Heroes of Hockeytown

Versus guys got it right... Salei went chasing. We all know what happens when your Dman does that.

Well, here we go. Twenty minutes to extend the season.

Well if they could play like that for 60 minutes every night they'd never lose. Unfortunately they're not just playing against air...

Hey, Jiri... behind you.

I want a Nick trick!

Yeah. Penalty was at 16:05, goal at 18:01.

It's definitely not just you. Maybe it's his injury, but there have been no sightings of Franzen barging through traffic to the net in these playoffs.

And the shame of it is, for the second consecutive year it appears the Wings were one shot away from a tie series leaving Detroit. Oh well, nothing can be done about that now. If nothing else I hope this game (and hopefully next games) convince Nick to give it another year. What a beast!

Nick has been a ******* predator in this series. I've never seen him appear so often in the slot to bash pucks home.

I'll tell you what, even if some of the other Wings haven't been great in this series, Nick has brought his A-game for all four games so far. Never retire Nick!

Great outlet pass from Rafalski.

Niemi continues to be far better than he has ever been in his life in this series.

I guess Abdelkader's stick just took off on its own.

Yeah, if this is going to be Nick's last game then I don't want it to be called by these clowns. Of course, there's an easy solution to that problem: win!

Any other time of the year, you can win or lose a game, and there will be a tomorrow. Not so for the Wings. And just as well! Take out that "lose" option! What a s***ty option, why is that in there anyways? Only one thing left to do now then, fellas...

I don't normally like to sit here and play armchair coach, but to me there were a lot of choices Mike made in this series that hurt the team. Not using Nick on the PK is the obvious one, when the PK is a disaster zone. Maybe Nick can't handle big minutes any more, but in a do-or-die type game like yesterday's was, I think he'd have survived. The D pairings still drive me nuts. I can't remember the reason he went away from Nick-Raf anymore, but for sure Ericsson-Rafalski don't compliment each other at all, hugely the opposite, and have no business being on the ice together. And he altogether didn't mess with the lines enough, which is doubly strange because he loves to mess with the lines. Blow up that ineffective third line and put Flip and Hudler on Pav/Hank's wing. Doesn't he remember in '09 how he caught lightning in a bottle against Anaheim when he put together Franzen-Flip-Hossa? Mix it up, man! Or are we really going to sit around and continue to watch Datsyuk do all the heavy lifting?

Isn't it amazing how two people can watch the same event and come to opposite conclusions? I thought Flip's line was far and away the Wings' or either teams' worst last night. They didn't generate any offense and in fact spent much of their time pinned in their D zone. On the PP Flip and Huds were also a mess. I was begging for Mike to double-shift Pavel's unit on the OT PP.

Rafalski struggles here and there with weird turnovers and he's not great at going into corners and winning battles there, but all in all you can't complain. It was always part of the tradeoff that he would be a bit past his expiration date by the time his contract was up in order to get him at a discount. He still contributes a lot offensively, plays plenty of minutes, and has a good stick.

If Setoguchi's first goal and Ferriero's OT winner are any indication, the boys need to head back to the arcade and brush up on their pinball.

Might be time to end the three scoring lines experiment. They didn't have three scoring lines when they won in '08, and it worked in '09 when they had an incredible roster, but with today's players it amounts to Flip + spare parts and that doesn't seem to work. It's just way easier to assemble two good checking/grinding lines than three scoring lines. And it also leaves fewer players mis-cast in scoring roles where they shouldn't be (Abdelkader) or checking roles (where Hudler or Homer occasionally found themselves).

They could try taking his stick away. Or maybe just make the blade really, really heavy.

Probably more to do with the Sharks clinging to a lead than anything else.

Sports are ******* dumb, I'm gonna take up knitting.

The last time the Wings scored late and won in OT... against these very same Sharks in '07. <==== Of course they don't have this beautiful man any more. I believe someone else can step up to the plate.

What the f***? Why didn't Eager get two for doing the same s***? Better yet, why is there any call at all? What a joke.