BlueMonk

Ericsson could turn a shootout attempt into a turnover.

I'm as shocked as Grapes about what Laraque did. It looks very intentional and he's one of the least likely guys to see something like that from. Shame on you, Georges.

Jesus, Bertuzzi looks like he's new to the game.

Habs showing nice discipline tonight.

I've never seen Laraque deliberately play dirty, although that hit is hard to see any other way. If anything, he takes heat for being too gentlemanly to be an enforcer. He never starts anything and always stops throwing to give a guy a chance to get up off the ice in a fight. Anyway, nobody on the ice in a Detroit uniform tonight is going to do anything to Laraque. Come on.

WTF was Laraque thinking?

As of this post, the Red Wings rank 5th in the NHL in team offense with a GFA at 3.12. That's good enough for 2nd in the Western Conference, behind only San Jose at 3.18. They rank 15th overall in team defense with a 2.78 team GAA. It's early and there are lots of injuries around the league, so we shouldn't read too much into these numbers. But still, the notion that this team would have to win 1-0 to make the playoffs hasn't exactly panned out so far, even with all the goal scoring they've lost to injury and free agency.

You just need to show a copy of the box score from last night's game.

Did Arby's start the hat trick deal last season, or does it date back before that? Because if it started last season, this is the first time they've ever had to pay out, I believe.

Let me start out by saying that I don't want a series against the Ducks, either. But this is a much different Ducks team. Losing Pronger and Beauchemin was a huge blow to the defense corps. I told my buddy who's a Ducks fan that Pronger was the real MVP of that team, not Niedermayer. Nothing I've seen so far this season is changing my mind. Love him or hate him, Pronger sets the tone for any team he plays on. He's lighting things up in Philly, but for the Ducks, he was a steadying force and a guy who made everyone play heads up.

Cleary: 1G, 2A and a team best +3. Eaves: 1A and a team second best +2.

It's always a problem when you have a small sample size, and that's what we have here less than 1/4 of the way through the season. But getting back Franzen, Filppula and Williams should help.

Roll one line, hehehe. Just sounds funny. ZETTERBERG!!!

Hard to complain too much about a 5 on 3 goal allowed, but Kronwall and Howard both need to be better there.

What an inexcusable mental mistake.

Wings need to settle down. Ericsson, wow; that was terrible. That goal has "momentum-changer" written all over it.

Yeah, same here; I didn't see that coming, but it was a stand-up move to not take advantage of Big Rig's chin strap malfunction.

Great goal! Ridiculous goal review, Jesus

Binomial distribution and the Bernoulli Trial don't fit especially well here, though. If you're going to remove the team's best offensive game, then how are you going to adjust for the rest of the teams in the league? The problem you run into is that you have to do the same thing for every other team and establishing a meaningful criteria for that is a study unto itself. And one of speculative value, at that.

Of course any good statistician would NOT throw any game out. Why would you? Do you throw out games where the goalie gets a shutout but the other team hits 5 posts? Anomalies and outliers deserve to be acknowledged, but you always include them. Think of all the games where the Wings got 49 shots but scored one goal because of bad puck luck. It all evens out in the end, that's why you look at all the data.

The absence of Pittsburgh's best player, their Conn Smythe winner, is what's wrong with them.

I'm not talking about shots; I'm talking about having the puck. The Wings did a good job of keeping the Canucks away from the prime real estate areas of the ice, but Vancouver definitely carried the play for a very long stretch. The Wings shots were mostly of the 1 on 3 into the goalie's chest variety, too.

It wasn't complacency; it was blowing their energy load the night before in Columbus. The Canucks had the luxury of a night off. This was a good, gutty win.

Wow, nice win under less than ideal schedule circumstances. The Wings got an energy boost when Z scored the go-ahead, but before that, they didn't touch the puck for what seemed like a period and a half. Jimmy Howard looked really good. I love the tougher edge of this team. They don't get pushed around physically with this lineup. Z's goal was beautiful. Kind of a nice "f**k you" to Kesler, who was going at him pretty good, both physically and verbally.

Funny thing about that scouting report is they praise him for his positioning and angle play, then mention that Kelly Hrudey compares him to... Tim Thomas?! Heh, not exactly what you think of from Thomas, who is a pretty unconventional goaltender.