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?

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