aarond

I'm not sure if this is kosher or not, but I saw the following obnoxious comment on the Ducks forum:



To summarize, Pronger opening up Homer's forehead on a "questionable" hit from behind into the boards is not suspension worthy.  Hasek's waterbottle is the real crime here.  

I miss the Wings-Leafs rivalry.

I knew the Sharks were better than their record before this series started.  But now that we're four games in, this team is even better than I thought they were.  Their forecheck is absolutely brutal.  It takes everything the Wings have just to clear the zone sometimes.  Their top line is fierce.  Probably the best line the league.  So I knew these guys weren't your average 5 seed, but when these guys are on, they look like the best team in the league.  So why did they finish so low?

It's amuzing how an inch here or an inch there in these games can determine the general theme of the posts we see after each game.  For example, if those two post-kissers that Schneider had in game three are an inch in the other direction, the Wings win game 3 and everybody would have come on here lauding their play, saying things like "they played great," "they played with heart," "they played like they wanted it," "they outplayed 'em," etc.  But since those two pucks didn't go our way, we saw lots of "they got embarassed," "they got totally dominated," "they got completely outplayed," "they didn't show up."  The same thing happened tonight.  The Wings fell behind 2 goals, one of them very flukey, and with another dinged post, and there were a bunch of people dogging their effort again (check out pages 3 through 7 of the game thread to see what I mean).  Then they come back with a couple of breaks in their favor (the Lang goal was soft, and Holmer got kinda lucky to make the play he made), and the evaluation of the game changes entirely.   All because of a few inches.  Bottom line is this (and I've been saying this over and over again for the last two weeks but some just can't get it through their heads): just because the Wings are losing, just because they make a mistake and the puck winds up in the net, doesn't automatically mean that they aren't trying 110%, aren't playing hard, aren't playing with "heart," or any other sophmoric nonsense.  It doesn't even mean they are playing poorly.  Hockey is such a fine game and it's pretty flukey at times.  Don't sell the Wings down the river just because a few things don't bounce their way from time to time.


btw-to the knee-jerk negativists, doesn't the other team factor into your analysis?  Do the Sharks deserve any credit for the bad things that have happened to Detroit in this series, or is it all because Detroit didn't "play with heart" or didn't "want it"?  Are the Sharks not a hell of a hockey team?  Do they not have one of the most oppresive forechecks in the league?  Is that top line not the most dynamic and frightening line in the NHL?

After the wings lost game 4, there were droves of Wings fans ripping the team's effort, predicting the Wings' demise in this series, etc.  Why?  Because they had just lost the second one-goal game on the road to one of the toughest home teams the NHL had this season.  It was completely irrational and completely unjustified.  Are you all embarassed for yourselves now?  The Wings completely smothered the Flames in games one two, then they lost two very close, very hotly contested games on the road to a very good home team.  The balance of the series was still in favor of Detroit.  And after games 5 and 6, there is absolutely no doubt that Detroit was far better than Calgary.  But hockey is a flukey sport.  A bounce of the puck here or there can make such a drastic difference in the outcome of a game, and that confuses fans.  After a loss, you get fans coming on here pushing the usual, tired cliches: they didn't want it badly enough; they're getting 'outworked'; they're getting outplayed; they have no heart; they're not tough enough; etc. and so forth.  It's ridiculous.  With a bounce of the puck this way or that, the score after game 4 of the series could have been 4-0 in favor of Detroit just as easily as it was 2-2.  Those were close games.  A couple breaks our way, and we could have won either one of them or both.  But I said it after game 4: there are a ton of fickle Wings fans.  They'll jump off the bandwagon at the first hint of adversity.