stormboy

we didn't score on a 5-on-3. they scored short-handed and on three powerplays. they way we were playing, we could have had five more powerplays and the net result would have been us getting one more goal scored on us. stop making excuses.

for a minute there, crosby was -4. still, i'll take -3. crosby, eaton, guerin kunitz and letang have been out there for every GAA and no goals for. the pens might think about breaking that unit up.

IMO, guy's elbows only came up on the follow-through (ala kronwall) and the leo just got decked because he didn't have his head up. glad to see he skated off under his own power: a stretcher is the worst thing you want to see in any pro sports game. but leo was wrong place wrong time against a bit body who had him lined up.

chut up. i want seats on the glass. you better start a ******* riot, my friend. if the joe is not rocking on sunday i'm going to be very upset. for all of us who can't afford to go to the games, those who can better make up for it.

i felt like he should have made the save on a couple of their bounce-back goals early. but i feel like he held his own late. you never want to give up four goals against, but we dropped six on bryzgolov, who is supposedly second to only luongo in the playoffs. it was just a wild game. jimmeh made enough stops to get the W, and that's all i really care about.

word. up. go z. go wings.

jesus. i didn't think anyone threw their own team under the bus more than LGW. guess i was wrong. anyway, my thoughts on the game: had to listen on the radio because i was at work. (btw, i missed the whole first period because of the whitecaps game...i'm fine with the fact that they finished the game, but THREE BREAKS OF POST GAME COVERAGE WHILE PLAYOFF HOCKEY IS GOING ON WTF WBBL FM GRAND RAPIDS f***!!!!) sounds like we got outworked pretty bad. i will call BS on the high sticking call. i'd love to hear what the explanation for that was. anyone hear/can post postgame comments from babs et. al. on that one? from what they guys on the radio said, the wings had the puck and they blew the play dead...but obviously they didn't call a penalty. it seems to me that that call was blown. it seems cheap and weak to blame the refs though. i guess we got one "kill" on the yotes' last PP, but basically going 0-3 against a poorly-ranked power play team is totally unacceptable. i think they'll clean it up for the rest of the series. they better, anyway. that was obviously the difference tonight. it PHX even goes a decent 1-4 on the PP we win the game. losing game one on the road isn't the end of the world. if we win on friday it's a split series and WE have home ice advantage. also, i can say all i want about the players, but the joe better be mother ******* rocking on sunday. we can't make the players play harder, but fans who go to the games need to go ******* crazy. i'd be there yelling constantly if i could get work off / afford to go / lived closer to detroit. the joe had better be out of control, no matter what the series is at on sunday. edit: spelling

i give my full compliments to the creator of this fine video.

oh boo hoo. i like how we can post pictures of dogs getting run over and then judge someone else for being unclassy for writing a blog that is designed to hype people for a hockey game.

welcome! don't know how much you've lurked, but your in for a fun/frustrating/hilarious ride at LGW! also, i enjoyed the pic!

i'm not saying that jimmy won't be a part of our run if it goes deep this year...but i think you're putting the cart before the horse to put howard on par with bryz and loo in terms of playoff goaltending. regular season and playoffs can be totally different things: we've seen the inverse with osgood the past two seasons, with regular seasons ranging from mediocre to terrible, followed by amazing playoffs. howard is untested, and even a very good or very bad playoff will not solidify his worth as a playoff goalie -- it could be a fluke either way, or, either way, it might be totally indicative of his future potential. there's just no way to know right now.

yeah, i sorta wish he wasn't tied for second-worse on the team +/- wise, but he doesn't score a lot, whereas rafalski does. i also enjoy that he only took 11 penalties in 82 games this year. hopefully he can bring his physical game (with a bit of offense) to the playoffs this year! to me, he's always shown flashes of brilliance but also a lot of facepalm moments...kinda like filppula in that way. in any case, he's a wing, so i appreciate him. go brad!

yeah, not that +/- is a huge stat, necessarily, but i did enjoy when he was, what, like plus-eight in three games or something like that, and up in the positives. overall, i don't think a 52 point pace is too bad for val...let's hope he brings it in the playoffs!!!

i agree, but the odds that bryz DOES stand on his head are regrettably high.

haha...yeah. only lids and stu were also able to accomplish that this season IIRC. anyone know what the final count of man-games lost to injury this season was? that's one thing that *i* would not have expected. would not have expected hank and pavs to have such low point totals, either. but, they're playing well now and that's all that matters (since we're in!). also, two months ago, i would not have expected us to be in fifth...much less in the playoffs. mmm...crow tastes wonderful.

i agree with this -- with the exception that bryz IS a major gamebreaking talent. i think you were getting at offensive production, though, and there i agree. obviously, a lot of our guys have not had their best offensive year and wolski will obviously be a big factor, as he earned a point-per-game with phoenix and has the most points out of any one on the team. but other than him, their best total point-getter is shane doan with 55 points in 82 games (.67 PPG). lombardi isn't bad, either, but to me, wolski-lombardi-doan does not match up with franzen-datsyuk-homer. and when guys like datsyuk and zetterberg can shut down crosby and malkin, i don't think they should have too much trouble containing phoenix's top guys. it seems like they have a fair number of guys that *can* hurt you, but most of them have not had huge seasons this year. our defense will have to be tight, but i just see our potential offensive output as being much greater than theirs. we outscored them by a few total goals in the regular season, but considering how bad we were playing at times and how many man games we missed, you have to imagine that the detroit offense outpaces phoenix's greatly.

ah, you poor bastard. i graduated last spring and i do not miss school *at all*. although, now i'm working a third-shift job to pay back my loans, which means i'm probably going to miss most of the games (i'm off friday though...w00t!) hmm...let's see. i work wednesday night, but my job allows me to have an MP3 player (with fm tuner) on at work...the only problem is that in GR 107.3 is the only local sports radio station, and i think that tigers games trump even playoff NHL games just because of ratings (which bums me out). tigers play at 1:05 wednesday, though, so HOPEfully that game will be on 107.3. friday i can watch live. sunday afternoon game = win. next tuesday with the wings on at 6.30 the tigers are not on until 10:10...so they might air that one, too! sweet! next friday might suck with the tigers being in texas and the wings on at ten. hopefully they'll at least join in progress...which sometimes they do and sometimes they have an hour of postgame instead of playing a live sporting event, which drives me crazy. don't get me wrong, i love the tigers, and will listen to them all summer. but there's no way that early-season anything should trump playoff anything. i'd feel the same way in october if the tigers were in the POs and they had an early season wings game on. now, if the whitecaps are on instead of the wings this spring WBBL WILL be getting an angry call from me. i realize more people watch baseball than hockey, but SURELY there are more wings fans in GR than whitecaps fans.

i don't think you'll see any roster changes for the last game, but if the playoff seeds are set in stone, you might see 3-22/52 and 43-33-17 burning up some extra minutes. i think babs will keep our top guys in game shape, but give them all a few less minutes, even if we lose that game. then again, i could see babs going all out and trying to win that last game just to make sure the hawks are s***ting bricks. i'm glad i don't have to make those decisions.

one of my favorite wings memories. amazing.

shut. up.

dude...i know you're an active contributor to these boards and i appreciate that. but in this case, you need to STFU. like another poster said, they are 10-1-2 in their last 13. the wings have played the hawks really well this year, and they're better now than ever, these last two games notwithstanding (one was an OTL and the other was a one goal game -- they're not getting blown out over here). and how exactly "SHOULD" they be playing? you're not happy unless they win every game 10-0 and outshoot the opponent 50-0. god damn. it's a back-to-back game, ozzie hasn't played since russia was still called the USSR, and we're just coming off the best stretch the wings have had all season. relax. it would take a miracle for the wings to not make it in at this point. the the flames lose today, we're in. if we win ONE MORE GAME, we're in. chill out. seriously. +1.

i'm not a hundred percent sure what you mean by that. we lost today's game, yes. if i'm not mistaken, we won the series 4-2, gaining a 9 of a possible 12 points from games against them. they're ahead of us in the standings, but they average 1.225 points per game while we average 1.230. obviously not a significant difference, but ours is actually better (in other words, be have a slightly better points percentage than the preds, even though we are behind in the standings currently). meanwhile, let's take a look at how we (and they) have fared against the west's top teams this year. we're 3-0-1 against the sharks this year (preds are 1-3-0), 3-1-0 against the canucks (preds are 2-2-0), and 2-0-2 against phoenix (preds are 1-1-1) and 2-2-1 against chicago, with the possibility of going 3-2-1 (preds are 2-4-0). a few points could be taken from this: we have .500 records (as measured by points) against two top western teams and winning records against the other two, or 2-2-0 (winning-tied-losing). if you'd like to count chicago as a losing records (more losses than wins despite earning exactly half the possible points), then we are 1-2-1 in season series against the top western teams. by comparison, the preds are 0-2-2 in season series against the same teams; 0-1-3 if you're going strictly by wins/losses rather than points. (again, that's winning-tied-losing season series.) another way of looking at is would be to say that, against the west's top teams, we have earned 20 out of a possible 34 points (58%). by comparison the preds have earned 13 out of a possible 34 points (38%) against the same teams. (as a sidenote, it takes a 57% winning percentage to win a seven game series.) looking at a few other points, our goals-for average is better (though only slightly), our goals-against average is better (again, not by a ton -- 0.2 goals a game) our powerplay is 3% better, our penalty kill is very nearly 8% better, we outshoot them and allow fewer shots, and we have scored more shorthanded goals while giving up fewer. i fail to see how the predators are on par with the red wings. here are the western teams against which the wings have losing record. (note that none of these teams will make the playoffs.) blues 2-3-1; oilers 1-1-2; stars 1-2-1. the preds' records against the same teams: blues 4-1-0; oilers 3-1-0; stars 2-2-0. a conclusion that you might draw from this is that the preds are where they are in the standings by feasting on weak western teams, while, for whatever reason, the wings are unable to get up for games they don't see as important. while that's not a trend i'm proud of, i think so far, the data suggest that the wings play much better against good teams in bigger games than against lesser teams in less important games. playoff games are of the former type rather than of the latter. i'd rather have the wings' problem than the preds'. another bit about the standings: wings record against eastern teams: 9-5-3. preds record against eastern teams: 12-4-2. so, while these records aren't hugely different, the preds have gotten a higher percentage of their points from out-of-conference games than the wings have. while i'm not trying to diminish the importance of any game, specifically any out of conference game -- especially since the SCF is played against such a team -- it's worth noting that out-of-conference games are more of a coin-toss than in-conference-games because the teams are less prepared for one another and know each other less well. in a seven game series, you damn well get to know the other team. so, i give the preds credit there for playing well in those games, and maybe this is just me reading the data with homer goggles on, but to me those games are less indicative of a teams quality than in-conference games, similar to the fashion in which -- at least to me -- games against good teams are more indicative of a team's quality than games against bad teams. as another sidenote: i just spent the last 20 minutes trying to find a league-wide tally of "man games lost to injury." i realize that it's not an officially tracked stat, but this March 29, 2010 article gives some specific numbers on the subject (NYR, fewest with 61; EDM, most with 457). i'd be willing to bet the wings have a higher total than the preds, by far, and i remember seeing some charts on FSN detroit broadcasts, but i can't find those numbers right now. it would just be interesting to see how all of the aforementioned data becomes even more definitive when you take into account the number of lost man-games this year. edit: even more long-windedness.

i'm not sure if you're joking or not. i know a guy who gets really irritated with weather people because when they say "there's a thirty seven percent chance of rain," he's all, "there's a fifty-fifty chance--either it's raining or it's not!" that doesn't stand to reason. there are two choices, yes, but that doesn't mean that each one of them is equally likely. like i said, not sure if you're joking or not...that's sort of a pet peeve of mine, so if you were kidding, congrats on successful trolling (intentional or otherwise)!