C-TownWing

Exactly. 22 hours until game 3 kids. Time to quit wasting time with unimportant s***. Like pretty much anything in the Eastern Conference.

Come in to his rescue per usual? I think you meant NumbaSixty-Six. That's a good one, especially given that I don't particularly like the guy. To be sure, I don't particularly DISlike him either. I'm actually quite indifferent. FWIW, my opinion is that he's a great player who probably wasn't psychologically ready for the responsibility given to him (the whole "face of the NHL" thing, and the captaincy too). Mostly though, I find LGW's ridiculous obsession with picking apart everything he says and does pretty freaking hilarious. It wasn't really my point to guess what Ovechkin would or wouldn't do, just to point out that certain people can do no right and certain people can do no wrong to a lot of you guys. Feel free to substitute Milan Lucic if you want. Is he a whiner? If his fellow players say so, then he probably is. There isn't any shortage of whiners in the NHL though, so why give a crap about this one? You know you're only feeding into the idea that Crosby's the center of the NHL universe by talking about him so much, right?

Even if I didn't know the Pens played tonight, I can usually figure it out by the mandatory "whine about something Crosby said or did" thread on here. In a role reversal between #s 8 and 87, you guys would be rationalizing it along the lines of "Ovie's a competitor who has passion for the game!" He was just pissed off, probably about the ridiculously weak goal Fleury let up leading to the hat shower. If he WASN'T pissed about an opponent getting a hat trick against his team, I'd question his heart.

This. Although my opinion's subject to change if yesterday's game ends up affecting us more than the Ducks

Andy Brickley. His regular gig is with the Bruins. Him and Jack Edwards are a helluva team on NESN.

You guys pretty much nailed it, but I'll just add that it came about because of how the EDGE jerseys are cut--the tip of the Wing is in the way now, it wasn't pre-EDGE. It gets kind of interesting with the patches, as you can see in the Lidstrom pic. Mr. Delvecchio says it's not a new idea either:

Nashville last year, game 4 against SJ in 2007, where Lazy and Sucks tied it late, game 6 against Calgary that year (another Mule special), Maltby in game 1 against Edmonton (forgetting the rest of that series)...it hasn't been ALL bad! Mostly just against the Ducks--I think we have a 5 game playoff OT losing streak to them now or something like that. 2 in 2003, 2 in 2007 and 1 in 2009.

I just hope that grinding out 3OTs with essentially 4 Ds doesn't kill us later. We're all hoping Getzlaf gets worn down with his minutes, but damn, we really rode our top 4 hard in game 2. As for the larger issue, I could tell that we weren't going to win about midway through OT2, or if we did win, it would be on kind of a fluky/bad goal. We sort of devolved into the "bad" Red Wings, where we bomb away from 40' with no traffic and don't generate anything down low/off the cycle. I sort of remember game 5 of the SCF being like that too, and game 5 of the Nashville series ended too quickly thanks to Mule's breakaway to find out. The record is what it is since 2001, but I have a hard time finding correlation--we've gone through 3 coaches since then and probably 80% roster turnover. Point being, it's probably not just one thing.

...or that nobody's thrown about $20 billion at Hakan Andersson yet. Maybe not for GM, but at least for scouting director/assistant GM or something. Ericsson's emergence after being the last pick of the draft being just the latest amazing find, obviously his track record is nothing short of phenominal.

If that's his philosophy as GM, I think half the people here would want him for the Wings. No joke. Big body presence = Downey with a full-time roster spot. Also, I think Babs says "Filppula" that way too, doesn't he? I'm on record, as of now: Pierre's one of the best minds in the game today and the best of the three candidates. JMO. I realize that's not exactly a popular position to take in these parts

Better that what I'm getting...the NBC affiliate here shows the GD Indians on Sundays and I always miss most of whatever hockey game NBC has that day. So I'll be rocking hockeystreams.com for probably the first two periods before the baseball game ends. Go Tigers. Just to spite the people that make these decisions.

Were you not watching the Pens-Caps game yesterday, where Crosby and Ovechkin were basically compared to more physical versions of Gretzky and Lemieux? I think most people see that old vs. new argument the other way around--what's here and now is always elevated above stuff that nobody under 50 remembers. I have absolutely no reservations about calling Lids one of the 10 best players in NHL history. As someone who has tremendous respect for the history of the game, that's not something I throw around either. This is going to sound pretty stupid, but as for "most impressive accomplishment," I'm going to go with the played in 98% of the games thing. Think about everything we're asking him to do--30 min. a night, all situations, against the best in the league. To endure that kind of wear and tear and almost never be hurt? Freaking amazing.

TO didn't do anything that crazy after TDs his first couple years either. I pretty much agreed with you until it came out that the burning stick thing was premeditated. If it's coming from a place of genuine excitement, that's cool, but that showed that it isn't all the time with him. As far as I'm concerned, Ovie is a great player, but he definitely has a massive ego. I take pride in the fact that the NHL doesn't have these same kinds of things you see in other sports. You call it stuffiness, I call it class.

List of people I'd rather see on the 3rd pair than Meech: 1. Chelios 2. Rafalski with leg amputated 3. Me 4. Red Kelly (in 2009) 5. Cory Cross Tongue-in-cheek obviously, but Cheli was fine. He played smart, won a couple battles to help clear the zone, didn't take any penalties, dumb or otherwise. He even created a great scoring chance, which is obviously a bonus out of him. Would've been nice to see him in the 3rd period too though.

They mentioned on Vs. that we've won 7 game 1s in a row. I didn't think that sounded right because I thought we lost in 2007 too. Weird. Actually, the better streak is that we've gone up 2-0 at home 5 series in a row. Let's make it 6 on Sunday.

Just saw it on Versus. He's a turd with a little hair hat on the back of his head.

Pronger's one game for the flying elbow to Homer's still fresh in my mind, I thought they really screwed that one because of his importance to the Ducks, they didn't want us to win the series because of a suspension. We'll know soon enough I guess. I think the thing that's most concerning to me is the trend we're seeing here. It used to be that you'd try to get a good player to fight a fourth liner and win the penalty tradeoff. Now it's gotten to where you have plugs taking headshots, figuring if they can knock out a key player like Huds (or Betts) for the playoffs, it's ok if they get suspended, they win the tradeoff.

The stick's throwing his fellow stick under the bus. I'll buy that I guess.

I thought stick at first, but watching the CBC video above, I think elbow. The stick followed his arms around, which made it look like a follow-through. The butt end was in there with his elbow, but it didn't look like it got to Huds' face. JMO, it's hard to say for sure. Brown SHOULD be done for the series, but I don't think he will be.

Yeah, as stupid as it is, that counts, even if it's the exact same hit...for that reason, it won't be as long as Brashear's--and don't forget, one of Brashear's games was for the pregame incident and five for the hit on Betts. I'm guessing 2 on this one, but that's ok, we'll be up 3-0 by the time he's back

Cheli will bring it and shut up all the haters...I'll be the first to admit that it's not 1993 anymore, but name a better guy in the league to be able to plug in in this situation. He's played well when he's been rested, and he's obviously been rested for a while. Rafalski was brutal in our end against the BJs, so I'm not worried about any dropoff defensively...our top four is actually stronger defensively with Ericsson in for Rafalski, IMO. Obviously, the PP is the biggest concern. The Ducks will take penalties, and we need to score when they do. Hopefully it's not serious and we're fully loaded (minus Lilja) when we go to SoCal...

nice work.

That's a great point--only reason I didn't mention it was because the numbers I saw were from the beginning of the year, and I don't think Cheli was counted in that since he was hurt. But if he was, he could basically add almost a full year to our average age by himself. Draper (who was counted in that number) is hurt... Another way to look at it: Pavel Datsyuk is roughly 30.75 (July birthday). Older than our average age. Is he old and brittle? Then why draw the conclusion that our team as a whole is? Osgood, Maltby, Draper, Holmstrom, Lidstrom, Chelios, Rafalski are the 35+ people on the team right now. Cheli generally doesn't play, Draper's hurt, Maltby's a 4th liner...leaving 4 guys who are in key roles at the moment. I just don't see that as a huge, huge deal. Again, this isn't really about Booch, who I think is one of the best hockey writers out there. Just being all tangental...

Most overrated player in the league. 3rd best D on that team (at best) and with that contract? Ouch for them. It all started with him being a trade deadline superstar--the trade deadline is known (to me, anyway) as a time when okay players are made out to be superstars just because they're available and people want to think everyone out there is a franchise-changer who can elevate their playoff bubble team to a Cup.

I was just thinking about how we haven't had that epic multi-OT game in these playoffs yet.