Dabura

I decided I needed to watch this game, 3-1 deficit or not, and I tuned in just in time to catch Bert's goal! FREIGHT TRAIN HAS ARRIVED, MOTHERf***ERS! And God I love Daniel Cleary. Is it a full moon tonight?

K, I was going to watch this game instead of writing a paper. I think I'll write the paper.

PP sure would be nice right now.

Yeah, this really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

Things just have to settle down, then the Wings will take control.

Lame. We'll get it back.

Bah.

Wings smell blood. They clearly want to put this away early.

Can you say 70s-style hockey? This is exciting.

Personally, I'm not expecting a dropoff in physicality. I think they'll do what they did in game 2 and open things up with "statement hits" on our stars to let it be known they've come to play.

People shouldn't be allowed to pick Nick. Too safe.

Agreed. The Ducks are more physical in the sense that that's a big part of their game that they can't really do without. The Wings can certainly dish it out, but it's not an absolutely essential part of their plan of attack most nights, IMO.

Good call. Nice prelude to Homer, eh? I met him at a golf tournament a few years back. Really cool guy. It was weird seeing people stand behind him and not slash the back of his legs and cross-check him in the back with their clubs.

What better guy to kill the trend than Nick?

I think with Pronger out, the Wings will look to make a lot of passes to pinchers for odd-man rushes. Pronger knows his limitations, which means he has a tendency to hang back a bit so as not to get burned by someone flying up the ice. Without that body hanging back, the speedsters are going to have more room rushing through neutral ice -- guys like Dats, Hank and Flip. I'll go with Zetterberg.

64-0 (Lilja)

No way does Pronger do it if Kocur and Vladdy are on the team. No way in hell.

Kocur was a beast. Quality guy too.

I know a lot of you aren't exactly keen on Bob McKenzie, but he wrote a short reaction piece about the Pronger hit last night and I think he hit on a great point. As far as points go, it's as obvious as they come, but he believes -- and I agree -- that it's been somewhat overshadowed by the Pronger debacle: The Detroit Red Wings just destroyed the Anaheim Ducks. And in the Ducks' own building, no less! (This is where I take over for Bob and run with his implications.) Should the Wings win the next game and go on to take the series, there will be no shortage of people talking about how the Pronger hit and resulting suspension changed everything. But you know what? Last night the Wings silenced every remaining critic, and they did it with such clarity and emphatic purpose that, regardless of which team you root for in the NHL, you have to admit that it was rather beautiful (especially for the Wings community, of course). If that game were to be summed up in one word, that word would be "NO." As in, "They're soft." "NO." Going into game 3, I think the most popular knock against the Wings was that they're only in this series because they know how to play opportunistic hockey, reacting to the other team's mistakes rather than really opposing the opposition. I've got a few Sens fan friends and they all seemed to agree after game 2 that the Wings simply don't have the ability to dominate teams like the Ducks and Sens through sheer will and hard work, and that this would be their downfall. After game 2's bitter end, that notion didn't seem like all that much of a stretch. But then game 3 happened. Now the hockey world knows that this Wings team is no longer residing in the realm of potential; no longer "can" the Wings flat-out abuse a Cup favorite -- they just did. Fans of the Sens, Sabres, and Ducks -- you just saw the monster wake up and kill for the first time these playoffs. Pray for the sake of your respective teams that it doesn't wake up again.

Well, this should be interesting.

That's the thing, though: It's been in the team, but I think game 3 was the first game of these playoffs in which it was fully put on display without qualifiers or nagging questions like "OK, but can Dom be consistent?" The blowouts in the first round were great, but they weren't perfect games like this one, and they came against a much less capable foe. The second round? I don't think the Wings played a single 60-minute game the entire series. Basically, we all knew the pieces were there, but it wasn't until this last game that they all truly came together. I mean, you know they played a hell of a game when the Versus crew has nothing negative to say about them after a game.

OK, I obviously did a really bad job of delineating things in my first post. 1. Bob simply said the Pronger incident is sort of overshadowing the big story of game 3, which is that the Wings owned the Ducks, which was huge for the Wings for many obvious reasons. 2. The rest is me.

Disclaimer: BOB DIDN'T WRITE WHAT'S IN MY FIRST POST. lol. I don't want to be accused of misrepresenting him.

Just to be clear, he didn't say anything about respect. The post is basically me "extending" his brief comments. I do think you could make a case for this being the second or third time we've seen the team play like this during this run, but the circumstances are extra special in this case, methinks. The Flames are one thing. The Ducks? Quite another. IMHO.

O. F. T.