So, this is a little extra snarky.

Goals were as follows:
Detroit: Henrik Zetterberg (Leino, Lebda); Br–(err, wait.  We’ll get to that.)
Dallas: Mike Ribeiro/Jonathan Ericsson (Just kidding.  Not really.  Oh damn, this is getting out of hand. pp; Richards, Robidas); Niskanen (Richards, Neal); Loui Eriksson (pp; Neal, Modano)

Pluses
+ Brad May won a fight.
+ Jimmy Howard was very good.  I saw him start to scramble a bit, which is something I feel like I’d seen less of over the past three games, but overall he was solid in 32 shots on goal.  I have a hard time saying any of the goals were really his fault.
+ Zetterberg was also up for this game, and his goal was a beauty, top shelf.  He extends his point streak to 4 games.

Minuses
- As I made apparent in the goal summary, a lot of ridiculousness happened.  First up is the Jonny Ericsson own-goal on Howard.  I appreciate that he went down to block the shot, but he hit the ice way too early and took himself out of the defensive play sliding past Ribeiro.  He tried to make up for it by swiping at the puck with his stick, and instead managed to shove the puck past Jimmy, who clearly wasn’t expecting that.  Congrats, Jonathan.
– Now the real meat and potatoes.   Weak calls by the refs happen every night, but this was taking it to a whole new level.  Mickey called it a circus at one point in the 3rd (and I don’t think he meant the Datsyuk-Zetterberg-Holmstrom circus), and the refs did a great job playing clowns.  Here’s the play:

What I simply cannot wrap my head around, is the concept of saying that the play was blown dead when, upon multiple replays, it’s extremely apparent that the whistle blew a good 2 seconds after Brad May shot the puck into the corner of the net, and Alex Auld sort of trapped it there with his toe.  Auld even looked at where it was, like he knew it was in the net.  Replay shows it was.  Ok, so we all know the puck went into the net.  Dennis LaRue and Stephane Auger reviewed it, and then claimed that the play had been blown dead before the puck crossed the line.  For the love of God man, how can you even think that that’s a logical explanation?

What I really can’t understand is, if Toronto called, that means they reviewed it.  So why didn’t they overrule the ref’s original call?  If it’s unquestionably in the opposite direction of the original call, they can override.  So… how come that didn’t happen, if they had replay available to them?  I can’t wait to hear the reasoning on this one.
– To be honest, it never should have mattered in the first place because the Red Wings played a pretty uninspired game through three anyway.
– Bertuzzi needs to stop with the freaking spin-o-rama.  I don’t know if he’s trying to channel his inner Savard (Serge or Denis), or if he heard that Battle of the Blades has been renewed for a second season and wants to be invited to participate, or what.  But I swear, he tried that dumb move every shift tonight.  Scoring chances created from it?  Maybe one.  Maybe.
– Someone give Brendan Morrow an Acadamy Award for his acting that he got high sticked by Kris Draper.  You’d have thought he’d been shot the way his head snapped back.

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