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Grypho, my answer would be that i think having 9 days off should be an advantage in my opinion for the Wings...a team that has older veterans who may need that rest. As well as to have a couple of our best players recover from injury. It's not like they took the whole summer off or something. It's 9 days after an 82 game season and 4 playoff games. Babs should have had them ready and "de-rusted" for game 1. Maybe other teams would see a 9 day layoff as a disadvantage...but given the Wings situation, it should have been an advantage. I think it really is dependent on the team, injury situation, average age of players on the team etc. as to whether a 9 day lay off is an advantage or disadvantage. Now, the Wings have lost two games. Close games. I think we were a bit better in game two, but we will need to turn it up a notch to make this a series. I expect that we will do better in game 3. If we lose, then it is looking a bit like last year. Sharks looked pretty good today cycling the puck in our zone. We made it a game at the end, but too little too late. Wings need to play with a bit more urgency for 60 mins in my opinion.

Then let him sit for a bit and play a healthy guy...until he is recovered and ready, he is a liability.

Grypho i sort of disagree with your theory. Sure "rust" can be an issue...but the "rest" actually helped the Wings get healthy, so there was a big benefit to having 9 days off. We should benefit from the fact that two of our top three forwards had 9 days to heal from their injuries (Franzen and Zetterberg). I thought both those guys looked a bit off...maybe they are still a bit banged up...who knows. I think a 2-1 OT game is a close game. I think the Wings got the lead and then went into "passive, careful mode" in the 2nd. Wings forecheck went into the tank and the Sharks became the aggressors and had a lot of shots, but not necessarily all of those chances were great chances. In the third, the Wings looked like they were going to take this game with the "passive, careful" strategy. But that plan was disrupted with the penalties (while they were soft calls, i think Bert should have known better than to give the refs a chance to call a penalty in that situation...not a smart play). In OT, either team could have won. But after killing off the 4 min penalty, there was a moment of discombobulation in our zone and the puck ends up in the net...fluke goal. My opinion is that the Wings sometimes go into "passive" mode when they are ahead...they seem to relax...or become less aggressive. It bugs the hell out of me, but it has happened before. They also need to SHOOT THE DAMN PUCK. Sorry there. But it pisses me off to no end when they over-dangle and hang onto the puck and search for that perfect tick tack toe goal when they can just shoot it ON NET, get a frickin rebound and score a frickin goal. There was a lot of that going on in game 1...as well as the passive mode thing. I doubt it has much to do with the rest or being over-rested. Babcock needs to tell them to forecheck more aggressively and shoot it on net more to test Niemmi a bit.