dat's sick

When other teams were trying to come back against us and iced their best offensive guys, we still had to ice players like Quincey, Kindl, Lashoff, Glendening, Abdelkader, Bertuzzi etc. When you have a healthy Z and Dats on seperate lines, and 2 solid d-pairings you can protect leads, we couldn't this year because we didn't have either of those things. Too many kids, weak defense, iffy goaltending. This needs to change next season, we lost so many points in 3rd periods this year.

As a Wings fan it seems so ridiculous that the Kings have taken this kind of road to the final and they're not looking worn out at all and as far as I know aren't dealing with much of anything injury-wise. But they're still human, and there has to be some fatigue sooner or later. If the Rangers can take the series lead you never know, LA might not have the strength to turn things around yet again.

All 3 plays in this semifinal are better than the 3 in Tatar's semi. The fact that there are 2 Ottawa plays should be an advantage for Nyquist though, that fanbase will be split up while all of us will vote for Gus.

Outside of the Wings winning, the Rangers are pretty much the best case scenario for me. At least now that Torts is gone. Seeing King Henrik lift the cup would be amazing. He's carried that franchise for years and now they finally have a decent team in front of him and a coach with a more offense-oriented hockey. Kings will be the favorites but I think this could be close. Lundqvist is by far the best goalie LA has gone up against in these playoffs, and offensively the Rangers are less top heavy than some of the other teams they've faced. Going with my heart, I'll say 4-3 Rangers.

Not sure how I feel about this being entirely decided on auto-votes but at least Hertl's goal is knocked out twice. Would have been a joke if that won the contest, which I thought for sure it would. And Oshie's isn't so great either.. meaning I'm kinda fine with the way Tatar is winning. Some great plays are out though sadly. Nyquist should win imo.

He might need it, but it's worth noting that on Val dOr he was the main threat so the opponents could focus on him, his linemates were nothing special. And he played HUGE minutes, quite possibly there was some fatigue for him towards the end as he had played a lot of games in a fairly short time. If he makes the Wings he won't play 25 minutes per game and he would probably have guys like Z or Dats to help him out, he wouldn't have to be 'the guy'.

Calle's been great defensively, but unfortunately he looks almost exactly the same offensively as he did a few years ago. He has some talent, but lacks the strength/drive/instincts to become really dangerous. He's still very weak on the puck in the offensive zone, can't really win those 1-on-1 battles along the boards. And while he's a good skater, he doesn't have the explosive speed that Nyquist has (easy to tell as they're on the same line). Time to get over the loss of Jarnkrok.

That's a bit biased. Tatar only really 'goes through' 1, who proceeds to take out another. I think this is a close call, Spezza's is smooth as heck. Tatar has a big lead early but I wouldn't be surprised to see that disappear.

Anyone else think it's ridiculous that these two goals are going at it at the very start of the bracket? Put them on opposite ends and there's a real possibility they end up in the final, maybe with Hemsky's goal the only other challenger. Nyquist's is way better though. Nathan Gerbe did the same thing as Hertl did on a better goalie in a game that wasn't 7-2.

Sammy we knew from Day 1 was just a waste of 3 million. Weiss has been a mess, he's got some work ahead to redeem himself. Playing injured or not, next year there won't be any excuses.

You don't mean to say we are fine on defense, do you? If we can add a legit top 4 d-man it would make a huge difference. Without a Lidstrom-Rafalski top pairing we can't afford our 3rd pairing just being two awful guys that kill us every time they're on the ice. If we can bump Dekeyser or even Ericsson down there we'd look so much more solid.

I'd just like to see us get a better start. Can't give the Bruins an early lead again. If Zetterberg returns it's huge.. but I can't imagine he'll play after only 1 real practice. I hope Oullet plays instead of Kindl. And that we start the game with different lines than we've had lately. We really need to find a way to break through the Bruins defense. Rask has been good but other than a couple saves he's mostly been stopping weak perimiter shots.

This is a really tough series for our young guys. They may have won the Calder Cup but the physicality the Bruins are bringing is on another level. Dekeyser, Smith, Nyquist, Tatar, Kindl, even Sheahan look a bit rattled. Jurco actually looks good though. 1st goal was a bit of a backbreaker. In the middle of trying to hold off a great Bruins start you can't give them one for free. We were still in it though, even after 2-0. But when our PP got chance after chance with barely registering a shot on goal it killed our momentum and the Bruins took advantage. We're still in a good position. Need to find some ways to break through offensively because we can't trust our defense and Howard to play as perfectly as they did in Game 1. Time to go with what got us here: Tatar-Sheahan-Jurco.

It almost looks like Franzen is telling Datsyuk "...dude, you scored!". Dats was soooo chill after that goal. No big deal, been scoring those goals for a decade.. Babcock deserves a ton of credit, he got the guys ready and playing exactly the kind of game they need to play against the Bruins. Now we have at the very least a split in Boston which is a great result to take back to Detroit.

Zetterberg was huge in every game he played, and I wonder if Nyquist would have had the same impact this year without him. He probably made the Olympic team because of Zetterberg and that seemed to give him a huge boost. So my vote would have gone to Z if he had just played a few more games. As it stands, this was the year of Nyquist. You could he was going to do something special this season when he scored in his first shift after being called up. That was a turning point of the season, because it was the moment the old guys started losing their jobs. And then he just carried us post-Olympics in a way that is still hard to believe.

Hnnnnnggg Not sure how our prospect pool got so stacked. Well done scouts. We can afford several of those guys being busts and still be solid, especially if Smith keeps improving like he has been.

Both of them look great. Oullet the more steady, reliable of the two but Sproul looks like a potential elite d-man in a few years. Size, skating, skill, shot, physical play.. yep.

Rest Alfie maybe. We still have something to play for (Pit/Bos) and we need to hit the ground running in the playoffs to have a chance. Gotta let Pav find his game and tinker with the lines and such.

4 games without a goal? Trade him. He was crazy hot. He cooled off. That doesn't mean he's been bad, just means he hasn't scored everytime he's touched the puck. There is absolutely zero reason to worry about Gus. He played amazing with Z, so I doubt having our stars in the lineup hurts him. Chill, and realize how ridiculous he has been for it to be a concern that he hasn't scored in 4 games.

I've always liked the Flames. They gave us a lot of help last night, NJ was my main concern as it looked as though they could win all their games. Now we have absolutely no one to blame but ourselves if we miss. Gotta win this one and then we'll basically just have to get 1 point in any of the 3 other games and we're in. Let's do it. He's just the odd man out unfortunately. He'll surely be the one scratched if/when Z returns. With Nyquist the kid line does become a bit more defensively sound, allowing Babs to play it more. But we're starting to see the kind of decisions we'll be forced to make when we're healthy. Helm on the wing? Jurco on the 4th line?

I think we look exactly like we did against Buffalo the last 2 periods. Creating some chances offensively, but overall being really sloppy with the puck and getting out of position defensively. Franzen has to get going, he's been pretty bad lately. It's painfully obvious that we're struggling to find scoring if Nyquist isn't acting like Stamkos.

Bruins score 2 quick ones, up 4-2 with 4 minutes to go and on the PP. Looks like the Flyers are about to get involved in the wildcard battle.

They were up 3-0 against the worst team in the league and had a game the day after so I don't blame them for taking things easy the last 2 periods. I don't doubt that they'll put in more effort tonight, whether or not it will be enough is harder to say. This isn't a must-win though, at last we have a game we can lose without hitting the panic button. Just take the games against Buffalo and Carolina and we're pretty much in. Maybe an insurance loser point in any of the other games.

That was Pavel... imo it wasn't a terrible decision with our timeout left. Now, Quincey I think it was who had the puck under control after the faceoff and didn't manage to get it out of the zone.. that's bad. Terrible last 2 periods. This team is so frustrating like that. Could have been an easy 6-0 game, we could have rested guys and given ourselves a great opportunity tomorrow. But wins are all that matters now and with Chicago helping us out we are looking good.

At least one of them is out if Ericsson comes back.