McAwesome

The great thing about sports is that (for me at least) it is a form of both escape and release. No matter what is going on in my personal or professional life, for 2 1/2 to 3 hours on game day I can put aside the cares of the world so to speak and allow myself to live or die figuratively with the fortunes of my team. I do my best not to let it spill over into my daily life, but my wife can usually tell without having to ask how the Wings did on a particular night. I realize that there are weightier matters in life, but as I said, sports are my escape, and win or lose, the Red Wings are my team and I will always have high expectations and will be disappointed when those expectations are not realized.

I need to stay away from the GDT from now on. I closed it shortly before the puck dropped and we had perhaps our best overall game in over a month. This should do wonders for the psyche of the non-olympic players, entering the break having not only won but dominating games like we know they can. Not to mention lifting the spirits of this board, I don't even want to think about the amount of negativity, venom, and mudslinging that would have ensued had this game gone differently. Here's hoping no one gets hurt in the Olympics (and that Franzen gets to play)

Russia/Czech, 12:00 PT (3:00 ET), NBC Canada/USA, 5:00 PT (8:00 ET), MSNBC (WTF?) Sweden/Finland, 7:00 PT (10:00 ET), MSNBC What were they thinking? I know the league likes to promote Ovechkin almost as much as Crosby, but how can they possibly justify putting what could possibly be the highest-rated single event this Olympics on MSNBC? That being said, supposedly nbcolympics.com is going to be streaming just about every mens Hockey game, which is lucky for me because I don't have cable, but this is ridiculous, NBC will be showing a grand total of 4 hockey games. Edit: Just went to nbcolympics.com to check out the streaming quality of the Sweden/Swiss women's game, and apparently you can only watch their videos if you are a subscriber of a Telco partner of NBC Olympics. Looks like I'm going to have to rely on someone here for streams of the important hockey games.

We need to play like this tonight.

Wow, I didn't even notice that. That sucks, between that and the back-to-back in the SCF last year, it's hard not to believe there is some bias against the Red Wings among the league brass (I know realistically there isn't, just saying). How many Olympians do the Avs have?: 4 Ruslan Salei, Belarus. Yeah, like he's going to be playing at all in the 2nd week of the Olympics Peter Budaj, Slovakia. Likely the backup goalie anyway, and he doesn't even start for the Avs Milan Hejduk, Czechs. Outside shot at the medal round, but doubtful Paul Stastny, USA. Likely to make the medal round, also likely to log a lot of TOI How many Olympians do the Wings have?: 7 (possibly 8) Brian Rafalski, USA: Likely will be one of the top TOI on the team, and USA will probably advance to at least the semis Valtteri Filppula, Finland: Another country likely to advance to the medal round Pavel Datsyuk, Russia: Definitely going to be playing for most of the tourney, possibly on the 28th Niklas Lidstrom, Henrik Zetterberg, Tomas Holmstrom, Niklas Kronwall, Sweden: Better be playing on the 28th Again, at the risk of getting caught without my tin foil hat on, that sucks that we have to play the day after the Olympics end.

I agree that the Red Wings need to start playing like they actually give a crap and want to have some control over their own playoff destiny, but in our current situation, we definitely need a little help from above. I think that both Calgary and Dallas will lose, but I am not as confident in our chances of beating an unexpectedly dangerous Ottawa team. That being said, I think that if Lilja and Kronwall can both go tomorrow, that will be a tremendous boost at both ends of the ice, Lilja will make our PK better with his shot blocking and improved positional play over Lebda/Meech, and Kronwall gives us another physical presence and helps our inexplicably anemic 2nd PP unit with him at the point. Here's my lines FWIW: Zetterberg/Datsyuk/Holmstrom Franzen/Filppula/Bertuzzi Draper/Helm/Cleary Williams/Miller/Maltby Lidstrom/Rafalski Kronwall/Stuart Lilja/Ericsson

Please no, then they would actually become a distraction to the action on the ice. I don't want to think about what it would be like for the players to have to look at electronic billboards when you are trying to keep your eye on the puck along the boards.

Actually it was Dec. 11-17, 4 game winning streak. Since then, we've only had 2 back-to-back wins. Still, that's over 3 months ago, and we have 22 games left, and like someone else already said, we probably need to win about 15 games to put us in a position where we may be able to control our own playoff destiny, the way we are playing now we will be watching the standings on a daily basis relying on other teams to take out the teams ahead of us in the standings, and that hasn't worked out too well for us lately.

Atta boy Jimmy

Shootout

PP in OT, lets get a GWG

OT upcoming. Hopefully we don't look as bad 4 in 4 in OT as we did at the start of the 3rd.

2 minute warning

PP for the Wings upcoming. Listen to that crowd, haven't heard the Joe that pumped in a long time.

Way to stand up Big E, don't know about the timing though, cost us an odd-man the other way with Datsyuk and Franzen, could have taken the lead.

:rotflmao:

WTF? That's definitely a good goal, no way they can find anything wrong with that. Tie game, way to go Jay-Dubs!!

Haha, salt & pepper scrapping with that pansy Nichol edit: How was there no penalty with 3 Sharks all tying up Cleary without the puck?

Don't know what to say about that power play

Get in the box, Jumblow. let's get a little cha-ching on this PP

OMG, how the $%#&@ did Nabakov stop that?

Wow, big surprise, O'Halloran calling goalie interference on Homer

Another Wings powerplay, anyone else excited?

Big hit by Helm

Meech missed a wide open net, never mind it hit the defenseman. Wings to the PP, let's cash in. My feed must be behind, I just now saw the goal. Congrats, Mule. My wife will be very excited to hear about this.