Heroes of Hockeytown

He'll score seven goals on us next time we play.

Hahahahaha! Well done.

WCF should put all of those resources solely towards kidnapping Bill Parcells. That's nine or ten wins right there.

Obvious overreaction is obvious.

Kind of? I remember Hudler was the talk of the Internets in 2004 when Dave Lewis was running the show. How did it take so long to get this guy into the line up? I love the guy, but Mike has downright mismanaged the Hudler situation, right up until Hudler made it so he was impossible to ignore.

Don't short-change the Train! He's eyeing a Gordie Howe hat trick tonight.

I hate to nitpick, but... Which is in and of itself quite a dubious stat considering: Scoring does not scale linearly with ice time. Hudler plays a larger proportion of his minutes on the power play than Datsyuk, who in turn receives more ice time in situations were it's harder to score -- ES and PK -- watering down his "points per minute." Datsyuk is the Wings' top threat (real or imagined) and more regularly faces the attention of the oppositions top defensive players.

And yet here they are within spitting distance of the best record in the league... Seriously, what's the matter with you? You are so obviously spoiled by the Wings' success that you take a handful of regular season losses personally. What's more, you make a ridiculous argument for the B's; their losses are "average" and Detroit's losses are "letdowns." Uhh, they're all worth zero points aren't they?

I'd really like to defend these guys, but I can't. The fourth line is, in my opinion, the Red Wings biggest and most glaring weakness looking forward. My heart sinks every time they take the ice, almost guaranteed to get trapped in the defensive zone and give up a goal or a penalty. Remember the days when they were our crack shutdown line and could chip in offensively, too? Those days are long gone. I don't even care about scoring, if they could just spell our productive players for a handful of minutes a night and not be huge liabilities out there it'd be just fine. Honestly, the only reason Kopecky is out there is because he has a pulse. He's the new and improved Devereaux. Hell, give me 450 grand a year and I can hang out in my own zone for a few minutes a night and get nothing done.

While this may be the the spawn of an overreaction to a mundane season loss, it is a valid point. The Wings are just not good four aside. I don't know what it is that makes their mastery of playing the game at full strength turn around and become ineffective when you subtract a skater, but their system or style or mentality is obviously tailored to having three forwards up and not two. I can agree that shortening the bench in these situations is probably a step in the right direction. Fourth liners should see zero four on four time, and poor or average skaters like Homer and Sammy should be kept off the ice if possible as well.

You guys need to cool your jets. The team played poorly tonight, yes, and it's just one game, that came after the Wings just ran off six straight wins and eight of ten... They were due for an off-night, and there it was.

After reeling off six straight dominating wins, I think we can cut the guys some slack... It's a shame though, because Ozzie deserved better. The Wings didn't, though, and were definitely out played for 40+ minutes tonight. I don't know why they collapsed back into a defensive shell and didn't try to go out and win it after Datsyuk scored an amazing goal, but they didn't. They sat back and that's a recipe for disaster every time.

What a crazy game.

And suddenly, we still have the chance to end this one in regulation.

Play to win, don't play to not lose, Wings...

The Wings decided they'd rather hang on for dear life after Pavel's goal then go out and win this thing. This is a poor strategy.

He held onto the puck for an extra second to avoid Pavel, no call. :nonono:

Wings have to stop hanging on. There's still six goddamn minutes left, play hockey!!!

Whooaaaaa

Pavel is the best damn player in the league.

Well played, Mr. Zetterberg.

Obviously a tale of two periods... Lots of weird goals bouncing in off guys and through screens and all other manners of nonsense. But Ozzie has stood tall, and I'll give Turco his due for stopping Hossa towards the end and playing well in general too. Given the opportunity to recover from the Star's furious second period push, I think the Wings will come out in the third, dictate play, and ultimately win. On an unrelated note, that "Sporting Hour With Some Dbag" commercial with the meat and the dogs might be the most rigoddamndiculous thing I've ever seen. Great job, Versus.

Just looks like ye olde Pain Train to me.

I feel for Vinny, but am leery of changing the balance of power in the NHL. Only the Wings should get to have so many great scorers.

The Detroit Red Wings are good, and not bad.