Heroes of Hockeytown

Team Russia's obsession with the clearly inferior Kozlov never ceases to amaze me. I guess our Koz is too old now, but they pulled they same stunt at the Olympics in Torino. Tsk tsk! Anyways, nice looking group. I wonder how they'll share Ovechkin and Kovalchuk between Malkin and Pavel?

I would have gave Giggy the nod over Kipper, because the latter only started 38 games in '04.

Having one NHL-caliber center or two makes a world of difference. Having Hank go down made the Wings go from being a .500 team to a just plain bad team.

That's an odd notion. I don't know why they'd be "unsettled" that the Wings aren't bothering them, in scrums or on the scoreboard. If they were expecting to have to deal with a goon squad and instead faced indifference, I'd say that'd be more of a relief than anything else.

It would be one thing if they lost two or three good players and their depth was tested and they pulled through, this is another matter entirely. While they are by no means out of the playoff picture, they are losing points now and those can't be recovered; their margin for error down the stretch with a healthier lineup will be significantly reduced. If they make it, then this crisis could be seen as a positive thing, but right now nobody knows what's going to happen.

They aren't going to win with this line up right now -- Datsyuk can't be expected to help put three on the board every night, not even Gretzky was capable of that. But he's not playing to the level he's capable of, and neither is Lidstrom (or Zetterberg, in times long passed), so it's a concern now as it was then. They could at least compete if the top line PP had any pop at all, but it's lifeless.

He was better in Jersey, luckier in Anaheim -- which is saying alot considering he won three Cups with the former.

The Wings management wants to take a look at Ritola before his contract is up or some damn thing, it doesn't really matter because they lose nothing by dropping Newbury and gain nothing by adding Ritola. Neither are players that have any impact. As for GMR, that's not really my bag but I like it when the team plays feisty, hits, clears the crease, that to me is tough hockey. They seemed to be rolling early on (even though they couldn't score) but fell off after the first period. I don't know why they lost their edge but they never really recovered.

They had a chance to get something out of this game early, but feared snipers Drew Miller and Justin Abdelkader (look out for his knuckle puck!) weren't able to convert. And yet, the Hawks weren't exactly skating all over the Wings and the big guns still had a chance to make something happen with power plays, but Datsyuk has been on and off seemingly at random and tonight he was way off; Lidstrom has been useless as a scoring threat all season. When the only two remaining elite players on your team aren't even playing up to an elite level, you take whatever small chance you have and reduce it to zero.

I'm happier with Franzen anyways -- although I suppose Hossa's got Mule beat when it comes to injury recovery time. Even in the Finals he made a few nice plays that resulted in goals (although some people think assists don't count), but I think there's a reasonable explanation for his being a superstar one year and just another guy the next. I'm sure people aren't happy with that or have very many fond memories of him because of that, but folks can do whatever they like, that's not really what I was posting about anyways. Alright then.

Well, anyways, they get Flip back and play a much weaker Columbus team after this, so there's reason for hope even after these lousy games.

It doesn't matter to me one iota what fans do or don't do with regards to booing, but as long as I'm here: Well, considering he spurned long-term deals to ink a one year contract on a great team to get HIMSELF a Cup he probably was giving it his all when it came down to the very end. He wasn't particularly good, but he was hurt -- he's pretty unfairly vilified for that. He turned down some like $90M contract from Edmonton to take the deal with Detroit. He ended up losing a lot of money out of the gambit considering what he's going to make in Chicago, and there was a lot of talk about how that would be the case so he was aware of it when he did it.

Change what? Shuffle the order of the fourth liners that are populating his lineup? The guy's hands are kind of tied in this situation.

Let's compromise, LetsGoPenWings.com

Perhaps they will activate the godmode third-period-deficit Wings of old and storm out of the gate to take a 4-1 lead after sitting back all night? Fingers crossed.

Having a 2nd PP unit should help, but the top PP unit has mostly been unchanged from the old standby with Nick and Rafalski on the blue line and Pavel, Hank, and Homer up front. Hank is out and Bert is in which isn't ideal but it's not terrible, and more ot the point the PP wasn't any better when Hank was there and Bert wasn't. The Wings can't skate their one NHL-caliber line the whole game; they need the PP to be an equalizer for them, and the first unit has been very disappointing in trying to achieve that.

Janik has stepped in and played 15 minutes of mostly error-free hockey a night so far, both at ES and on the PK.

Haha, oh wow.

Might be about time to make the call that Wings will never score again. In which case, it's been a fantastic 84 years of scoring goals, and the fans will miss them.

Eaves-Helm-Draper, Meech-Kindl That wouldn't be a PP unit on the Griffs.

At least he got his money's worth.

He's played only two minutes so far.

Wings played a good period (minus the Lebda/Hossa breakaway) but they're on borrowed time when they miss chances like Miller and Abdelkader had. For all that is good in this world, put something in the net, fellas.

Detroit ran the old "Pittsburgh 57" formation. They should probably take that out of the playbook.

Another Datsyuk-May sighting.