Big Red Machine

I’m still wrestling with how I feel about this.  Oh, irritated that we lost, for sure, but am I less annoyed because we came back from a 0-4 hole to tie?  Or am I just as pissed as I would be usually, given the train wreck that was the first and second periods?  And maybe I’m let down that we couldn’t get it done in the post-game skills competition.

Goals were as follows:
Detroit: Darren Helm (Filppula, Stuart); Henrik Zetterberg (Kronwall, Datsyuk); Jonathan Ericsson (Draper, Eaves); Todd Bertuzzi (Datsyuk); Patrick Eaves (Helm, Ericsson)
Edmonton: Jean-Francois Jacques (Brule, O’Sullivan); Dustin Penner (Horcoff, Hemsky); Hemsky (pp; Penner, Horcoff); Hemsky (Penner); Horcoff (pp; Grebeshkov, Penner)
Shootout: EDM: Patrick O’Sullivan

• Ken Daniels commented on an interesting tradition that I was unaware of.  If the Red Wings win, their jerseys will be hanging in their lockers with front facing.  If they lose, they’ll be turned around so the names and numbers face out.  It’s part of the “win as a team, lose as an individual” mentality.
• We knew this was going to be a stressful game when Edmonton scored on Jimmy 0:42 seconds into the first period.  Gee, where have we seen this before?
• There were not a ton of penalties in this game.  Detroit only had 3 power plays total, two of them back to back, and utterly failed to convert any of them.  The PP is clicking along at 24%, which is somehow good for 9th in the league right now.  (Oddly, it’s Toronto of all teams who are leading the league in converting, at 30.8%)
• Motown Wings, A2Y, and Bingo Bango all commented before the game that this is the exact type of scenario that would lead to a Red Wings loss.  Edmonton got shutout their previous two games (v. Colorado and Vancouver), are ravaged by the flu (both swine and garden variety), and yet come out with guns blazing to pop 5 goals in 2 periods.  Of course.  Sadly, we all saw this coming a mile away.
• I pretty much stopped watching at the middle of the first, and mostly through the second, and opted to talk to my mother on the phone, instead.
• It was nice to see Darren Helm finally get his first regular season goal, though.  He also posted an assist and ended the game +3 (and the game’s second star).  He sort of pulled a Maltby, in that he came back on fire after being a healthy scratch.  I still question the move because Helm hasn’t gotten lazy like Malts does occasionally, but if this is the result, I’m not going to argue.  Helm was one of the best players on the ice.
• As was Patrick Eaves.  He also potted his first goal as a Red Wing, got an assist, and was also +3.  He and Helm have some serious wheels on them, and make for a very energetic line.
• Jimmy scrambles too much, and needs to stop wandering from the crease.  It reminds me of Hasek, only without the innate, raw, ridiculous ability to make the save no matter what.  I am utterly unsold on him to be a solid backup for Osgood.  I don’t know how long they’ll allow him before giving Larsson a look, but I hope it’s not long.
• One good thing that happened was that as soon as I asked when Bertuzzi was going to get his due and score, he scored.
• Dan Cleary’s been stuck on 99 goals, and am not surprised that he’s a little snakebit in terms of getting his 100th.  I just hope he does it soon, because once he gets over it, he should be producing a bit more.
• I can’t even begin to start counting how many posts we’ve hit this season so far.  It’s absurd.
• I get that Pavel and Z were thinking that Khabibulin was going to read their dekes in the shootout, but I’m not sure if that warrants just shooting it straight at him… sure, goalies know that Pav’s going to deke, but he’s so good at it he can usually manage to fool them anyway.
• Overall, this game was ridiculous.  Yet another early deficit, only to come roaring back in the third.  I will say I prefer the trend of having a dominant third period as opposed to falling asleep, but I dislike getting to that point in the first place.  I’m tired of watching them get blown out early because they’re not awake yet.
• Lastly, when it rains, it friggin’ pours.  Filppula got hit by Gilbert Brule in the second period and wound up with a broken wrist, meaning he’ll be out for 6-8 weeks.  Just what we need, another major injury.

Red Wings won!  Red Wings won!  If we’re this excited about a win in October, can you imagine what Leafs fans felt like the other day when they won their first of the season?

Goals were as follows:
Detroit: Tomas Holmstrom (Zetterberg, Datsyuk); Niklas Kronwall (unassisted); Pavel Datsyuk (Williams, Ericsson); Pavel Datsyuk (pp; Rafalski, Holmstrom); Jason Williams (pp; Filppula, Bertuzzi)
Vancouver: Henrik Sedin (Samuelsson, Bieksa); Christian Ehrhoff (Kesler, Bieksa); Mathieu Schneider (pp; H. Sedin, Bieksa); Henrik Sedin (pp; Edler, Kesler)

General thoughts:

• Awfully scary moment in the second period when Canucks’ Ryan Johnson lost an edge trying to side-step Lidstrom and went crashing into the boards.  Something you never want to see happen.  He was carted off on a stretcher, and reports say that he’s doing ok.
• Osgood let in a goal 30 seconds into the game.  Nikolai Khabibulin did something similar tonight against Colorado, and let in one 25 seconds into the game.  Oz didn’t do himself any favors by letting in another one around the 7 minute mark, which got him yanked.  Quite frankly, I can’t recall a time in which I’ve ever seen Oz have that atrocious of a start.  It was like he wasn’t mentally even in the building.
• Jimmy Howard did great, seeing as he wasn’t expecting to play almost a full game tonight.  Should have had the goal from Schneider, I thought.  The Sedin goal was kind of a gimme for the Canucks because it was on a 5-on-3.
• Speaking of, is it horrible that I just knew that goal was coming?
• I missed the play that led to the Holmstrom goal because my internet crapped right at that moment, but it looked like a gorgeous tic-tac-toe on the replay, courtesy of the Flying Circus.
• Jimmy needs to stop flopping around in the crease like a fish out of water after he makes a save.  It makes me nervous.  I’m anxious enough when he has to make a save, I don’t need to see him pull out the snow angel, too.
• Brad May had a nice fight against Tanner Glass, who sort of ran Brad Stuart into the boards.  It was an odd play, and Stuart went down after the hit, but I couldn’t see anything egregious.
• Bertuzzi had some good chances again, and is continuing to play well defensively.
• Filppula had yet another very good game.
• Absolutely beautiful goal by Pavel in which he undressed Ehrhoff and whacked the puck in while falling.  And he later decided on the power play that he was just going to end this, and ripped it.  A great time for him to turn it on and lead the Wings to the win (and good for my fantasy team, too).
• Zetterberg had a great breakaway chance in the first, but made little to no attempt to deke and basically shot it straight at Luongo.
• Which, incidentally, is how I feel a lot of shots have been going recently.  Maybe part of it’s playing against hot goalies, but it seems like shots have been sort of weak, and not difficult.  The Red Wings outshot Vancouver 42 to 26, and torched Colorado 49 to 23 on Saturday, but they need to put better quality shots on net as well.
• I felt exhausted by the time the game was over from yelling at the TV, and being nervous.  What a relief to get the win.
• Elliott Friedman from HNiC pondered on Twitter if Babcock would give Jimmy a run after this.  I think at most he’ll let Jimmy start in Edmonton as planned, but I would think he wants to get Oz back in a game and into a groove.
• Also from Elliott, Ladislav Smid from the Oilers apparently has swine flu.  Guess where we’re headed next?

Update before tonight’s game…

Helm’s a healthy scratch.

Per Chris McCosky of the DetNews:

“Anytime you miss training camp, especially when you are a kid, it’s tough,” Babcock said. “Helm, on this team in my opinion, should be pushing for third-line center, not battling to be the fourth-line center.

“So, he’s going to get an opportunity to watch (tonight). I talked to him about it and he’s going to be fired up to come back. Sometimes just a shot over the bow is a good reminder for guys.”

Babcock didn’t want to make it sound like he’s making Helm a scapegoat for the team’s slow start.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “Helmer’s been fine. He’s not at the level I am used to having him, but there’s a lot of guys that could be accused of that.”

With 5 games played, Helm’s 0-1-1 and a -1.  I’m not thrilled at the idea of an energy guy like Helm being scratched.  I don’t think he’s ever going to pot a lot of goals, so it’s hard to judge him by points alone.  Admittedly, he hasn’t been quite as noticeable, crashing and banging around like he usually does, and like Babcock said, maybe he just needs a little extra time to get where he needs to be after missing training camp with an injury.

Apologies for having gone AWOL for a short while.  Real life has gotten very busy as of late, compounded with some horrific losses by the Red Wings, and I’ve not had much time (or desire, to be perfectly honest) to blog.

Looks like there are some line changes for tonight’s game against the Canucks–Filppula’s going to pivot Cleary and Bertuzzi on the second line, which drops Leino and Williams down to 3rd with Draper:

Datsyuk-Zetterberg-Holmstrom
Bertuzzi-Filppula-Cleary
Leino-Draper-Williams
May-Helm-Maltby (Abdelkader working in).

Henrik Zetterberg is one up on Samuelsson in terms of playing against him, and would like to keep his advantage.  Some motivation for Z, perhaps?  As long as the team puts in 60 minutes of effort and comes out with a win, Z can do whatever he wants.

While I’m talking about Vancouver (terrific segue, I know), I read this bit the other day by David Staple at The Cult of Hockey entitled, “A Twit Move by Ryan Kesler.”  Basically, Staples complains about Kesler’s actions the other night against the Oilers, when he was stopped/tripped up on a breakaway, and proceeded to snap his stick in half.  Look, sure it’s a little childish of him to do that, but Kesler is just showing his frustration that he was tripped up on the play, and wasn’t awarded a power play, or a penalty shot.  It’s a passionate sport, and gee, what a shame to see a player expressing some of that passion and emotion.

Now, let’s hope the Red Wings can show some drive tonight against Vancouver.  If it takes breaking sticks, then so be it… remind us fans that damnit, you’re still pissed about last year, and you want to win.

Vancouver Province:

Samuelsson’s experience showed Wednesday in the 3-2 win over the Blackhawks. The night may have belonged to Roberto Luongo’s saves and Willie Mitchell’s hit, but it was Samuelsson who won it.

…In the third, Samuelsson deftly picked off a brainless Brian Campbell drop pass which he saw coming from Kalamazoo. He said he’s played Chicago “a million times” and knew the antics Campbell can get up to in his own end. With that takeaway, Samuelsson did what he’s done so well this year — he shot. It was his 41st shot of the season, good at that time for second place in the NHL, trailing only Alex Ovechkin.

I find this amusing firstly due to the slight Brian Campbell jab.  Campbell always goes for the slick move rather than the smart play, which is absolutely stupid to do in your own zone.  And secondly the fact that Samuelsson is second in shots in the league with 41.  The phrase “wildly inaccurate” always come to mind with Samuelsson, and if they haven’t already, Canucks fans better get accustomed to hearing announcers say “and Samuelsson shoots it just wide.”

Well that was… unsettling.  Matt over at On The Wings and George at Snapshots pretty much sum up exactly how I feel about last night’s game.

Goals were as follows:
Detroit – Justin Abdelkader (Helm); Todd Bertuzzi (pp; Zetterberg, Cleary); Filppula (Williams, Leino)
Colorado – Cody McLeod (O’Reilly); Matt Duchene (Clark); Cody McLeod (O’Reilly, Galiardi)
Shootout – DET: Justin Williams; COL: Marek Svatos, Milan Hejduk

More can be read on my Twitter.  Due to an oddity in the scheduling this year, the Red Wings won’t be playing again until Thursday, in Phoenix.  Datsyuk will also return to the lineup, and we can hope that these 4 days will be ample time for the team to solidify.

Nicklas Lidstrom scored the 999th and 1000th points of his career tonight at The Joe Louis against the LA Kings.

He is the 8th defenseman in history to achieve this milestone, and the first European defenseman.

Congratulations to Nick.

I didn’t post any thoughts or comments on that absolute crap-show that was Tuesday’s game against Buffalo because to be honest, I didn’t really have any at the time other than, “Well that sucked.”  Majorly.  Probably three players on the entire team bothered to show up at all.

Defense needs to shore up, immediately.

DetNews:

“We haven’t played well defensively,” Lidstrom said. “We haven’t played that well in our own zone. That’s something we worked on today a lot in practice and we know we have to correct.”

But let’s not dwell on past wrongs and failures.  Because there’s a whole slew of brand new grievances and causes for worry!

Pavel’s out, Lebda’s in.

There goes any attempt at playing better team defense for now.  Khan’s also got the lines for tonight.

Also, another must-read from The Chief over at A2Y.

Time Warner is the current bane of my existance, having outages over my area in Brooklyn, so I’m hoping I can catch the game one way or another…

Well that was a nice win.  I miss seeing the Mule out there.

Goals were as follow:
Detroit: Ville Leino (Cleary, Filppula); Jason Williams (pp; Kronwall, Filppula); Holmstrom (pp; Datsyuk, Rafalski)
Washington: Matt Bradley (Poti, Gordon); Brendan Morrison (pp; Ovechkin)

Some thoughts (most of these I also Twittered during the game):

• I liked seeing the Eurotwins back together, even if they only joined for one goal, which was on the power play.
• Bertuzzi skated with them even-strength rather than Holmstrom, and I wonder if it’s because he’s slightly more mobile than Homer.  Only slightly.
• Speaking of Bert, he had another decently defensive game, and made a nice effort at the end of the game.
• Osgood gave up a softy at the beginning of the game, but other than that he looked good.
• The defense played much better in front of him this time, though there were still a lot of giveaways–15.
• On the plus side, Detroit had 9 takeaways.  3 of those were by Datsyuk,who, I’m pretty certain had a few more than that.
• Pavel was defensively all over it tonight.  He made a lot of amazing plays.  Including stripping the puck from Ovechkin a few times, the other play that really stood out for me was when he backchecked all 200 feet of ice and attempted to sweep the puck away from Washington as he was clearly gassed.
• Who knew that Holmstrom could wire a shot like the one he scored on?
• Meech made a dumb, dangerous play, slamming Quintin Laing headfirst into the boards.  With the attempts being made by the league to cut back on that kind of hitting, I’m surprised that he got away with a 2min boarding call.
• On the bright side, that penalty kill was incredible.  I loved how they managed to set up what looked and felt like a power play for several seconds.
• Mike Green and Alexander Semin had 2 penalties apiece for Washington, 2 of which led to the Williams and Holmstrom goals.
• I liked how Valtteri Filppula opted to loft the puck into the air over the Caps defense with about 30 or so seconds left in the game, rather than try to shoot it down the rink.  He either would have gotten an empty netter, or at worst, iced it.

I’m not going to freak out, I’m not going to freak out, I’m not going to–

Oh hell.  I’m freaking out.

Via John Hahn in the Red Wings’ Communications department:

Red Wings forward Johan Franzen has suffered a torn ACL in his left knee and expected to be out of the lineup a minimum of four months.

Matt Saler over at On the Wings followed the news as it broke on Twitter.

This is so not good.  As much as I scoffed at the MSM’s idea that Detroit can’t deal with the loss of 88 goals gone with Hossa, Hudler, and Samuelsson, this might be detriment.  Franzen has been projected as a 40-goal scorer this season, and not having that production for 4 months will be felt.  Just to twist the thorn a little more, keep in mind that it’s a minimum of four months.  Which means who the hell knows when he’s getting back.

With this turn of events, the Red Wings are really going to have to rely on Zetterberg, Cleary, and Filppula to improve on their scoring.

–EDIT 5:45pm–

Abdelkader has been called back up and Babcock is playing around with line combinations.

Let’s consider the possibilities… the interesting thing here is that Babcock can shuffle guys like Zetterberg and Filppula between wing and center.  I have a feeling he’ll move Filppula up to the top line to replace Franzen, but I’d love to see him put the Homer-Z-Dats line back together.  Unfortunately, with the loss of Franzen, he’ll be even more concerned with spreading out the offense across multiple lines.