RedWingsFanatic

I'm surprised people haven't mentioned the most shocking part of the first period: The fans have towels instead of pom-poms. Again, shocked this hasn't been brought up. Forget the goals and the penalties, this is what we should be discussing. I miss the poms.

Filppula was a monster in that first period. Great stuff from him. Parise just scored to put the Devils up 1-0.

It looks like there are about 7 people in the crowd.

Oh, Eddie... NHL on ESPN: Belfour Arrested

At ESPN.com, the NHL Rumor Central page reads like this: "Will Henrik Zetterberg return to the lineup before the start of the playoffs? Chances are looking slim for the Red Wings' star forward." Unfortunately, you have to be an ESPN.com Insider to read the entire article. Whether this is pure speculation or actually based on new information can't be determined unless one can read the whole thing, but I thought it was worth posting. Anybody have access? Edit: The thread title should say PLAYOFFS. Not sure how that got cut off. If a mod can change that, it would be greatly appreciated.

Say all you want about the economic conditions, it certainly is a valid point, but I really think the bigger issue here is what you stated as your #2 point: The Detroit Tigers. It's not a secret that the tide has turned from Hockeytown to Tigertown throughout the past year, and this plays into it big time. Not only are people saving their money to buy Tigers tickets (or still recovering from buying too many of them last season), there also just isn't the excitement surrounding the NHL playoffs this year. But, like I said earlier, it ebbs and flows. The Tigers own the city right now, but it might only take a Red Wings playoff push to make things change back again.

I mean, the playoff games will obviously sell out. But this is a far cry from the days when I would get on Ticketmaster and try to get first round tickets and be unsuccessful because all four games were sold out within a matter of minutes. It's ebb and flow, I guess.

There is no way the Wings would sell out a 35,000-seat arena for forty-two games a year. Not a chance.

I will say this: anybody who thinks that the Red Wings would be at the top of the league if they were in another division is a little delusional. I'm not saying they wouldn't be an elite team, but they probably wouldn't be leading the way for the President's Trophy. It's not fair to criticize the NBC announcers for pointing this out.

No, Ken and Mickey might be one of the best play-by-play/color pairs in all of regionalized sports. They're fantastic together. I really enjoyed the NBC guys today. They made a 4-0 3rd-period blowout very entertaining and worthwhile. They were honest, which I really appreciate. We need to see more of this kind of stuff.

I continue to applaud NBC for doing a really nice job with their NHL broadcasts. Sure, sometimes the commentators get a bit off track, but there wasn't really much to talk about. The production is very slick, and I really enjoyed that feature they did on Fedorov skating all over the ice. In regards to the actual game itself, blah.

Not to derail the conversation, but the real story here in these next few days may end up being the Anaheim Ducks. They started feverishly, and then severely cooled down, but since then, they have been steadily climbing the standings without many people noticing. As was mentioned earlier in the thread, they have leapfrogged Nashville and are now tied with the Wings (albeit with Detroit having a game in hand). Still, though, the race for the President's Trophy is most definitely a four-team race with Detroit, Buffalo, Nashville and Anaheim. The Ducks will be a scary playoff team, too.

Don Cherry absolutely butchering Ponikarovsky's name was the highlight of my night. Let's hope Dallas can hang on and give me another one.

I answered my own question.... sac - rum (sak-ruhm, sey-kruhm), noun, plural sac·ra "a bone resulting from the fusion of two or more vertebrae between the lumbar and the coccygeal regions, in humans being composed usually of five fused vertebrae and forming the posterior wall of the pelvis." Ouch.

What the hell is a sacrum?

I'm not really one to be very pessimistic, but it really seems like people on here give the Wings loads of credit no matter what happens. Folks, they just lost a game in which they had a three-goal lead with less than ten minutes to play. No excuses for that under any circumstances. You are allowed to be mad at the team from time to time. I'm not going to say that this is the beginning of the end, because that would be foolish. But, it certainly is disappointing.

I want to finish 4th.

Good Lord, Kris Draper seems like a great guy.

It's obvious the Preds are feeling the effects of having so many prominent guys out of the lineup, and the Wings are taking advantage of it. Huge win is ours if the Wings play another solid 20 minutes. HUGE.

None of the 12 forwards out there tonight deserve to be scratched for the playoffs. Besides maybe Kirk Maltby.

This is a great thread.

This is the biggest game of the year, folks. Not saying that the winner will go on to secure the division title, but it will go a long way in determining it. Anyway, I was just thinking about something. All season long, people have been saying that whoever takes the season series between Nashville and Detroit will take the division. Yet, with a win tonight, the Wings will go 6-1-1 against the Predators to finish the season, and the teams will still be tied at the top of the standings. The Wings may effectively take 13 out of a possible 16 points from Nashville, yet still finish second. Crazy.

I'm saddened to see that we have such bad music taste here at LGW.

Oh, I bet they do. I don't think they would have gotten this far in professional hockey without knowing something like that, you know?

The radio feed makes it seem like the Wings have come out to flying start.