dat's sick

Wings are looking good!

2-1 Wings. Hossa and Z with a goal each.

I too believe it will come down to Sweden, Russia or Canada. If the russians can keep up their trend from last year's WC's of playing like a team, then they'll be very hard to stop. But they do always have that risk of falling apart due to internal struggles. Canada are always up there, they have that way of winning games even when they're the worse team, they always find their way into the medal games. And with home advantage and everything that comes with that when we're talking about Canada, I'd be extremely suprised if they didn't make the final. Sweden should have a really good team, although some of our big players (Sundin, Forsberg, Alfredsson, even Lidstrom) have seen their best days. I expect the team to be carried by Henrik Lundqvist, Zetterberg and the rest of the Detroit players. We are the reigning Olympic champs, but I don't think we'll be able to repeat. Overall we're going to have a slightly weaker team, and our coach hasn't been doing well since the double golds in 2006. But with Lundqvist in goal and Hank at his best.. who knows.

I don't know why, but the previous times this season when we've had to play with less than 12 forwards (the games when Franzen & Stuart/Datsyuk were injured) things have not looked very good. Hopefully we can still win this game. P.S. I think D-Mac is injured.

I'm really looking forward to this game. Washington is my 2nd favorite team in the league and Fedorov is pretty much my all-time favorite player.

Ovie still has so many weaknesses.. I'm not sure our team would be better if we traded Hossa and Z for him. He is the best goal-scorer in the league though, and when he's at his best he's almost unstoppable, definitely the player in the league who has the greatest power to single-handidly decide games.

I agree with everything except I don't think watching Ovechkin being interviewed is much fun either. ...and I didn't think the hat and sunglasses changed the fact that Ovechkin completely failed in that breakaway comp.

Yeah, the elimination shoot-out was quite fun to watch actually. The quality on a lot of players attempts were laughable though.

Will be nice for Pasha to get to see Las Vegas later this year. Just hope he doesn't gamble away his Selke, Lady Byng and Hart trophies.

Lids has played in 9 straight All-Star games, right? He's barely missed any regular season games in his entire career. This is not someone with a history of not playing a game because he's feeling a little tired or has better things to do. That anyone is doubting the fact that he is actually injured and needs the break is ridiculous. As for the charisma bit, I wouldn't say he's the most charismatic player in the league but there aren't a hell of a lot of players that actually have that much of it. Looking at the Skills comp today I was struck by how few players there that actually have any of that "star-quality". Lids definitely has more of it than most who were there. And I really missed guys like Dats, Z, Hossa and hell, even Crosby despite my hatred of him, in the shoot-out competitions. Some very weird selections this year.. Tkachuk? What the hell.

"...the goaltender died from exhaustion on his way to the lockerroom. His teammates then proceeded to point blame on him for the loss, saying that they didn't get the goaltending they needed."

The only thing you could say against that Datsyuk deke is that the goalie could have been more aggressive and poked away the puck. Other than that it's sweet as hell, def no.1. Ribeiro move was nice too, even though it pains me to say it because I hate the guy.

Swedish 5 doesn't really exists so this an easy question. I've only seen the S5 on the PP a few times. We should totally acquire a skilled Russian defender to accompany Lids and the HDZ line though. Russian/Swedish Five = Best from both worlds.

Yep, this is the main problem of the sport right now. The shape of the goalposts. Glad they have their best guys on it, no need to worry about fixing the things that are actually BROKEN.

First of all.. I love, love, love Datsyuk. I think he's the best player in the league right now, and I thought he was right up there last season as well. There's no player currently active or even that I've ever seen that can match his stickhandling and the moves he makes. Every time he touches the puck you get the feeling something great is about to happen, and you don't dare to take your eyes of him because at any moment he can do something that you've never seen before. He's probably my 2nd favorite player of all time. Because.. ..for me Fedorov will always be no.1. Fedorov made me a Wings fan. Hell, he was almost the one who made me a real hockey fan. The only authentic jersey I have is a white RW Fedorov one (I really should get a Datsyuk/Z jersey now that I think about it though). Even now when he's not exactly in his prime anymore, I love seeing Sergei play. Like in the WC's last year, when he was absolutely dominant and was the deciding factor in the final game. And in the Washington game the other day when he made this perfect little flip-pass to create a goal. He doesn't do as much of the "big" stuff that he used to do, but there's something about his style of play that still appeals to me so damn much. And despite all the contract bs with Detroit, I like the guy. He seems like an awesome guy imo. Do I wish he would have stayed in Detroit? Hell yes. He kinda "disappeared" for a few years there.. I know he played pretty good in Anaheim and Columbus, but when you live over here in Sweden those are not teams that you see or hear much about. But now Washington has quickly become my 2nd favorite team in the league, and I'm so damn glad that he is back to being on a really good team and playing really good hockey. I'm really looking forward to the Caps-Wings game next weekend, and that matchup for the SCF would be just awesome. EDIT: I have to say though that I have seen probably 5 times as many Datsyuk games than I have Fedorov games. When Feds was in his prime, things like atdhe.net didn't exist and I mostly got to see him on highlight footage on an NHL-show once a week, during the playoffs when they showed games on TV here, and in his rare appearances in the Russian International team. So I've pretty much always seen the best of Feds, and not so much the average regular season-performance by him.

He showed last season that he's still an awesome player when he's not injured. I think the guy is worth a "real" comeback, his career was great but he really would have been up there with the very best of all-time if he had been a little more healthy. Most players would probably have given up in his situation, but I don't blame him for trying. You can tell he loves the game and he's willing to do anything to get another chance to play it. He had a really tough way of playing that led to several injuries, but most of them don't really have anything to do with his current situation. His main problem is one of his feet, which apparantly has some really rare problem that causes it to change size in the skate or something like that. He's probably been to almost every doctor in the world to try and find a solution. I believe the thing he's trying right now is to have an electrical current applied to the foot while playing, but from what I've heard it's not looking too good sadly.

GAME OVER MAN, GAME OVER!! EDIT: terrible 3rd period. I don't know why everyone is gangin up on Hank, sure he was out on a lot of the Coyote's goals but he can't defend alone. Hossa was directly to blame for atleast one, maybe two goals. Hank wasn't great but who was? Lidstrom, for the first two periods. In the 3rd everyone was terrible.

That would be stupid and I honestly don't think they could care less about the freakin' ASG when an actual game that is worth points is on the line.

Is Datsyuk playing? I haven't seen him this period.. EDIT: what, what's wrong with him?

Things aren't looking good. HDZ-line to get things going Babs?

YEEES! Our PP is bailing us out tonight.

oww how did that not go in? Hank?

Refs are killing us right now. Time for us to score a shortie.

Ouch, that one's on Hossa.

aah, gotcha. Can be hard to tell here sometimes you know