BlueMonk

Because the NHL is a garage league?

The good news is, Kronwall can't kill the Wings any more for a while.

Surprising to see the Wings completely fall to pieces and commit a series of ridiculous turnovers when the Stuart-Kronwall pairing is on the ice. Oh, wait....

Z! These little chip deflections are killing the ducks!

LOL @ May. Stay on your skates, son.

I don't know what Corey Perry did to the Wings, but they're beating the sh** out of him like they hold a grudge.

Datsyuk & Hossa!

We have our first fighting major! Win, May. Wings need to wake up.

The Hawks have had Detroit's number the past few years, but that could change now with Quenneville behind the bench. The Wings own teams coached by Q, both in the regular season and in the playoffs.

I was pretty pleased with this game. The Wings deserved an easier night for all the chances they had, but took the extra point in the shootout. They played a pretty good defensive game tonight and were much more physical than they've been. If I had seen more efforts like this before tonight, I wouldn't be harping on how badly they've been playing defensively. To have three forwards like Hossa, Datsyuk and Zetterberg is crazy. These guys are all in the primes of their careers.

Nobody moving on the PP. Stagnant and lame.

Lilja with some much needed meanness!

Wings just cannot keep an opponent to less than 3 goals.

Hossa is a beast!

I'm not prepared to rank him among all 30 teams, but he's certainly been the worst Red Wing so far. Along with Kopecky, he's the player who needs to elevate his game most. Neither player has done anything besides skate well. Lebda doesn't make a good first pass, can't run the point on a PP, has no goal scoring ability, doesn't hit or fight, is small and hasn't played good defense.

I was unable to watch the game past the first goal, but I watched the highlights. Some tremendous goals scored by the Wings, including in the shootout. 5 goals and 41 shots allowed is too much. Back to back probably had something to do with that, but it's a disturbing trend. They haven't played 1 really solid defensive game in 7 tries, which is hard to understand. The Wings were almost impossible to get good scoring chances on last year. But they keep winning, so I'm assuming it's just a matter of time before they get their act together. I mean, it's the same players on the ice, so it's not like they can't do it. Hope Franzen is okay. Oh, one more thing: CHICAGO SUCKS! CHICAGO SUCKS! CHICAGO SUCKS!

Well said. I agree with all of this.

The Wings defensive problems can all be attributed to a lack of physicality. It's not enough to just play sound positional defense. When guys are in your crease, you gotta knock 'em on their ass. There wasn't one big Wings hit in this game. It's ridiculous. But a win is a win! The Wings do need to get this problem solved, though. The lack of intensity but ability to get by on talent alone reeks of the last Cup defense squad in 2002-3. Don't want this season to end like that one did.

Hudler was invisible. If you told me he was a healthy scratch tonight and I hadn't already looked at the box score, I would have believed you. I think we'll see an enforcer in the lineup soon. Zetterberg took way too much abuse tonight (particularly from Jackman) that went unanswered and there's no reason to keep a guy like Kopecky around. Samuelsson is playing really well. He had a really good game tonight on both ends of the ice. He's going to the hard areas of the ice, battling along the boards and forechecking well. I know it's a punch line by now, but he led the team in SOG and I didn't have a problem with any of the shots he took tonight. Lidstrom made some uncharacteristic mistakes tonight. Kinda weird. Kronner... well, Kronner had a bad night. Where are those monster, open ice hits, son? Conklin was huge early on. Not a great effort, but it's a win. And the Blues have been playing well, especially at home.

Way too dramatic a finish! Wings played 2007-8 style, dominant hockey for about 40 minutes tonight, up from the 30 minutes we've seen in most games. But still, to let them back in the game like that was ridiculous. Need to play 60 minutes!

Not the right place for this but I wasn't going to start another thread about it... Toskala played a solid game for the Leafs, who came back to tie Anaheim near the end of regulation with a late goal. No goals in OT, so they go to the shootout. Ron Wilson pulls Toskala and brings in Cujo, cold off the bench, for the shootout. Cujo allows goals on both the shootout attempts he faces and the Leafs lose the game. Afterwards, Wilson explained that Cujo had a better career save percentage against shootouts, and that he didn't want Toskala out there in a shootout until he's had more time to "practice" them. I'm not even going to comment on the whole thing. It speaks for itself.

Heaton, I agree with your assessment for the most part. Also, let's face it, it's hard to find talented guys who also bring size, speed and toughness. Those are franchise players for their teams. You pretty much have to draft those players, and when you're racking up 100 point seasons, players like that are already gone when your turn to pick comes around.

Fedorov left because he wanted to be "the man" on another team. He was willing to take less money to do that. Fair enough. Although Yzerman retired and Shanahan moved on presumably because he wanted to, I don't think Babcock was exactly broken up about either event. There were already rumblings that in order for Datsyuk and Zetterberg to really become leaders of this team, the old guard had to move along. It was fortuitous timing, but I'm not sure the Wings would have made much of an effort to keep Shanny even if he wanted to stay. Frankly, the team has performed better in the playoffs since both those guys left.

I can't complain about Lilja's play so far. He's been one of the few willing to really sacrifice his body. He's blocked a lot of shots (like he always does) and hasn't made any brutal errors.