norrisnick

That baby was dug up before round 2 last year.

Sarah Spain can use fuzzy math all she wants as far as I'm concerned...

Kronwall and Stuart were lit up on the PP all during the regular season. Nick lost his regular partner when Lilly went down. A couple of the PP goals against went right through Stuart who blocked Oz' sightline but not the puck. But whatever... a PP as stacked as the Ducks have is going to put up goals. Nick and Z matched up with Getzlaf at ES and not only contained them but put up big numbers themselves. They neutralized the top line on a one line team. The secondary scoring was a bit lacking (Pavel, Hossa, Homer). Luckily our tertiary scoring came through.

Getzlaf and the Ducks did most of their damage on the PP. Getzlaf had 10 points and was -2. Nick had 7 points and was +2. I take that trade off all day long.

Nick is slowly but surely putting up some ridiculous career playoff numbers. Fun facts: Nick is tied with Stevie for most career playoff assists as a Red Wing with 115. Nick is tied with Howe (and Murph, and Bossy, and Macinnis) for career playoff points at 160. With 1 assist Nick would tie Larry Robinson for 10th all time in career playoff assists. With 3 points Nick would tie Denis Potvin for 3rd all time in career playoff points from defensemen. Nick is sitting at 8th all time in career playoff games played. Possibility exists to move up to 3rd (11 more games) behind only Roy and Chelios. Nick is the all time leader in playoff game winning goals by a defenseman. Toss in his 4 cups in a 27-30 team league. Conn Smythe. Cup captaincy. Etc... and his playoff resume is just unbelievable.

Spiders....

How in the world do some of you not realize that Z put up 3G 7A 10P +4 against the Ducks? For a frame of refernce, that's 35G 82A 117P +47 over 82 games.

It wouldn't take much for Q to give Pahlsson and Keith some game tapes of this series and tell them to do EXACTLY what Marchant and Niedermayer did. They have the ability, mobility, and stamina to hound Pavel (or anyone for that matter) all game long. Keith is very very good.

Sami Pahlsson. He should have won the Conn Smythe in '07 for doing precisely what the Ducks did to Pavel this go round.

Only to see if there was a whistle, highstick, or kicking motion. The war room can't make a ruling on goaltender interference. They should, but they can't.

No matter what happens, the Ducks are going to focus on Pavel. He's got to fight through it. All the best players do.

Babcock can't score the goals for Pavel. There are no magic coaching tricks that are guaranteed to result in offense. Or magic line combinations. At some point it falls on the head of the player. The player still has to play. The player still has to execute. This isn't football where bad play calling falls on the coaches head.

Scotty would have put Pavel on D by now.

Jones was an Avalanche and then a Flyer. Just what did you expect?

If the brawl was so integral, how and why did the Wings allow themselves to fall in that hole to begin with? It's not like the Avs were up 5-0 and then the fights happened and the Wings stormed back.

o/ People are equating the brawl in the 1st period with the furious comeback in the 3rd. After the fights the Wings still allowed 4 more goals and fell behind 5-3 in the 3rd. It was the goals that won the game, and planted that seed of optimism that the Wings could beat Roy. Lemieux was insignificant. Patrick Roy was always the central figure of the rivalry.

Exactly. And the bolded part is the key here. If the Wings don't win the game they get swept in the season series the year after they get ousted by the Avs in the playoffs. They had to WIN that game. They had to score on Roy. They did both.

Because Osgood, like your homeboy Fedorov, knows which games matter and which don't.

Hell yeah, I was! I'm Martin Lapointe. You can't tell because there is no frenchy accent when I type...

So directly tied to the result that the Wings gave up 4 more goals to the Avs and had to muster up a furious 3rd period comeback to score 2 goals to tie and then a tictactoe play from Igor to Shanny to Mac in OT to win it. Without that comeback the fights wouldn't have been anything more than a minor blip in Wing fans' consciousness.

Or at the very least told Kop that Beauchemin was a lefty. Lilly was off balance and got caught with the first one and that was all she wrote. Have fun. I'm off to bed...

And I think it's more important that the Wings figure out the scoring goals part than the fighting part. Pretty simple concept. I highly doubt any Wing has even an ounce of doubt regarding Lidstrom's dedication to the team.

If any of the Wings then or now felt that Mac beating Claude was more important than Mac beating Roy? Yes, I'm not only implying that I'm flat out stating it.

It isn't all positive. Lilly getting his brain scrambled and Kop getting his face cracked aren't really a rah rah building points.

A lot of them are getting up there in years. The mind starts to play tricks. It wasn't beating Lemieux that was the hump. It was beating Roy.