person and not just into them. This doesn't mean you can jump into them, but it does mean that if you make solid contact your momentum continues and you end up in the air, too. Kronwall is an artist when it comes to this area. Kronwall has also hit late in the past. Sometimes he does all three of these things. Based on precedents set by other big hitters, it's pretty suprising he's never had to sit out a game for one of them.

But this, this was a textbook big hit. The notion that it was interference is a joke. At high speed, you might be able to argue that it was an elbow. But it wasn't. Havlat took a slow pass up the boards with his head down. He glanced up the ice and then continued to look down and behind him at the puck coming. He lost the puck in his feet and still kept his head down, and then was rocked by Kronwall. The puck was directly between his feet when this happened. All contact was with the shoulder. Kronwall barely went airborne even on his follow-through.

Although I've ripped CBC's anti-Detroit attitude which bothers me in the slightest, but their coverage of this incident is why I always prefer to watch a game on CBC over Versus. I watched the Versus feed, but I caught the CBC coverage of it at OnTheWings. They point out several things, instantly, that make NHL officiating look downright bush league. First of all, they get a great in tight angle which you can freeze at 2:48 to show Kronwall's elbow was absolutely down. No question about that. Then they point out that there was no call originally. They have an absolutely brilliant look at 3:45 in the video where they show an aerial shot of the entire ice and they show that no referee or linesman put a hand up, they all immediately skated over to break up the fight.

They also point out that linesman are allowed to call major penalties, which is further debunked because of how quickly Kronwall was thrown out. For that kind of thing, I believe the linesman would have to inform the referee, and the referee would toss him. This just happened way too fast for that to have happened. Some ref saw that Havlat was hurt, probably saying something like "where am i? why is it so cold in here?" and just made up the call on the spot. What a disgrace.

But even Versus' guys were able to pick up on it. Ed Olzyck, who's actually Chicago's color commentator during the regular season, saw nothing. Keith Jones, who isn't anti-Detroit per se, but picks against them more often than anyone I've ever seen, said it was a bad call. Matt Saler suggested, based on really nothing more than the NHL's lack of consistency on stuff like this, that he expects Kronwall will be suspended. The thought of that just enrages me. This is exactly the same scenario as the Mike Brown hit on Hudler where they ruled that the five minute powerplay and the game misconduct (with the incident having occurred in the first period) was punishment enough. The differences were, Brown got his elbow up, Brown got him late, and Brown was just looking to hurt, while Kronwall was making a common defensive play. The NHL suspending Kronwall will be the evidence that throws me over the edge and I will wage a full on campaign of the NHL deliberately screwing over Detroit. No joke.

Anyway, that's what was really on my mind. I don't have many player thoughts, but here's a few that stand out.

The big story was Ville Leino in the lineup for Datsyuk. I felt like Leino was basically lost in the first two periods. He looked terrible. Lazy, confused, slow. But the third, he was magnificent. He caused at least one turnover on every shift he took in the third. He, with Maltby and Filppula, probably had Detroit's best shift of the third. I loved the play where he took it right from the corner to the front of the net and tried and tried to stuff it under Huet. I'd like to see him stay in the lineup for at least one more game. Kris Draper apparently pulled his groin, as per Bruce MacLeod. Assuming Datsyuk comes back, I'd like to see Leino stick in the lineup over Abdelkader to give that 4th line more of an offensive kick. It's been rare this season for Detroit's 4th line has been able to dominate a shift multiple times in a game, and it's no coincidence 95% of those shifts have featured Ville Leino.

Props to the defense for picking up Kronwall's minutes. Brad Stuart was sensational. I'm getting ahead of myself here, because there are a lot of players who just play better in the playoffs, but if Brad Stuart could play like this in the regular season he's easily a top 15/20 defenseman in this league. He has all the tools and is capable of playing mistake-free hockey. I'm talking overall defensemen too, not guys like Sheldon Souray, Andrei Markov, and Mike Green who consistently get more credit than a guy like Stuart because they can shoot the puck, despite the fact they lack basic defensive skills like playing the body one-on-one and tying a guy up in front of the net.

Jonathan Ericsson didn't look great. He made a lot of mistakes in his own end but was almost always able to recover. Brett Lebda had the best game I remember him in a while. He rushed the puck up the ice and pinched from the point a lot, I can't remember the last time he did that. He was physical and had a little bit of an edge to him all night, too. But the other four ate up most of the minutes.

Did anyone else feel like Henrik Zetterberg never came off the ice? I think that's the biggest impact in losing Datsyuk, is the additional role Zetterberg fills. He seems to double-shift a lot, even on the PK. Babcock wants him out there for big faceoffs too and if he loses, sometimes he's forced to take another long shift. Let's hope Datsyuk returns for the next game so that Zetterberg doesn't end up getting banged up either. And, let's hope Datsyuk returns for the next game, because the longer he sits out the more likely it is that his "sore foot" is really a "broken foot."

On the other end of things, I was absolutely thrilled when Cristobal Huet enters the game. That'll be a huge story for Game 4 if Khabibulin cannot go. Huet is absolutely terrible. He mishandled almost every shot he faced in the 3rd, and Detroit didn't really get the same quality chances they had in the 2nd. The first glove save he made, he looked behind him. I've never seen a goalie not know if the puck hit him in the hand before. He almost fell backwards for no reason early in the third. Honestly, my friend jokingly suggested it, but he might have been drunk. Wouldn't you be? Making $6 million a year to keep the bench warm, why not take a few shots during intermission? He didn't face enough action, and he didn't look great on any of it. It's bad news for Chicago if he sees any more action.

Dick Axelsson to Grand Rapids; Sebastien Piche on the big stage

2009-05-21T02:14:00.004-04:00

Bonus coverage tonight because of the extra time off. I wanted to post this news sooner, but I felt it would be buried between game recaps. Hopefully the extra day off will give all some time to digest it. If you're looking for the game recap, it's right below this post.

The first news came last week, brought to my attention by Snapshots. Dick Axelsson will be headed to Grand Rapids for 2009/10, after telling Swedish media he would like to take one more year in the SEL to, from what I could tell, prove everybody wrong. He took a shot right to his pride when his team, Djurgardens, suspended him for training poorly despite his pretty good numbers. He ended up transferring to another team, Farjestad, who ended up winning the league title. Axelsson actually put up better numbers here, and supposedly was taken under the wing of Rickard Wallin, ex-NHLer and SEL star. Wallin helped him train properly and stay out of trouble.

Axelsson's numbers are really incredible for a 21-year-old player. Extremely close to what Zetterbrg put up at the same age. Axelsson doesn't really get that hype though. He's had "issues" consisting off a night in jail when he drunkenly told a cop to "politely" eff off, and being kicked off your team is never good. He put up some pretty legendary penalty minute totals in his draft year when he put up 157 minutes in 28 games. You've gotta put the effort in to rack up those kind of minutes, but to be fair in Sweden you get 10-minute misconducts for not keeping your toenails trimmed.

Dick signed with Detroit last summer, but Detroit let him stay the year in Sweden. Detroit still has a few more players on the fence about North America, primarily Johan Ryno, who will be entering the last year of his contract after bolting from Grand Rapids (after putting up good numbers) last season and then breaking his leg and missing the year this season. Joakim Andersson is also on the fence. He would need to be signed this offseason if there was a transfer agreement. Detroit seemed content to leave him one more year in Sweden, but plans like that tend to change when the guy comes over on a tryout basis and ends up forcing his way into Grand Rapids' lineup the last game of the season, in time for the playoffs. Anton Axelsson was on the fence to be signed for last season, so if Detroit does a "they signed WHO?!" signing this offseason, it'll be him.

I've suspected Dick Axlesson's closer to NHL ready than any other prospect Detroit has not already playing for Grand Rapids. Completely unfounded speculation by Swedish posters on message boards seem to think he could make Detroit immediately. He most likely won't, but I expect big things from even in Grand Rapids even as a rookie. He's the best Detroit has in the system in terms of offensive potential right now. I don't think the things that he did off the ice would be much of a problem in North America. It's not like he took a swing at a cop, it's not like he hasn't improved his PIM totals, and it's not like he wasn't producing even if he was poorly training. Curt Fraser seems like the kind of guy that's not going to put up with any garbage behavior, and Detroit's not the kind of organization that will tolerate possible cancer no matter the talent. I can't imagine he'd be out causing troublle when he's already got a black mark against him and Detroit still didn't hesitate to sign him.

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In other news, the only Detroit prospect left playing hockey not for the Red Wings right now is defenseman Sebastien Piche, who they signed two months ago for the purpose of having a prospect for me to still write about in May. Or not. But he is playing, for reals.

Piche and the Rimouski Oceanic are currently hosting the Memorial Cup, the tournament that features the champions of major junior hockey -- the OHL (Windsor Spitfires), WHL (Kelowna Rockets), and QMJHL (Drummondville Voltigeurs) champions as well as the host team.

I've followed junior hockey for almost as long as I've followed the NHL, but I never watched the Memorial Cup until my local team, the OHL's Plymouth Whalers, won the OHL and made the tournament. America totally ignoring the tournament has something to do with that. Plymouth basically got destroyed, but I was blown away by the tournament.

The hockey is just outstanding. I like a good NHL playoff game as much as anyone else, but this games are guaranteed to be intense. Think about the stakes. These teams have to win 16 games like in the NHL to win the league. Then they have to go out and beat two champions of leagues just as good as theirs who they probably have never played before and might never play again. And a host team, which has known for three or four years it's hosting this tournament so it built it's team to compete, being the only team with home ice advantage.

It's a round robin style tournament. You play the other three teams once. The only way to secure your spot in the championship game is to win all of your games. It's like a bunch of Game 7s crammed into about a week and a half.

Anyway, it's a ways into it already. Piche's Oceanic were bounced out of the QMJHL playoffs pretty early so they hadn't played in close to a month before their first game. They got trounced pretty bad by Kelowna. They then won a thriller against Windsor, who I believed to have the strongest lineup based on my knowledge of prospects, and lost to Drummondville in a game I didn't see.

So they'll play in a tie-breaker game with Windsor tomorrow to see who gets to go on and play Drummondville for the right to play Kelowna in the championship game. Pressure? Like you wouldn't believe. In front of the home crowd. I figure if you're as sick as I am of the Pittsburgh Penguins, this game might be a little more appealing. Watch for Piche as well as Windsor's Taylor Hall, who, since the beginning of last year, looks like the #1 overall pick for the 2010 draft.

Piche has looked alright. You can read the post I linked to at the beginning to see my original report on him. Based on his statistics, I suspected he was either a defensive defenseman who waited until his overage season to put up any points, or an offensive defenseman who realized he'd need to score to get an NHL contract. It's the latter, basically. He's not great positionally. He ices the puck a lot, intentionally. Just doesn't care. But Rimouski is pretty overmatched talent vs. talent.

But offensively, he's beautiful. He is very fast and agile and moves the puck really well. He's a fixture on the powerplay. Good passer, loves to shoot. Didn't play as much against Windsor as he did against Kelowna, and I'm told he played even less than that against Drummondville.

If anyone's interested, there's some pretty good coverage on the players to watch here. Full rosters here. The game will be streamed somewhere through this link, just look for "Memorial Cup Day 6." And just as I'm about to post this, I find that Telus has the entire thing archived already and may or may not be streaming tomorrow's game. Registration required, not sure if it will just be for Canadians or not. I'll sign up tomorrow and check it out.

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Lastly, TSN.ca has been putting out a weekly prospect breakdown of every team, and finally, Detroit's is done. It's pretty interesting because they have strict standard for what a prospect is, so the usual suspects are all already off the list. I'm all for alternate prospect opinions, so take a good look at it. I feel like Pyett is pretty high, the writer really doesn't seem to know how little Pyett played for Grand Rapids down the stretch. Could be influenced by the fact that Pyett made the Canadian WJC team two years ago. Axelsson's a little low for my liking, but I'm sure he won't mind not being in the spotlight. It's pretty in depth analysis, check it out.

http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/story/?id=279245 (for some reason Blogger just refuses to let me link it to text, so check it there.)

Mikael Samuelsson: Great player, or GREATEST player?

2009-05-20T16:44:00.003-04:00

This is why the playoffs are so wonderful.

Because nothing matters. Regular season statistics don't matter. Past seasons don't matter. It's a fresh slate for everyone. Kind of. A few big goals in the playoffs has made more than a few people very, very rich.

It's the same reason most teams expect they'll have no trouble scoring on Chris Osgood. This guy just lives for the playoffs. He loves the challenge, and he steps up his game every year. There's a really heated debate going on at OnTheWings where some superexpert is trying to convince the rest of the world that Osgood gets too much credit.

Honestly -- tired of it. There's no debate on my mind. Sure he could be Roberto Luongo and, essentially, have a perfect technique. He could be a little bigger. He could be a lot of things. But Luongo could have three Cups. There are a long list of goalies that are more skilled with Osgood. But there's a long list of goalies with fewer Cups than Osgood. If the ultimate goal in hockey is the win the Stanley Cup, and Osgood has won three (two as a starter) who is the better goalie? Osgood or Luongo? Sure, Luongo's younger, but what if he goes his entire career without winning? Osgood is the perfect goalie for Detroit. He shows up for big games. For the price of elite guys, like Luongo, Detroit can afford Osgood and two solid defensemen. Overall, Detroit becomes a better team, and in turn, Osgood becomes a better goalie. He's a product of the system as much as he's a component of it.

That's all there is to it. He's 10-3 in the playoffs now. Does it matter if he gives up questionable rebounds or gets bailed out by his defensemen or doesn't complete shut down a team on 30+ shots? He damn near did that last night. He wins. End of discussion. Good goaltender. He gets the credit he deserves.

Samuelsson is somewhat the same. Worthless doesn't even begin to describe his regular season play. But his minutes are reduced and he's scoring clutch goals. He didn't look that great early in the game, but he was less noticeable in later in the game, which means he isn't messing up so I have no gripes. Except for the fact that he looks like a cat and I hate him.

It's a win-win, in my opinion. He makes Detroit win, and he prices himself out of Detroit's range, ideally. Who doesn't want a big forward who scores clutch goals? I don't, if it's Samuelsson. He scored a few big ones last year and he's been automatic this playoff when Detroit needs him.

Obviously, the winning is what is important. But when Datsyuk, Hossa, and Zetterberg look more like role players, the team is not at it's best. Datsyuk and Hossa have been called out by everyone and anyone, but was Zetterberg really the best player on the ice against Anaheim? Against Chicago? Was he even really that visible? I think he could do more.

Right now, it's fine. But if Detroit loses, fingers will point right to them. Datsyuk and Hossa look like they're each about to emerge for an Arby's Roast Beef hat trick, but neither can crack Khabibulin right now. You just know all it will take is one for both of them and then three of four more will just go in almost instantly.

Credit is given. Chicago played much better. Seabrook and Keith looked less wound up. Toews was functional. Kane seemed to enjoy having the puck, even if he couldn't get anywhere with it. That kind of confidence needs to be shattered and that's what an overtime goal can do for you. It's a young team. They'll feel it more.

Of all the Hawks, I think I hate Brian Campbell the most. I decided this shortly before he gift-wrapped the game for Detroit. It can't even be put into words what a terrible play that was. Let alone for a player sucking up $7 million a year likely for the rest of his career. It's the capper of what's been two games showing very poor hockey sense. He can't position himself correctly. He gets beat on the inside and the outside, and almost right through him too. I started hating him when he went for the big hit on Jiri Hudler in Game 1, and missed almost entirely. He then just stuck his leg out and tried to knee/trip Huder.

Disgusting. If you're going to waste your career being a poor defenseman don't go out and try to ruin someone else's. He seems like a dumber (overall) version of what Mike Green can hope to be some day. Poor defensive coverage, so he just goes for the big hit in 3 on 2 or 2 on 2 situations, rendering himself useless. But he shoots top corner every now and then and dangles once in a while so he must be a good defenseman. Chicago's going nowhere if he's getting more minutes than Brent Seabrook.

Again, it's a shame that Green's going to even be mentioned in the same breath as Nick Lidstrom for the Norris. If you're keeping track at home, Lidstrom still hasn't made a mistake in the playoffs. Washington would probably still be in if they didn't have Mike Green. No joke. His responsibility was Sidney Crosby and Crosby is on pace to shatter the record for goals in a playoff year if Pittsburgh makes the finals. And Bruce Boudreau lets this happen and more people wonder why he wasn't nominated for the Jack Adams and not Babcock.

Anyway, this isn't about Washington.

I didn't see a lot of exceptional performances from Red Wings. I'm giving Samuelsson a virtual free pass for the playoffs (conditional upon overtime winners) and even he was bad in the first period. Brad Stuart and Dan Cleary are tremendous overachievers. Silently, Valtteri Filppula has gotten much calmer around the puck. He just seems to play so much better with Jiri Hudler, which is almost a shame because they get so few minutes each game. Johan Franzen was probably the best players on both ends of the ice.

One guy who was just plain bad was Jonathan Ericsson. All rookies hit a wall eventually. Unfortunately that wall seems to be the Conference Finals for Ericsson. I don't know what he was thinking on Chicago's first goal last game, but that falls onto the team as well for not noticing or telling Osgood that Burish was sneaking around the net. And Osgood for trying to play that, because he's not a puckhandler. Poke that stuff back in the corner. A goal went off Ericsson yesterday, to the slam of his stick, and he was rattled after that. Didn't look as calm. Didn't rub people off the puck with ease. Got caught in the rush a few times. It makes you wish Chelios was 20 years younger or Meech was 20 years better.

It sounds like the only change will be Kirk Maltby in for, most likely, Justin Abdelkader for Friday. Abdelkader didn't makle any glaring mistakes but, like Ericsson, he looked a little less confident. Fired up doesn't even begin to describe what the United Center will be. That's a big stage for a rookie that probably didn't expect to see playoff action. But it's huge for him to stay in this long. Had he even made a minor mistake, he'd be out. Same goes for Maltby. If he's responsible for a goal, Abdelkader will come right back in.

Personally, if Datsyuk/Hossa don't score, I want to see Leino in win or lose. He can be the spark to get that line going and easily shuffled around if he doesn't. He even got Draper and Maltby goals this season. He might be the only player on this team better than Samuelsson, and he's living in the press box.

I suppose that's pretty much it. I know, what a short recap, how disappointing. Overall the effort was just poor tasting. The win tasted good, soured by the guy with the game winning goal, but it didn't feel deserved. Detroit was outworked. Osgood saved everyone's ass. We're very lucky that it's not 1-1 and I hope that feeling transfers into the dressing room and we see a little more on Friday.

The extra day off helps immensely. It's going to be the same situation as in Columbus though. If you don't take the crowd out early, it's going to be bad. The natives will be surly. It's a hockey cliche obviously, but I don't feel it's as big a deal in Anaheim where they need ice girls to get the meatheads to pay attention. Chicago has no pressure and the fans will just be loving every single thing that happens. Until Datsyuk and Hossa put up seven goals against them.

Hopefully. But somehow, I still wouldn't have my roast beef sandwich.

Dan Cleary and the Arby's Sabotage

2009-05-18T01:14:00.002-04:00

It feels like this is all happening too fast. At this time last week I had just gotten over a cyber-panic in the blog after Detroit had overcome Watsongate to eventually take a 3-2 series lead. Suddenly it was 3-3, I panicked, and now we're up 1-0 in the Western Conference Finals. Strange.

And having come off that series from hell, things could have gone a lot worse today. This team was supposed to be tired and crawling onto the ice with just their arms because the legs are too tired to work. Chicago was supposed to have the young legs to deliver a Game 1 beat down. That was their plan, anyway. Newfoundland had other ideas.

A satisfactory effort, I suppose. Detroit started pretty flat and Chicago took it to them in the early going. Detroit caught a break that their only goal early was a fluke one, because Chicago outworked Detroit to the point where they very easily could have had two that early, and all the additional momentum that comes with it. I felt that Detroit finished the first period strong, the second was more back-and-forth, and Detroit was able to close hard in the third.

I suppose the biggest story within the team was Justin Abdelkader skating on Datsyuk's wing opposite Hossa. No one could get a good read on the reasoning behind this, but those who guessed it was to piss Tomas Holmstrom off can come and claim their prize. The Abdelkader experiment lasted all of two shifts before he was bumped down to the 4th line with Darren Helm and Kris Draper. He logged over 9 minutes of ice time, but looked a little jittery overall. It's insane to think a rookie can jump into a stage like this without any hiccups, so he's excused.

But what do you call that line right now? Slumping? They had more quality scoring chances than any other line. Datsyuk looked a little more confident and was definitely Detroit's best defensive player all afternoon. He had six shots of his own and set up Marian Hossa for a few dazzling chances. I'd wager that the two shots Hossa was credited for are on the conservative side. But both showed signs of the squeezing of the stick that is associated with slumping. Datsyuk uncharacteristically bobbled a few routine passes and Hossa had two identical scoring chances where Datsyuk dropped to him in the high slot on a three-on-two, a scenario that Detroit fans have come to regard as "automatic" for Hossa.

What happens next? That's the only part of the team right now that's starting to concern me. Obviously if you're winning and scoring five goals doing so, you can probably leave it be for now. Holmstrom played barely 11 minutes, the lowest I can remember seeing for him since the Scotty Bowman days. Draper took a few shifts in that line late in the game, albeit probably more for faceoff purposes. Do you throw Ville Leino in for Abdelkader? Not sure. I think if Detroit were to have lost that would be a definite lineup change. For now, I think Holmstrom will get a full game in and Babcock will just have to pray that the obvious increase in scoring chances is an indicator that something is gonna go in. But I'm curious to see how everyone else feels about that, because part of me is very trigger happy and really wants to see Leino do some damage and make Detroit look even smarter.

When I wrote those couple paragraphs I kept saying "top line." But I've got to stop doing that, because as of the past couple games, it's been all about Johan Franzen, Henrik Zetterberg, and Dan Cleary. They combined for 4 goals today and scored them in all types of ways. Chicago's defenseman are physical but they're not quite as strong and dirty as Anaheim's, Franzen really had no trouble taking the puck where he wanted and had no fear of going back to the net.

And a little confidence goes a long way. Dan Cleary has really kicked up his game to the next level to the point where I'm a little upset I forgot he can play this good. Where was he in the regular season? Well, not playing with Zetterberg, and that's part of it. But would regular-season-Dan have taken that shot that led to his first goal of the game? His hunger to score is back again, and it's great to see. He was on the ice for the empty netter but bobbled a puck breaking out -- a clear sign Arby's is working with the Red Wings to ensure that nobody gets a roast beef sandwich.

Speaking of confidence, I felt that Darren Helm was rather good today. He looked less spastic with the puck when he had it, and he seemed to have it a lot. A lot gets made of Chicago having younger legs, but I don't see at all where that means quicker. Helm aside, with Chelios, Maltby, and Lilja out of the lineup can you even name the slowest player on the Wings? Everyone can skate. Their older guys like Draper and Rafalski are even among the quickest. But Helm can put anyone to shame, and when he feels like he can do something good with the puck, it's not going to be very hard for him to find some open ice to shoot from.

When's the last time Osgood's given up a goal that he's had a chance on? He was stellar tonight as he was throughout the entire Anaheim series. The first goal he gave up was partially his fault, but I'm not sure what Jonathan Ericsson intended to accomplish gifting it out front like that and I'm not sure why nobody on the ice was able to read the situation and see Adam Burish speeding around the net. And the second goal was a super deflection, mainly caused by a Franzen/Filppula positional mixup at the point.

Meanwhile, Chicago certainly didn't impress. I don't think much of Joel Quenneville as a coach, but I tend not to criticize because most of what goes in to coaching is unseen on television. But fighting a line matching battle with Mike Babcock on the road is a losing battle, just ask Randy Carlyle. Quenneville managed to roll all four lines, but never gave the Brouwer/Toews/Kane line anything to work with and they barely played at all. Brian Campbell is probably not the defenseman you want to see 25 minutes from against Detroit.

But they're quick, and they never looked like they were out of it. I thought Nikolai Khabibulin was spectacular, but the second Cleary goal is probably the only one he couldn't have had. He certainly made up for it with his ability to track pucks through traffic and get his pad on a lot of Detroit's cross ice attempts. Overall I came away pretty impressed with him, I'd say on the beatability scale he's a little more scary than Jonas Hiller but not quite in the league of Dan Ellis, 2008.

I expect this series to get harder. I'm not going to lie, I never said it publically because that's the kind of thing that can look really, really bad if it's immortalized on a blog, but when we drew Dallas in the last Conference Final, I thought it was a joke. They were scary because they'd knocked off San Jose and Anaheim, but I was not impressed with their lineup at any position. Part of this has to do with my eternal, undying hatred for Mike Ribeiro, and my belief that he as the focal point of your offense leads to disaster. Also, I tend to rate Marty Turco as a much worse goalie than most. But sure enough, Detroit willed their way to a 3-0 lead, and overconfidence stretched the series to six. The 'Hawks do frighten me more than that, in that I don't think any game or series lead will be insurmontable for them. Once Detroit got out 2-0 against Dallas, I figured it would probably be over. But I won't count Chicago out until Detroit is seconds away from taking the series.

The second biggest question mark behind 'The Bulin Wall' was the officiating, in my mind. Today's was not great, but I will take that any day of the kinds of atrocities we saw last series. For the most part the refs swallowed the whistles. Both teams got away with a lot, powerplays did not dictate the game. Ericsson's interference was weak, but Ladd's trip was definitely not a must-call. The only thing that really jerks me is the in front of the net garbage. The refs called Duncan Keith and Tomas Holmstrom for roughing after three Hawks started shoving Holmstrom around. Holmstrom did nothing.

I'd wager that half of Holmstrom's penalty minutes come from this kind of thing. He should accept it and throw a punch or two to get his minutes worth. The timing of this call really upset me, after this kind of thing and much, much worse went largely uncalled against Anaheim. Mickey Redmond says this all the time, and as much as I hate to say it, I agree with him completely. The way to stop the shenanigans in front of the net is to take one player from one team. That team will learn really quickly to stop taking those kinds of penalties. The other team would stop because they would have no one to go after and if they did, they'd likely get a call against them as well. Keith should have gone alone there, or nobody should have gone. It's an advantage for Chicago to get Holmstrom off the powerplay, though it did hurt them that it was Keith in the box when Seabrook was already there. Horrible call.

Also, a big, big thumbs down to NBC today. Their first intermission analysis consisted briefly of actual Detroit/Chicago analysis, followed by a thorough wrap-up of Pittsburgh/Washington series and a Pittsburgh/Carolina preview. Second intermission, even less analysis, a little piece on hockey being back in Chicago, then an interview with Sidney Crosby that ended with Mike Milbury asking him if he'd ever beaten up a dog. You can't write this, folks.

Just another on the long list of things that are reasons why the NHL is so mediocre in the USA. Everyone knows Crosby, everyone knows Ovechkin. You've got Detroit and Chicago here, again, straight out of my last post, "Two of the biggest markets in the NHL, two original six teams, division rivals, and thankfully no ridiculous west coast teams." The interest writes itself, all you have to do is acknowledge it. If you wanted to talk Crosby, they should have started their series on Sunday so Crosby could get his NBC facetime. But aside from the guy being boring, its insulting that he gets the attention over the players in this series. Nick Lidstrom is one of the top three defensemen of all time, no matter who you ask (#1 for most). Datsyuk, Zetterberg, Hossa, Franzen, Rafalski, Kronwall. Premier players in this league right now. Osgood's a great human interest piece. Chicago too, Toews, Kane, Seabrook, Keith, Versteeg. These guys will be talked about for years (in Canada). Patrick Kane is probably the most talented American-born player in the game right now, and he's twenty. Kane should be promoted just as much, if not more, than Crosby and Ovechkin. I guarantee the "casual American fan" that the NHL tries to pander to, alienating all else, assumes Kane is Canadian over 85% of the time. Depressing.

You've got the Crosby lovefest in America and the anti-Wing thing going on at CBC. As much as I hate them, sometimes I just need Ken Daniels and Mickey Redmond to hold me and tell me everything's going to be alright (and falsely complain about composite sticks and throw around useless terminology like 'kickplate.')

Kickplate.

Too young to know any better

2009-05-17T01:18:00.003-04:00

To start off this series preview, I'll pass on something I believe Craig Simpson was talking about during the Chicago/Vancouver series on CBC. He said that Chicago's inexperience is actually somewhat of a strength for them. This was Game 2, in which Vancouver took a 3-0 lead and Chicago won 6-3.

Simpson said that Chicago is too young to know that they should be nervous. They're too young to know that 3-0 leads don't go away in the playoffs on the road. They didn't know they weren't the favorite. There's really not a lot of pressure on the team. Think about it, this is a Chicago team that has been over .500 once since 1996, making the playoff once in that span. They hadn't won a Cup since 1961, the longest active streak (not Toronto, like most like to think). They're coming off some of the worst ownership in professional sports, with a stubborn Bill Wirtz who refused to show home game on television because people weren't coming to the games. The logic is there, somewhat, but this just led to even fewer people coming to the games.

It's really morbid to say this, but Wirtz dying was the best thing to happen to the Blackhawks in years. They were getting better -- Dale Tallon really believes in building through the draft, and years of top ten picks really sped that process up, but Wirtz never spent enough money and the 'Hawks became pretty famous for getting rid of a lot of young players before they hit their primes, and their big contracts. His son, Rocky, took over, and instantly teamed with marketing genius John McDonough to attempt to get people to care again. Putting home games back on TV was the first step in the right direction.

So, slowly over the past two seasons, Chicago has gotten better and people are starting to go to the games again. A young team even making the playoffs would have been a thrill for the fans, so the idea of the 'Hawks in the Conference Finals must have been almost laughable at the beginning of the year. That's not to say it's a bad team, but they're a team built for the future. They have the youngest average age of any team in the playoffs. If they can keep it together for five years they'll be a dynasty. But this season, they overachieved.

That's why there's no pressure. Hockey would have been "back" in Chicago regardless of playoff success, Craig Simpson went on to point out that all but like three or four (something ridiculously small) players on the team are single. So they all pretty much hang out with each other constantly. At 35, Nikolai Khabibulin is the elder statesman on the team, but after that only Sammy Pahlsson (31), Matt Walker (28), Brian Campbell (29), Patrick Sharp (27), and Martin Havlat (27) have the honor of being over 25. That's insane.

On a personal note, I am really looking forward to this series and was definitely guilty of crossing my fingers for it before Detroit ever started the Anaheim series. I've really enjoyed watching Chicago play all season; they're one of the most fun teams to watch. Since their players are so young I've been lucky enough to see most of them play at other levels. I want a Detroit/Chicago rivalry more than any other divisional opponent. I want to hate them. But I don't yet. Sure they knocked Detroit off in the last two games of the year, but overall in the past five years they've really laid down to Detroit.

Anyway, a lot of people are predicting a similar series to Anaheim's, but I see this one playing out a little different. I didn't believe Anaheim could contain Detroit's attack. They couldn't, really, they just got every break out there. Chicago has four very solid lines, one of the most underrated defensive corps out there today, and a proven winner in net. They play physical but they're not about the thuggery. I won't say there won't be any cheap stuff because no team is above that in the playoffs. But their team's strength is their offense, so it's really going to have to come through if that's their gameplan.

I'll break down their team, line by line.

Patrick Sharp | Jonathan Toews | Patrick Kane
The big line. I don't think Detroit will have as much trouble containing them physically as they did with Anaheim's top line. But they do have the entirely new element of Toews and Sharp being tremendous two-way forwards. Sharp has been a certified Wing-killer for a few seasons now, dating back to the year Detroit went 8-0 against Chicago in the regular season. I've always felt he was underrated, but this year he's even getting consideration for Team Canada in 2010. He could have been up for the Selke. Toews started the year slow but still found a way to lead the team with 34 goals, including a couple of beauties against Detroit. Kane's performance in the Vancouver series was downright unreal. He leads the team with 8 goals through the playoffs and has the ability to be a real thorn for Detroit. Despite his generous 5'9" frame, he's one of the hardest players in the league to knock off the puck because of his center of gravity. He needs to be played the most physically of any Hawk.

Andrew Ladd | Dave Bolland | Martin Havlat
This line makes four of six player in the top six as first round picks, with Bolland missing the cut as #5 as being the second pick of the second round in 2004. Ladd's a bit of a reclamation project as he never really got off the fourth line in Carolina, but set a career high in points in his first full year with Chicago. He's not the power forward everyone thought he could be, but he has some scoring touch. Dave Bolland is probably my vote for the All-Underrated team this year. He has a tremendous set of hands and he's pretty good at the other end of the ice too. And Havlat, I'm convinced, had the Hawks gotten a healthy year out of him last season, would have made the playoffs. He could give Kane a run for his money in terms of raw skill, and will certainly be the focal point of the danger of this second line. He led the Blackhawks in scoring during the regular season and so far in the playoffs.

Kris Versteeg | Samuel Pahlsson | Dustin Byfuglien
This is an interesting line, as all three players play radically different styles. It's probably due more to score than it has in the first two rounds. Versteeg is a nominee for the Calder this season, and he looked like he'd run away with it until Steve Mason and Bobby Ryan (hey, Detroit gets all three Calder nominees) emerged from the AHL. He's fits the definition of a "slippery" player, and loves the high shots that Osgood can struggle with at times. Pahlsson has always been an elite shutdown forward but rarely gets the credit. He faced the Datsyuk line in 2007 with the Ducks, but it will be interesting to see what line they throw him up against this round. Dustin Byfuglien is probably my favorite non-Red Wing player right now, but I could easily learn to hate him. He gave Roberto Luongo fits last round, leading Luongo to attempt to fight him at least three times. He's listed at 245 but it's no secret he's in the 260-270 range. He can skate, he can fire the puck (clocked over 100 one year in the AHL Skills Competition) and he has a tremendous set of hands in close. His demeanor on the ice is hilarious, he's the most laid back player I've ever seen after a scrum or after a goal -- nothing.

Ben Eager | Adam Burish | Troy Brouwer
This is a solid energy line, but I don't see it getting big minutes against any of Detroit's lines. As far as goons go, Eager can take a regular shift and is a huge asset because he has a decent set of wheels. Adam Burish is your typical agitator type who I'm probably going to learn to hate, he's quick as well. Troy Brouwer is a pretty big guy who's been a big scorer at other levels but only potted 10 this season. You'll know him because he looks suspiciously like Brad Stuart when bearded (no pic, just wait and see.)

Depth?
Colin Fraser is the only other Hawk to have seen playoff action, playing one game when Patrick Kane was too banged up to go. Beyond that, the only other forward they have who has a point this season is 2005 1st round pick Jack Skille. They'll be wanting to stay healthy.

And on the backend..

Duncan Keith | Brent Seabrook
My favorite pairing in the league outside of Detroit, up until tomorrow at 3:00. Keith has a big set of wheels and loves to get involved in the offense. He's more of an offensive type defenseman, but is definitely pretty solid positionally. It remains to be seen if he's smart enough to shut down one of Detroit's big lines. He's balanced perfectly with Brent Seabrook, one of Chicago's best kept secrets until this season. Seabrook can really chip in offensively and he's clearly their best defensive defenseman too. He's big, he's mobile, and he's smart. The two together have put together a strong case for Canada's 2010 team, but mostly because they play so well together. If they were to take just one, it would be Seabrook.

Brian Campbell | Niklas Hjalmarsson
Pretty big opposites in terms of where their careers are right now. Campbell got a hilariously huge contract after his big year last year but didn't really perform as expected for Chicago. He put up the benchmark 50 points, but proved unreliable in his own zone. He can hit hard when he wants to, but he doesn't want to. Watch out for what I call "The $100,000 Spin" which is the spin move Campbell frequently does when carrying the puck up the ice, for the most part, needlessly. I figure they're not paying him for his defense, so every spin he does is worth a fraction of his contract. Hjalmarsson, meanwhile, has been a pleasent surprise for Chicago after playing most of the season in the AHL. They brought him up late, he scored his first NHL goal against Detroit, and now he's in the top four. He seems like a steady two-way guy, I don't have much of a read on him yet. It certainly speaks a good deal in their faith in him if they were willing to part with James Wisniewski to get him in the lineup.

Cam Barker | Matt Walker
Pretty solid third pairing. Barker is still very young, he was a really high draft pick and it took him until this year for a full-time NHL job. As of right now, he's more of a powerplay specialist, but he's a fantastic skater and definitely no defensive liability. He's balanced out with the rugged Matt Walker, who's a pretty steady #6 as he'll clear the crease, block shots, and just generally exhibit that warrior quality that makes the playoffs so badass.

Depth?
Brent Sopel has been injured since December but can apparently play (just not well). Aaron Johnson is the only other defenseman with a comfortable level of NHL experience.

In the nets.

Nikolai Khabibulin | Cristobal Huet
Khabibulin started the year as trade bait, as everyone's favorite savior Cristobal Huet came in with a big contract and was expected to take the reigns. Unfortunately, he was the victim of some severe Montreal-grade hype (one of many players to by hyped up mercilessly in Montreal, and do nothing for the rest of their career) and quickly found the bench. Khabibulin took over and had a hell of a win streak going during midseason. However, he's a tremendous wildcard. On one hand, he hasn't been great in the first two series and you could argue that with Calgary (playing with a crippled backend) and Vancouver (offensively incompetent and prone to self-destruction) they haven't had a hard road to come down. But on the other hand, this is a guy who won the Cup in 2004 and he's looked dangerously close to being in that form again. He's always struggled against Detroit and was pulled once this season against Detroit and I believe twice last season. But, conversely, he hadn't won against Vancouver in 11 years and here he sits. That's why the playoffs are so awesome, stats just mean so very little.

A respectable lineup. Khabibulin is the wildcard, I think whether or not Chicago's defense plays well will have little to do with the fact that Detroit is going to bombard them with shots. Chicago has the offense and has been a quick strike team all playoffs, erasing several two and three goal defecits damn near every game. Little things that Detroit hasn't really done right in the first two rounds like clearing the zone and making good line changes are going to make or break this series.

On the Detroit end of things, Mike Babcock mystifies me. He kept the forward lines the same for most of the regular season, with really two alternate combinations he's had to cope with injuries. However, he roles into Game 7 with this:

Franzen - Zetterberg - Cleary
Filppula - Datsyuk - Samuelsson
Hudler - Helm - Hossa
Abdelkader - Draper - Holmstrom

.. with only that first line really seeing significant regular season time together. I think he shifted around Datsyuk's wingers a bit, but overall he seems to be limiting Samuelsson and Holmstrom. That trend continued with what looks like the lineup for Game 1.

Franzen - Zetterberg - Cleary
Abdelkader - Datsyuk - Hossa (Leino)
Hudler - Filppula - Samuelsson
Draper - Helm - Holmstrom (Maltby)

Really interesting. Abdelkader in a scoring role in his fourth career playoff game? That's a lot of pressure, but it could pay off. He's probably got more to offer offensively than Helm does, and, as I always go back to, he's a lot like Dan Cleary. Holmstrom didn't do enough in the Anaheim series to wreck havoc in front of the net. Abdelkader is going to provide more of a forecheck, and if he can make a few plays in the corners and kick the puck out to Datsyuk or Hossa, he could potentially stick there.

The other interesting thing was the Leino was subbing for Abdelkader sporadically throughout the practice. It sounds like Abdelkader will go, but if he struggles, I think two things will happen. First, Holmstrom could go back up to that spot and Detroit will see if he has better luck against less oafish Chicago defenseman. And secondly, if Holmstrom can't get it done, Leino can come in and jump right back on that line. Abdelkader was the better choice for the last forward in the Anaheim series because he's faster and stronger, but Leino certainly has the offensive tools to make a difference in this series.

Anyway, this should be a brilliant series. Detroit hasn't played an Original Six opponent since they met the 'Hawks in 1995, a team that featured such legends as Bernie Nicholls, Joe Murphy, and Gary Suter. It also had the young versions of Tony Amonte, Jeremy Roenick, Ed Belfour, and Chris Chelios.. Wait.. Chelios was thirty-two that season. Unreal.

This matchup is great for the league. Two of the biggest markets in the NHL, two original six teams, division rivals, and thankfully no ridiculous west coast teams. Whatever happens, I want the winner to take it all. Go Wings.

They should have trusted their eyes to Dr. Rahmani

2009-05-16T00:27:00.003-04:00

They were given fair warning.

I seem to be the last Detroit blogger to always put up recaps and such, but that's expected, as I am a creature of the night. I'm not going to lie. I lost sleep the night before the game. I went to bed at 4 AM under the impression that I could sleep away the day and only have a few hours to kill before the Wings game. Wrong. I woke up at 8 AM. Wide awake. Completely amped. Didn't so much as yawn during the day.

But it was so worth it. This was the most complete effort of the season, by a long shot. The game was much closer than it should have been, as was the series, thanks to the quality officiating we got once again.

Just because Detroit won doesn't mean I'm not going to harp on the officiating. I know NHL officiating. I know hockey officiating -- day-to-day NHL officiating doesn't hold a candle to the travesty that is the OHL's Brad Beers, or most officials in the CCHA. I know bad officiating. I understand blown calls. But this series had some truly terrible officiating. I don't know the exact numbers, because facts aren't what I do at this blog, but the fact that Detroit didn't have a landslide advantage in powerplays is extremely unsettling. Detroit isn't a clean team, but they're not in Anaheim's league. So the fact that Detroit got called for what they did, instead of their infractions that were actually penalties, yet Anaheim's defensemen were allowed to do anything after they were caught out of position, really led this series to be much closer than it was.

On that subject, I need to say this. I love CBC. Their coverage blows Versus out of the water. There's an obvious pro-Canadian bias, but that's okay. I like the Canadian teams, Hockey Night in Canada was part of my childhood and its absence is probably the worst thing about living on the west side of the state. Don Cherry, I tolerate. In a world of people who come from broadcasting backgrounds and not hockey backgrounds, he is a god. Nobody else is as interesting from week to week. But that doesn't mean I don't think he's wrong with almost everything he says. I've long suspected that he doesn't like Detroit, mainly because they're a team of visor-wearing, diving Euros. But just the anti-Detroit sentiment this series from CBC in general is disheartening.

I wanted to see what Cherry would say about Perry fighting with his visor on, and beating up on an injured and peace-keeping Brian Rafalski. On that note, I was anxious going into the game, but I wasn't angry until I saw Rafalski's face. Instantly, I was enraged. I've never seen anything like that, were those claw marks? Un-fucking-believable. So what does Don Cherry say about this? He says, in complimentary fashion, that Corey Perry is the next Dale Hunter. I couldn't believe it. The first thing that came to my mind when he said that was this. Sounds about right to me. Both disgraces.

To make matters worse, Ron MacLean, who I generally admire for speaking his mind and being a respectable person despite Don Cherry berating him every segment, has decided to complain about every call that goes in the Wings favor. After the game, he complained that Dan Cleary should have been called for goaltender interference for pushing Jonas Hiller's pad into the net. First off, Cleary tipped the Zetterberg pass, and it dropped between Hiller's legs. It clearly wasn't going in, so he jammed at it. Any player would have done that. Hiller was dropping, and Cleary was trying to get under his pad. I've never seen a goal like that called back, meanwhile, I've seen Anaheim sit on Osgood three different times this series.

MacLean even brought out the rulebook and held it to the camera, and capped it off with a "if the referee was brave, he would have called interference on that goal and let this wonderful series go to overtime." Give me a break. MacLean is one of the biggest talking head opponents to the new NHL style of officiating. He's got a montage every other week of the weakest calls and it just makes the NHL look terrible. Knowing Detroit's luck, Anaheim would have scored another garbage goal with two minutes to go. Especially on the ensuing hypothetical powerplay. Guarantee MacLean would be harping about what a great series it was if that was the case. Jackass.

Anyway, that kind of stuff bothers me, and it bothers me that I'm bothered by it. I want to just take the high road and let the winning speak for itself. But I'm so enthralled with hockey media. I read all the blogs, I watch all these guys, I hear them out. And I feel more strongly this year that Detroit's not getting a fair shake than I ever have before. I feel like it's just a big joke that I'm just not in on. Like the moment CBC cut away from Coach's Corner, Cherry went off on what a bitch Corey Perry is and Ron MacLean burst out laughing at the thought of that being called a penalty and Detroit being screwed out of another earned victory. Even Versus was able to pick up that Osgood had been sat on for Anaheim's second goal. Bah.

Okay, so now that I've got my complaining out of the way and if there are any Anaheim fans out there that can read and are thinking to themselves, "omg detroit fans evn complain when they win wtf omg," it's time to talk about the game.

Aaand I don't even know where to start. So many sensational performances. I could give a paragraph of verbal fellation to everyone on the team. But I'll try to be as brief as possible (I know, it's not happening).

First off, Babcock. Guy's not getting enough props for outcoaching the hell out of Randy Carlyle. Some say this series was an unofficial interview for Canada 2010, and Carlyle came away looking like the bully who got beat up by someone's big sister. The gall it took for Babcock to throw together those lines in a Game 7 is insane. I don't think we saw Datsyuk, Zetterberg, and Hossa on separate lines all season. If we did, it couldn't have been more than for a period or two. Every line was impressive.

What more can you say about Osgood? His best and busiest game of the series. His confidence is unshakable now. Detroit's most consistent player of the series. Right on his heels though, was Henrik Zetterberg. Ten points in the series, sensational 5-on-3 penalty kill.

Honestly, that early 5-on-3 on one weak and one non-existent call was probably hte best thing that could have happened to Detroit. Stuart and Datsyuk made some hilariously good defensive plays, they killed it with ease, and the fans were worked into some drug-addled frenzy.

Zooom. (Darren Helm).

Ugh. I'm just so proud I don't even know where to go next. Kris Draper begged his way into the lineup and looked inspired, albeit a little rusty. Valtteri Filppula looks ready to take his game to the next level, he's a much better player when he gets to play with better finishers. Brad Stuart is downright elite when he wants to be. Jonathan Ericsson stepped on a stick, but was the only defenseman who knew you have to put Getzlaf/Perry/Ryan into the boards. Hudler is just crazy productive.

Two players I don't normally recognize need special attention.

First, sigh, Mikael Samuelsson had a really, really good series. It makes me wrench up inside to say it -- maybe Anaheim just didn't account for him at all -- but Babcock really limited his minutes and I think he's a more useful player that way. He was up in the 15-17 minute range in the season and was 12 all series. I still don't like him on the powerplay, but he has a knack for being in the right places. Clutch. However, he is evil and cannot be trusted.

I've always liked Dan Cleary, but I called him out before the playoffs and he had a great series. A lot of energy, back to the energy player he was in his first year with Detroit. It was awesome to see him rewarded with the series winner.

Pavel Datsyuk and Marian Hossa are probably 1-2 in best performances by low-scoring players. I have faith Datsyuk will turn it around. I think Anaheim was physical on him early enough where he thought he would need to make open ice for himself, but really he should have kept it simple and passed the puck (like his assist on the Samuelsson goal) sooner. But he was awesome in Game 7. He's had a lot of success against Chicago, and they're not as physical. I think even if they're not reunited, we can count on them for some offense.

Bask in this win. Know that Anaheim is largely going to fall apart this offseason. They'll have the big three forwards, but one of Pronger or Niedermayer will be leaving. Selanne might retire. Half of their interchangable role players are due for new contracts. They'll come back bigger and doucher than ever, but just know that Detroit just cost some players their jobs. It feels great.

Tomorrow expect some kind of series preview with Chicago. Here's a spoiler: Score goals.

I hear California's nice this time of year.

2009-05-14T22:03:00.001-04:00

Destiny and Despair

2009-05-14T00:52:00.004-04:00

The following was inspired by a drive and a post.

First, I wanted to pass on a brilliant comment by a member of Abel to Yzerman. A2Y's own Bill decided it should a post on it's own. Read it. Digest it. I can't admit to being that calm right now, but I think that post was a step in the right direction.

Obviously, looking at last night's post, I was fairly tense. I'm struggling to be rational about this series. Back in the day, I used to get pretty heated during the playoffs. I don't post on as many forums as I used to, but I used to lose sleep arguing with people over this sort of mayhem. The old back-and-forth, and I never shied from the personal attacks, so it goes without saying that never helped resolve these problems. I can only imagine what some of the Ducks fans I argued with in 2007 are saying about this travesty. "The Wings are no angels," "if they broke the rules, they would have been suspended." Etc, etc; the same old shit. Probably with the same people I used to argue with, probably with some new members slinging the insults like I did.

I'd like to think I've matured a bit. Sometimes I would go back months later and read some of those arguments. I'd usually get a good chuckle out of it, but at times I'd be a little ashamed. I'll never apologize for being opinionated; I'll never apologize for my passion. But the whole back-and-forth thing just seems excessive. I often wonder what I was thinking in the heat of the moment. I was relentless, it's like I wouldn't ease up until the other teams fans say, "you know, you're absolutely right, the Ducks are classless," without sarcasm.

You've got to take the good with the bad. You've got to expect bad calls. And what's the playoffs without referees completely dictating a game or two? When hasn't there been cheapshots and thuggery? I'm not going back to double check any of this, but I feel like I've been a little more reasonable on controversial calls than I have in the past. Blaming the referees is an easy way to skate around the fact that your team couldn't overcome it.

But I'm not alone. If you feel the same way, you're not alone. I tortured myself this morning. I went to bed, and I was still pissed when I woke up. I wasn't even at that level after Game 3. I got online almost immediately, checking all the usual blogs, reading the comments, and just getting angrier and angrier. I didn't even see the elbow by Scott Niedermayer when it happened. I felt like going off on him entirely. That is your captain; this is the face of the Anaheim Ducks. And his comment after the game? I'm not going to find the exact quote, but it was something along the lines of "well it happened so fast, I don't know what started it."

Pathetic. Naturally, this didn't calm me at all. So I relapsed. I started reading what Anaheim's bloggers have to say (to which I must express that Detroit's bloggers are just much better writers), and even fell back into some of the message boards just to see what people are saying. And again, this didn't help. I didn't get involved, but I was just driving myself crazy. For the most part, the Detroit fans are just upset at the second classless display by Anaheim after a win. And Anaheim fans retort with the same "like the Wings are angels," "all you guys do is complain" thing I expected. Usually, when fans bicker back and forth like this, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

But this time, I just don't know if that's the truth. Anaheim's faithful goon up the internet like the team goons up the ice. There's just no way these people are real. Case in point -- they defend Niedermayer's elbow by saying that he won't be suspended because Holmstrom wasn't suspended for the elbow on James Wisniewski. This is just hilarious to me. Every nonpartial observer I've seen has agreed that Holmstrom's was most likely accidental, and even so, was barely a graze. Meanwhile, Niedermayer teed off on his.

It's intentional. They like to think that Anaheim has Detroit's number. Because, if they win tomorrow, that will be three playoff series wins over Detroit in six seasons. They ignore the fact that Anaheim has two players from the team that swept Detroit in 2003 (Giguere and Rob Niedermayer), and eight from the team that won the Cup in 2007 (Detroit has six from the team that won in 1997). That just shows how poorly run that team is. They don't have Detroit's number, they just have a constantly interchangable blend of thugs, goons, and thugs who can put points on the board. There's no rivalry here; it's just an organization with different priorities.

And that transfers on to the fans. How attached can you be to a team that can just be thrown together? They don't even try to act classy. They have Detroit on the ropes, and that's enough for them. So they just attack and throw around the bias card. I'll say something about that. In all the years I've read George Malik over at Red Wing Snapshots, I've never seen him upset like this. I've read Matt at OnTheWings for a few years as well -- it takes a lot for him to get upset, and he clearly hasn't been happy all series. The guys over at The Triple Deke pretty much sum up the thoughts of a lot of bloggers with what they put up immediately after the game.

These are reasonable people. If there's a controversial call and I get online to let loose about it, I read these guys first and it usually calms me down. George is always the first to point out that despite the fact that Detroit gets hosed on many calls, they often didn't play well enough to win in the first place. But it's just hard to be mad at Detroit when the game gets out of control in the fashion that it did.

But enough is enough. This is Anaheim's game. This is the position they want to be in. This is why I have faith that Detroit will win.

Continuing back off on my story, after I read all the bloggers and the message board hubbub, I wasn't feeling too great. I was pretty negative. I feel like I was setting myself up for anything. Because I was going to flip my shit if after all of this, Anaheim ends up coming to Detroit and putting them away. I drove back to my apartment in Grand Rapids out of pure superstition (I was planning to come back on the weekend). I realized the Wings are 5-0 in the playoffs when I've watched at my place. They're 1-2 when I'm at my parents, and 1-1 at my buddy's place. I figured I need all the good luck and karma that I can get.

But on the two hour drive, in the rain with various alternative rock blaring, I started to feel better. This is Detroit's chance. The slate is clean. A loss would taste terrible, it means that the blown Game 3 call and the lack of disciplinary action in Game 6 will actually have meant something. But the bottom line is they have no effect on what Detroit will face tomorrow. It's a 0-0, best-of-one series. Although I severely doubt his ability to form cognitive thought, Corey Perry will be feeling significantly less tough if he has to sit in the locker room having been put in his place by the best.

The best. No doubt in my mind. The cliche "the better team will win" seems to be thrown about a lot of Game 7s. I don't buy it. Detroit has been the better team in four of the six games and they haven't advanced yet. If Detroit outshoots Anaheim 50-15 and Anaheim wins 2-1 on two bad breaks, will they really be the better team? They'll say they did, they'll say they executed. But what kind of game plan is it to sit on your heels and hope you'll catch a lucky break?

It's not every year, but Detroit has had some teams that can win every must win game. The 2002 team was one of them. Last year's was. This year's is. There's no doubt in my mind they will show up and, behind the home crowd, outwork the Ducks. It's just a matter of execution. Getting the breaks. Playing well enough to earn the breaks and not letting them just fall into your lap. Desire. Want it.

So during my drive, I decided I would do several things to amp myself up. In the morning, I was not looking forward to Game 7. But by this point in the day, loss wasn't even crossing into my mind. I just wanted vengence. I decided to re-watch the 2008 Stanley Cup video, and the last Game 7 Detroit played -- Colorado 2002. My faith was completely restored. The 2008 team faced adversity in every series except for the Colorado one. They rebounded from Dominik Hasek's attempt to throw the Nashville series. They rebounded from Dallas forcing a Game 6 after Detroit went up 3-0. They rebounded from that, sigh, crippling Game 5 triple overtime loss to Pittsburgh. In all of the players' interviews the theme was apparent -- they needed to win, so they buckled down and won.

Some of you might be rolling your eyes at this point. "What a homer," that kind of thing -- and if it's true, why didn't they win Game 6? Different kind of pressure. Wanting to win and needing to win has been two entirely different battles for Detroit over the years. But tomorrow, with the crowd behind them, with Anaheim mocking and provoking them every step of the way, Detroit will have their window. They will show up.

Go Wings.