Heroes of Hockeytown

I can sympathize. He's used to having his breakout passes hit the sticks of the best players in the NHL, and now they're going to no-talent nobodies.

Even if he turns around and is never an NHL caliber goalie again, the Wings aren't tied to some Huet-style albatross, either in term or cap hit. It's low-risk, high-reward, and a solid deal for all parties involved.

Bert was the third shooter, but of course didn't need to be called upon. As for Cleary, hundreds of millions of years ago when our ancient forebearers first staggered onto the shore and drew breath with primitive lungs (you might also refer to this time as the 2006 preseason), I remember very distinctly that a then-tryout Dan Cleary scored in nearly all the of shootouts, which were being played after every game regardless of score to show off the new gimmick, and may have very well helped him get on the team. But it must have been expressly for that purpose, because he's never been good at it since -- 2 for 11 lifetime.

Homer with a nice screen on the PP tonight, Miller never saw a thing.

I wrote a bunch of crap about this an hour ago that indicates to me that the answer is "no."

It's been implied that the reason Kenny went after Nabokov was because he was uncertain that Oz was going to be able to return at all: Ozzie's seemingly imminent return would then preclude any movement for an additional goalie.

Keith is signed to one of those monstrous cap-busting deals like Hank or Franzen, with throw away years at the end to push the cap hit down. He's making $8M this year.

You're barking up the wrong tree, fella. I think Hudler is plenty talented and capable of producing without Datsyuk. And in fact already has this season and in prior seasons. What I wrote was that Pavs had a pretty significant hand in creating Homer's goal, whereas you seemed to think he didn't.

I think Homer has a hard time scoring that goal if it's not for Pavel stripping the puck from Benn, skating it all the way through neutral ice (avoiding Benn again) and then sliding it in between defenders to him in full stride.

Well, if it makes anyone feel any better, the Canucks and Flyers also lost today. A bad day to be top dog I guess.

The five game streak is the fluke and the one loss is the norm. The B's and Bolts are pretty good teams as well.

Christ these guys have no coordination with the sixth man.

A little late to be of any use, probably.

Turn out the lights, the party's over...

Bertuzzi was turnstiled on that rush, you'd have thought he had Datsyuk barreling down on him.

Dano has some sort of puck magnet on his stick, unreal. Or: going to the net is a good thing and I'm glad someone is doing it.

Puck was going in anyways, but nice work from the top line again.

It was probably over, but it was still right on the line, and the nearest referee was still at center ice so he probably couldn't get a good look at it.

Another failed clear. I swear this is Hockey 101 guys.

Nice power move by Abby.

They looked incredibly discombobulated on that PP.

Jimmy to the rescue here. He's been awesome lately.

Oh my goodness gracious, keep your sticks down for crying out loud.

Third or fourth game in a row Ericsson's visited the box? Seems that way.

Why didn't anyone cover for Rafalski? He was the only Wing up ice for like ten seconds.