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Schneider has a sore right elbow. DTD. Lidstrom is playing.

I went out to hockeydb and checked playoff results since the league expanded the playoffs and Carolina has the most losses of any Stanley Cup Champion with 9. I also found that the 76 Canadiens went 12-1. That season each division champ got a first round bye. Of course the all time record for fewest playoff losses is still the 52 Red Wings with 0.

I don't know about teams that won it but the 1997 Flyers had 11 losses. *Edit* Damn, Toby beat me to the punch. Last year Carolina went 16-9. That's going to be hard to beat.

At least Lidstrom's back. Go Wings! Bury the Blow Jackets!!!

MLive is reporting that he's still not ready.

FOX2 is WJBK in Detroit and WXSP in Grand Rapids. FSN is carrying the Pistons game.

I'm getting a little concerned about Detroit's lack of scoring lately. They haven't scored 3 or more goals in a game in two weeks. They better work on that or sooner or later it will bite them in the ass.

It looks like everyone clinched last night. Vancouver, Dallas, San Jose, and Minnesota are in. Nashville, Detroit, and Anaheim already had their ticket. And every division race is so close that Detroit could end up playing anyone but Nashville in the first round. The current division leaders all have leads of two points or less. Central Nashville 105 Detroit 103 Northwest Vancouver 99 Minnesota 98 Pacific Anaheim 100 Dallas 98 San Jose 98 What a clusterf@ck.

Crap! You're right. How did I miss that? Still, they are 1-12-1 since February 23 and they got shut out by Nashville 4-0 last Saturday. I'm not too hopeful.

No, it means they suck.

The Red Wings had 8 shootouts in the first 76 games, roughly one in every 10. I hope we don't go to another. Our record (2-6) is craptacular.

They probably won't even get the chance. There's only 6 regular season games left and the odds are none of those games goes to a shootout. After that it doesn't matter since they don't use shootouts in the playoffs.

Losing Pronger transformed them from a Stanley Cup finalist into a team struggling to make the playoffs. Losing Smyth turned them into a joke. Their last win was over a month ago.

That Modano guy is pretty good too... Modano Sets Record

So if the Storm fold, who is going to be the Red Wings new minor league affiliate?

Babcock could put Lilja on the shootout but he'd probably turn the puck over at the blue line.

Five dollar lower bowl tickets are back this Wednesday against the Admirals. They're nice seats too. Mine were 7 rows off the ice right on the goal line. March Ticket Offer

The Griffins are having a ticket special where you can get lower bowl seats for $5 each. Offer is good on games against Syracuse tonight and on February 21. Just print the coupon from the link below and redeem it at the Griffins ticket sales window. February Ticket Offer

There's a goalie who plays out at the Patterson Ice Arena in Grand Rapids who is a paraplegic. He's not the best goalie in the league but not the worst either.

I could care less about the Ducks game as long as we beat the Predators on Thursday. Any points tonight are a bonus. One thing to keep in mind is Detroit has a seven game winning streak against the Ducks at JLA.

I'm shocked MSU got this far. Still, it was a nice surprise this weekend. Both games were on Comcast Local but only on tape delay so I avoided the local news, sports channels, radio, and newspaper so I wouldn't hear the scores and watched the games like they were live. In the opener, BU came out fast and scored the early goal but the Spartans pretty much dominated the rest of the game. I wasn't that surprised since BU has played hot and cold all season and they just gave up after the Spartans took the lead. The Irish game was the big surprise. Lerg was awesome. I'm not sure how he kept some of those pucks out of the net. The 09 line (Kennedy, Crowder, Abdelkader) played some of their best hockey of the year and got that game winner on hard work alone. But the biggest reason the Spartans won this one is they beat the Irish at their own game. All season long ND jumped out to an early lead then clamped down the defense. Instead it was the Spartans that jumped ahead and held on for the win. ND wasn't built to play a catch up game and it cost them. Now it's on to St. Louis.

Post of the week! Seriously, if Illich wants to solve the empty seat problem he should tell the ushers to give any empty lower bowl seats to the SRO crowd after the first period.

What pisses me off the most is that our goalies and defense played well enough to win at least two of these games. And it's not like they faced a good defense last night. Half their defensemen are on the IR. Their best guy on the blue line is a converted forward. Their best regular defensemen is Anders Eriksson. Detroit should have put up seven goals on these guys, not one.

I was thinking about it until I saw the ticket prices. $35 each is a little out of my price range. I could go to seven Griffins games for $35.

Don't worry. The Sherwood 5030 is still one of the best selling sticks on the market.