Wings had a crap effort tonight.  But at least for me, my mood was tempered some by the fantastic, amazing overtime win by the Under-20 USA team who stole gold from Canada at the World Junior Championships today, ending Canada’s 5 year streak.

Changing up the formatting a little bit for a more linear form.

Goals were as follows:
Detroit: Valtteri Filppula (Lidstrom, Datsyuk)
Anaheim: Saku Koivu (sh; unassisted); Matt Beleskey (Brookbank, Festering); Corey Perry (Getzlaf); Kyle Chipchura (EN; Neidermayer)

– Jimmy looked awful for the first time in a long time. Let up a shortie, and another soft goal as he flopped around the ice.  2 goals in just over 7 and a half minutes.   Nick saved his ass, too, on the first Duck’s PP.  Jimmy was fighting the puck a lot in the first, but he managed to get himself together a little bit for the rest of the game.

– Hey Brad May, nice of you to leave the fighting and rabble-rousing to Doug Janik and Derek Meech.  May didn’t even get in a real fight, he just sort of fell on top of Brookbank and ended up with a double minor for roughing.  Nice fight by Janik against the much larger Troy Bodie, and it was… interesting watching Meech go around with Nokelainen.  Bertuzzi tried, towards the end, but like May, couldn’t even get into a real fight and was also slapped with a double minor.

– Rafalski got owned by Saku Koivu on multiple occasions.

– Ridiculous goalie interference call on Maltby. Nokelainen knocked him in. Ducks announcers claimed it’s the onus is on the attacker, but Maltby had nowhere else to go except into Hiller

– Pavel had an atrocious game.   I called him out in the podcast, and I unfortunately don’t have the influence that Hollis does, where when he rags on someone they go out and prove him wrong.  Instead Datsyuk just reenforced my point that he’s had an off season. Ducks announcers claimed that the Ducks had done a good job on him defensively but I’m sorry–when Pavel feels like it, he can dance around and walk through anyone.   He just sort of floated around listlessly.   The Ducks really didn’t do much against him.   He had a D zone turnover, and was stripped of the puck a couple of times.  I noticed him for the first time when he fell over.

– I hate Corey Perry. What a friggin douche.

+ Ok, I feel the need to at least try and not have an entirely negative recap, so CONGRATS TEAM USA!!!

+ Oh, and I was actually glad it was a west coast game, because it meant I could watch the end of the WJC gold medal game and not get too far behind on the Wings game live.  And I worked so late today I would have missed puck drop if it’d been any earlier.

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