Airborn

2nd sweep of the season; we're on a roll! Yeah, I know it's only the Orioles and Royals. The team's really coming together. Sheff looks like well Sheff, and Monroe and Casey are coming around too. All-in-all the offense is cooking right now. The only one not hitting well is Pudge. The Zumaya injury is scary; we have the depth in the bullpen with Mesa and Rodney to withstand an injury for a little while, but definitely not for any length of time: Especially considering how many close games we've played in thus far. Anyway - the Mariner's are coming to town for the next three. I like the matchup. We have Bonderman-Robertson-and Verlander starting. Ouch! We could easily be talking about a 10 game streak by the middle of the week.

He played good. I thought Olczyk was spot on when he called him the Wings best forward in the 1st period.

He played much better today. He said before the game to Pierre Mcguire that he felt pressure, because he new guys were dogging him in the media. I think he needed the kick in the pants.

I knew what you meant - I was just kidding.

Yeah - he also made bad pinches and gave up the blue line way too easy. I recognize he has great speed, but how fast do you think he's going to be on a bad ankle?

I think we'd promote Meech before doing that. In fact, Holland was just talking a couple of days ago about how good Meech has been for Grand Rapids. Personally, I thought Lebda played horrible in the Calgary series, so I wouldn't mind seeing Meech in over him.

Annoying: Are you crazy; it makes me umbelievably giddy, because I never thought he was capable of playing at half the level he's at.

Damn! I would expect to see Lebda back for game 6. After his injury, it was stated he could come back for the Stanley Cup finals, but probably no sooner.

This has been a couple good days for the Tigers, and I'm starting to see the light. The bullpen appears to be on track (finally), and Sheff is out of his slump. He, Ordonez, and Guillen are making it really tough on pitchers right now. Don't be surprised if the Tigers go on a run the next 10 to 15 games. I like the way we're playing right now.

Amen to that. I don't care if Hasek, Brodeur, and Roy were all in net at the same time, we weren't going to win tonight with the effort turned in. Hasek is the least of our problems.

Two excellent points. The Sharks won this game with their pressure. The Wings haven't been able to beat it all series. Once again, way too many turnovers. The Sharks plain wanted it more, and they deserved to win. As for Bertuzzi, he was by far the worse player on the ice for either team. What a s***ty effort on his part.

Joe's been a force in this series.

Let's make it a PP goal. I'm feeling a couple of those for us tonight.

He didn't even had to think about it either; his first reaction was to toss the pizza. I love the look of puzzlement from the guy who got hit. Did somebody just throw a slice of pizza at me!

I must have laughed for 5 minutes straight. Thanks for posting this!

It'll be intersting to see if shifting to the Shark Tank actually helps us. There was a definite lack of concentration in the 1st period of games 1 and 2. I like Bertuzzi for a good game tonight.

Some nastiness brewing tonight. Tejada overeacts to a couple inside pitches, causing the benches to cleared, but no punches are thrown. The funniest part to this was Zumaya. He came charging out of the bullpen like someone had just kicked his grandma down a flight of steps. You know it's bad when Rod Allen thinks you need to settle down! Also, I loved how Sheff took his medicine when Cabrerra plunked him (clearly on purpose). Then in his next AB, drilled a 2-run homer.

Marinelli would probably tell you there's a world of difference, because Stanton didn't have the offield issues that Smoker did. Stanton wouldn't have been drafted by the Lions if he did, because Marinelli puts so much emphasis on character.

It might involve getting Rogers back as soon as possible. I saw this article today on MLive. Apparently Kenny has added Zumaya to the list of guys he's mentoriing... http://blog.mlive.com/cutoffman/2007/04/re...lps_zumaya.html It's unbelievable how much he means to the pitching staff. Last year a week didn't go by without someone crediting him for turning something around in their game. Also, every time they pan to the dugout, there's a bunch of guys huddled around him picking his brain. I can't remember a more important player from a mentoring standpoint than Rogers.

Apparently Alexander is a Jon Barry guy. He fell in love with him after watching tape from the Fiesta Bowl. Overall, I think the Lions did OK. I would have been happier if we had been able to trade Johnson for a bunch of picks, but the offers weren't there, so we did the only sensible thing and took the best player. We didn't get much help for this year on defense, which is disappointing, but we did grab two players (Stanton and Alma-Francis) who could be huge steals. What I like best about these two is they clearly have the talent, they just need the coaching. It ceratinly helps that the Lions have two of the best at their respective postions in Marinelli and Martz. Edit: 2nd straight year of drafting all character guys. Should be interesting to see if this starts having an impact.

David Harris isn't a good fit for the Tampa 2, because he's a big guy who struggles in coverage. He's a much better fit for the 3-4 system the Jets run. I like Harris a lot, but you can't fit a square peg into a round hole. Here's why I like the Alama-Francis pick. We got a guy that has as much talent as any Defensive lineman in the draft. The knock on him is that he's not polished, because he's only played for 4 years. Now he's going to be coached by the best Defensive Line Coach (Marinelli) in the NFL. To me, that's a good pick.

Huge win today. Hopefully this helps Inge get on track. I'm happy we won, but even happier how we did it. The game was won because 1-9, we had great ABs, making Santana work for every out. He had to throw close to 120 pitches to get through only 6 innings. Also, the bullpen finally came through in a close game. THANK THE HEAVENS!

I love the Stanton pick and I'm salivating over what Martz can do with this kid. I was worried we wouldn't pick him, since we took offense in the 1st round. Good decision. Look at it this way. The only thing seperating Stanton and Quinn was coaching. Quinn's coaching is probably going to get worse from here; Stanton's gets exponentially better. I'm still not sold on the Johnson pick, but hopefully he proves me wrong by catching 80 balls for 1,500 years. He better, because our defense is going to be horrible!

The game can't be defined purely by statistics though. The Wings put some hits on today that rocked people (Lilja, Franzen, and a couple others). Whereas, in Game 1, I don't remember a single big hit.

This wasn't Tuzzi's best game, but I do think he's going to get it together and will be a force if we keep him on the top line. All I can say is thank god his dumb penalty didn't cost us. I don't even want to think of how many "Bertuzzi Sucks" threads there would be right now. No doubt about it. Cleary is the catalyst for this team right now.