BlueMonk

They have good guys in the booth, but they seem to be having trouble calling the action. They're not just missing the penalties, they're missing a lot of the good scoring chances, etc. Must be the proximity to the ice or the vantage point. Or some other element of the unorthodox setting.

I hate to be right about stuff like this, but my comment during the last game that the league was going to... influence... this game seems to be on the mark so far.

Conks can't move out there, it looks like every second chance is gonna go in!

Cripes, let 'em play, refs.

I don't know what a single one of the penalties has been for so far.

I had a sneaking suspicion you might already have started the work so I came to check before I did it myself! Nice work. Those are some startling goal differentials.

Top notch work, NN. I may dig in a bit deeper and do some analysis of the goal differential, as the above post suggests, if it doesn't turn out to be too time consuming. I remember a lot of extremely one-sided games against Q's teams.

Okay, I found this. I can't verify the accuracy of it, but it sounds about right: Overall, Quenneville is 19-47-10 against the Wings and was 0-8 last season. At Joe Louis Arena overall he is 8-28-4. The Wings have beaten his teams in the playoffs four times and won the Cup each season (St. Louis - 1997, 1998, 2002; Colorado - 2008). With St. Louis, Quenneville was 11-22-10 during the regular season against Detroit and 5-12 in the playoffs. As bench boss of the Colorado Avalanche, he was 3-9-0 in the regular season and 0-4 in the playoffs in meetings with Detroit.

I tend to agree with this. That being said, what did the Hawks do about it? Teams all year long have failed to make the Red Wings pay for not dressing a tough guy, so those teams have nobody to blame but themselves. Part of it is the Wings have been in one goal games all year. A few more blowouts like this and that could change. Detroit played a great game, but part of what's hurting the Hawks against them this season is Quenneville. He's a really good coach, but the style he wants his teams to play is doomed against Detroit. Anyone know what his lifetime record against Detroit is? It has to be incredibly bad. Seriously, I'd love to know.

Glad the boys took this one, as I have a feeling the league will see to it that the Winter Classic is a lot closer (if you know what I mean). The Hawks power play looked pretty good moving the puck around but the defense was extremely solid and Conklin was lights out. No odd-man rushes against that I can remember tonight and just solid in their own end all night, even without Lidstrom.

Maltby's unconscionably weak, pansy clearing attempt leading directly to that penalty. What a f**king wuss.

Ooh, Wings got away with one there. That said, those were some weak-assed penalties they just had to kill, so...

Holy cripes! Kopecky?!

Franzenstein again! Huge goal!

The All-Star game is meaningless. Nobody cares who gets in. At best, it's a popularity contest. At worst, it's rigged.

Ok, pet peeve time: A couple years ago, the Fox Sports networks started showing scores around the league with the team that has a lead in yellow. The old way, they only showed final scores with the team that won in yellow. So now, I have to look twice to figure out if the game is still in progress or over. I mean, what does this accomplish except confuse the viewer?

Franzenstein! To think that just a year ago we thought this guy was just a big, steady checking line forward. What hands!

Physical hockey!

Well I don't think anyone would argue that Sammy or Maltby play with any kind of great honor. But those guys bring (or used to bring, in Maltby's case) something else to the table, at least.

Agitating is fine, finishing every check is fine. What's not okay is being challenged to answer for your actions and just standing there like a ***** with your gloves at your side. Laperriere and Tucker are not monster heavyweights; especially Tucker. Tootoo has done his share of fighting over the years (albeit somewhat cheaply with the early sucker punches at times), but he's turned into a diving wuss lately and if you take away the toughness in his game there's not much left.

I miss him a lot, but it's going to take a lot for Downey to leapfrog past Tomas Kopecky and crack this lineup. You know, like steal the compromising photos of Ken Holland that Kopecky apparently has. I mean, I'm sure he has them hidden somewhere where someone can't just grab them and run off with them. And he may have extra copies saved somewhere. Yeah, it won't be easy.

So it ends in a tie, I'll take it. After the way they started this game, that's the equivalent of a win in my book.

Haynes, McNab and Kelly are brutal. Kelly is in St. Louis now but still just as bad as ever. The fact that both Kelly and McNab did national games for Versus a couple years ago is incredible.

If they had played like world beaters last night, I could understand them losing this game. But they really weren't that good in that game, either.

Preds deserved to win this game. They were the better team. Time to reload and get ready for Colorado.