DirtyD

I was just about to ask whether anyone actually understood the origins of the "Green Man". Charlie is the absolute man. Personally, I'm more disposed to the Original Kitten Mittens, but this works too.

This is great news. I was hoping that this would happen but was unsure whether or not Babs would be to stubborn to pull the trigger. Regardless, the fourth line and Williams - as godawful as he may be - did not cost us the game last night. The team as a whole did not deserve to win because, after the 1st period, they got manhandled in a major way. Honestly, did we even get a legitimate scoring chance in the last 40 minutes? I can't remember one. Nonetheless, I'm pumped to see that useless plug out of the lineup, hopefully for good.

To the best of my knowledge, Williams only uses professional hockey as a source of income to support his primary career, professional D-Bag. Though I'll happily admit that I know absolutely nothing about Williams personal, non-hockey ventures, from what little tid-bits I've gathered, I can only assume that he meets at least half of the above criteria.

...but is generally unsuccessful as the majority of elderly people are plenty strong enough to absorb the minimal contact, return with a solid knee into the fleshy patch where his nuts should be, and then hobble off muttering angrily about young people with their XPods and cracked cocaine.

...effectively lowering the value of professional hockey players in general due to his complete lack of effort or heart. Does that count? ...effectively pissing me right the f*ck off. Does that count? ...effectively making me s*** my pants on a bi-nightly basis. That one doesn't count, because its just not true.

One of the good things that may come out of this loss is the fact that I cannot IMAGINE any possible f*ckin' circumstance in which Williams suits up for game 2. Babs has to see that Abdelkader should be in the lineup given the general tempo that Phoenix is bringing. Despite how useless Williams is in every single situation, he is even more useless against a team that plays with as much fire, heart, and speed that Phoenix looks to be bringing. Williams was not genetically equipped with any of those things. Abdelkader is a perfect fit in the series and I'm a little pissed it wasn't recognized sooner. No need to take Draper out, I think. I thought that he actually looked decent in the first period (that is the only fair basis on which to judge him given the fact that the second and third period were total write-offs). All in all, after the first period in which the Wings played precisely as I imagined they would, our boys reverted to playing the worst hockey that I have seen them play in a long time. I would equate it to the way that we played mid-way through the season with half our team injured, but that wouldn't be fair to the December Wings because they team absolutely showed effort, which is far more than I can say for the clusterf*ck that was tonight's game. Lastly. Yes, that non-call was an absolute abomination. The fact that four damn "referees" could miss something so blatant is absolutely mind-boggling and, from purely a hockey fan standpoint, unacceptable. However, it should be noted that our powerplay was an absolute abomination tonight. The team could barely be bothered to gather a little speed to gain the zone which is ironic because when we were on the penalty kill, and we simply gave them the f*ckin' zone any time they wanted it. In all though, it obviously stings because we would have had a 5-3 for over a minute and then another three minutes to try and pull something out of our asses. Okay, so this post ran a lot longer than I had intended. Basically, I can only reflect what most people have already stated. Obviously, I have faith that the boys can make the necessary adjustments and steal back home ice on Friday. We simply have to bring our compete level up so that it is equal to there's, and at that point our skill should be able to pull us through.

That's what confused me as well. We had a bit of a rush going, Z had the puck, and to the best of my knowledge we'd already gained the zone no problem when the whistle was blown. Baffling.

I hear ya. Luckily my next exam is on Friday, so I'm good to go.

Alright, so I pretty much took the old pictures of Tippett with his porn-stache and just ran with it; a little too far? Perhaps.....

I'll admit that this one didn't turn out quite the way I envisioned. But here it is nonetheless.....

Fantastic.

SJS/COL: 4-1 CHI/NSH: 4-3 VAN/LAK: 4-3 PHX/DET: 4-2 WAS/MTL: 4-0 NJD/PHI: 4-2 BUF/BOS: 4-1 PIT/OTT: 4-3 WC Champion: Detroit EC Champion: New Jersey SCF Champion: Detroit

Haha. I had noticed that too. To each his own, I say lol.

That's how I'm leanin'.

My first little attempt. Apologies to anyone overly sensitive about the animal violence.

I believe that you have hypothetically placed LA in the wrong division. LA plays in the Pacific along with San Jose, Phoenix, et al.

Hopefully he doesn't have the opportunity.

That, my friends, is what a badass looks like.

While I'm never inclined to bet against the Wings, especially when they are winning as much as they have been lately, I would not be all that surprised if the scenario you posited came to fruition. The Blue Jackets suck, but this is about as big of a game for them as they could possibly have at this time of year after the season they have had. Looking beyond just lat game and you'll see that, while the record shows that we have dominated them all year (besides the 9-1 thrashing) every damn game between us has been close. I have to assume that they are going to be playing balls-to-the-wall for their pride tonight, and the Wings had better come ready to play. Hopefully the defense is a little more reliable than it has been the past few games. Just to be safe, my prediction: 9-1 Wings

Kind of a Catch-22 type situation tonight and tomorrow in that we're looking for Phoenix to help us out by beating LA and Nashville so that we can play them in the first round. Personally, I'd just like to see the Wings finish in fifth just for the sheer unlikelihood of it given the season we had; it would really be quite a feat. I don't think you can worry too much about the match-ups, though. The cream rises always rises to the top in the end.

One of the key reasons that I want to see our boys finish in fifth is for the fact that Nashville would get to take on one of the "Big 3". The way that they've been playing, I'd actually be surprised to see Nashville lose in the first round to any of those three teams. There's something about them; they're resilient as all hell. Niiice. 3-2 Coyotes. Let's see if it holds.

Fixed that one for ya.

Overall a pretty brutal game for every forward that wasn't Datsyuk, Franzen, or Holmstrom.