Heroes of Hockeytown

The crowd is going nuts. Attaboy Pavel.

That did not ******* affect the play at all.

There's the whipping boy, giving up the puck in front of the goal...

Great hitting, great action.

The much-maligned Filppula with the feed.

T-T-T-TRAAAAIN

Ugh, Flipper misses the open net. Feels like it's not in the cards tonight. But there's still a period and change to go.

Hossa had the puck in the slot and tries a spinorama back pass instead of shooting it. Flipper did the same thing earlier. Someone's got to shoot it.

Unfortunately, it might have been Franzen's tip that knocked the puck towards Turco's glove instead of the empty net.

Oh geez, that's no goal.

That's gotta count.

Cleary trying to get the puck out there was a pretty good window into the Wings defense so far. He had the whole ice surface and teammates to his left and right, and he shot it directly into a Stars forward in the middle.

Marty made some amazing saves back there. But at least Hossa's got one. Great tip.

The Wings are clearly above clearing the zone on the PK.

Aaaand Ozzie's done.

Whoa, chill out man!! Well, that period went well. That first goal was just a bad break that you get when you take penalties, but that next goal was brutal coverage. Ozzie can't give up a short side goal like that when he's supposed to be squared up for the face off anyways.

Well, I'm sure the Barnes Bros. -- or whatever passes for them these days -- are ecstatic. It's been plenty long enough since I've seen a good fight, I'm sure Downey will stand and deliver. And there's certainly to be said about change just for the sake of change, even on a such a successful team. My main concern is that Stuart's absence will continue to put Meech and Lebda out there for longer than they can handle.

You're taking his words a little too literally, methinks. Anyways, this appears to be as close to a full disclosure as you'll get on this tiresome story.

Chris is a horrid, vile, despicable human being, but you'd get over it. Worse atrocities have been committed in the pursuit of Stanley.

Clearly, my memory is somewhat off. Thanks for the stats.

Here's the presser.

I hate to say "I remember reading somewhere" and not giving a source, but during the flurry of news during the All-Star break I remember reading somewhere that, back when they did the champs vs All-Stars format, those games ended up very close to a 50/50 split.

At the risk of opening up a can of worms, I'll defend both of those deals. The players were big, mean, solid D-men; the kind that the Wings have been elusively chasing since Konstantinov's injury. They both got hurt (one in more dubious fashion than the other) but that's got nothing to do with Kenny signing them to a deal. Although the Hatcher thing probably worked out for the Wings in the end, since the game changed and sort of left him in the dust (although I've got no idea how he's doing now in Philly). But again, hindsight and all that.

Consider the larger proportion of North American players and, by extension, All-Star worthy ones, versus Europeans. By nature of format star NA players get left out while more marginal European players make it. It was an interesting idea for a year to promote NHL participation in the Olympics, but too many good players got left out in my opinion, and they changed it back. I realize that in the format it's in now, marginal players still make it by virtue of the "represent all teams" policy and the fan-voting farce, the announced reserves (prior to injury) were still of high-quality and decently representative of the best the league has to offer. It seems more fair for good players to miss the ASG based on team equality than a very broad sense of nationality, to me. I don't have any desire to try and arrange a NA vs World roster for this years NHL but if you show me a good enough team I could be convinced (for all that that's worth ).

He had a bit of long-winded, rambling response, but the gist of his words was that he had the good fortune to play with Hank and be in the locker room with him so he knew the type of player he was, and so he was confident along with the rest of management that a 12 year deal was a good plan.