On this Veterans Day/Remembrance Day, a moment to thank all those who’ve served.

Edited to add goals, which I initially forgot.  Which makes me realize there were fewer points all around gathered by the Red Wings, as a lot of goals were scored off of turnovers from CBJ, which means a lot of one-assist tallies.

Goals were as follows:
Detroit: Dan Cleary (Zetterberg); Pavel Datsyuk (unassisted); Kris Draper (Lebda); Niklas Kronwall (pp; Cleary); Todd Bertuzzi (Datsyuk, Holmstrom); Ville Leino (Zetterberg, Lidstrom); Niklas Kronwall (pp; Rafalski, Bertuzzi); Justin Abdelkader (Eaves); Justin Abdelkader (May, Kronwall)
Columbus: Rick Nash (Umberger, Klesla)

Pluses
+ Dan Cleary scored the first goal of the game 1:05 into it.  This was nicely indicative of things to come.  Also nice to see that he’s off the schneid, having scored his 100th.  He had a goal and an assist tonight.
+ The first period was solid, solid hockey by the Red Wings.  They outshot Columbus 18-7 in the first 20 minutes and scored 4 goals, chasing Mason in the process.
+ And they didn’t blow the lead!
+ The power play went 2/4, both goals scored by Kronwall.  Good to see him step it up and produce.
+ Because they were so ahead in the game, the Red Wings had the luxury of resting their top two lines in the 3rd period to get them ready for tomorrow’s tail end of the back to back against Vancouver.
+ This also gave some of the kids more minutes.  Lidstrom only played 16:23, while Ericsson logged 22:48.  Datsyuk and Zetterberg had 16:09 and 16:11, respectively, and Helm and Abdelkader got 15:20 and 12:46.
+ Every Red Wings ended the night with either a plus or even +/- rating.
+ After Draper’s goal I said:  ”It’s been the 3rd goal of the season for each of the #Redwings who’ve scored so far.”  And then Kronwall scored his 3rd of the season.  To which Kris over at Snipe Snipe, Dangle Dangle, in an extraordinarily prescient statement said: “Bertuzzi and Leino can also score their 3rd of the season. Let’s do it.”  Abdelkader also got his 2nd and 3rd of the season, which brought the total to 7 Wings who scored their 3rd of the year tonight.
+ I didn’t really notice Howard a lot.  Which is a good thing, because it means I wasn’t holding my breath every time he went to make a save.
+ And that means the defense did a good job sort of… ensconcing him when the play came towards the net.
+ But I DID notice Leino, which is a good thing.
+ I really like the “Hockeytown, No Limits” commercial.

Minuses
- The Columbus stats crew.  Ken Daniels really dug into them about how they only gave the Blue Jackets 1 giveaway through the first.  The final stats were 2 giveaways, CBJ, and only 3 takeaways by Detroit.  This was clearly not accurate, if you even watched a third of the game.  Love the homer stat inflation.
– …I hope they have some firepower left for tomorrow.

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