Big Red Machine

First things first, huge congratulations to Team USA for playing strong, tough, and with heart, and for never giving up. A great performance by the Americans to win the Silver medal. We’re proud of you all.

Secondly, congrats to Team Canada, specifically Steve Yzerman and Mike Babcock. (Can someone clarify for me whether coaches and executives get actual medals? Apparently they do not in the Summer Olympics, because then they’d have to give all coaches, like for figure skating, medals as well). I’m happy for Stevie Y, and it really did make me happy to see his jump up and cheer when Canada scored.

On that note though, did it REALLY have tp be Crosby? Of all the players… It’s probably my fault, too, because milliseconds before, I said to my brother: “If Crosby scores the GWG for Canada I’ll throw myself out the window.” And then he scored. Sigh. He was a virtual non-factor all tournament until now, and the media is all praising him as being a “leader” of Team Canada. What a joke.

Anyway, again, congrats to Finland, USA, and Canada (both mens and womens, which oddly turned out identical in terms of medal results) for their wins. And especially to Rafalski and Filppula, and Yzerman and Babcock.

Red Wings hockey starts again tomorrow, in Colorado. I’ll be at the game! Hopefully Rafalski can bring back his awesome play, and the rest of the team will get their heads into the season and ready to make a push.

Let’s go Red Wings.

Check out the newest episode of TOV with myself, Joe from Red Wings Guy, and Kris from Snipe Snipe, Dangle Dangle, in which I discover that I’m awful at trivia, and Kris destroys us all.  There’s also some chatter about the Olympics, and what other sports we’d like to see Red Wings try their hands at.

Also, make sure to listen to the trivia contest at the end, and send in your entries to theobstructedview @ gmail . com for a chance to win a prize!

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Red Wings hockey is almost back.  Russia got ousted today in a lackluster effort against Canada, and Sweden lost a stunner to the Czech Republic.  This means the only Red Wings remaining in the Olympics are Brian Rafalski (USA) and Valtteri Filppula (Finland), who are, interestingly enough, meeting on Friday to play for the medal game.

In 4 more days the Wings will take the ice in Colorado to play the Avalanche (a game that I will hopefully be at!).

And when that happens, we’re likely going to see Andreas Lilja play his first game in the NHL in over a year.  We will also not be seeing Kirk Maltby, who has opted to get shoulder surgery after all.  Via Helene St. James at the Freep:

Detroit Red Wings general manager Ken Holland has told the Free Press he expects defenseman Andreas Lilja to be cleared either today or Thursday and that Kirk Maltby will have surgery.

Lilja said he still has to complete some paperwork before he is formally cleared. The Wings also need to put Maltby on long-term injured reserve, which would free up $700,000 to fit Lilja under the salary cap

Apparently there was some confusion about whether or not Maltby was actually going to get surgery, or if he was going to stubbornly decide to play the rest of the season, but the original article has been taken down (with no mention of the mistake.  Nice).  Regardless, it’s been sorted out now, and even though this clearly wasn’t the scenario Maltby, and I believe many fans, envisioned for him to end things, it’s still the smart move.  Especially now that the estimated recovery time has been shortened to 4-6 weeks, he could easily come back for a playoff run, should one be had.

It also sounds like Eaves and Holmstrom are ready to roll when the season starts up again.  So, barring Olympic injuries (knock on wood), the Red Wings should be able to ice a full lineup for pretty much the first time this season.

Oh, and Rafalski?  You better bring that level of play you’ve been showing with Team USA back to Detroit

Yes, I’m still alive.  I needed a hiatus for a little while to do some serious job hunting, and the Olympic breakwas kind of a perfect excuse to do that.  I didn’t, and still don’t, really have any plans for what to do here for the next week, anyway.

Yesterday was the men’s hockey Olympic Super Sunday, with three great rivalry games: Russia v Czech Republic, USA v Canada, and Sweden v Finland.  And yes, I watched all three of them.

As with all the Olympic hockey games, I keep an eye out in particular for Red Wings players.  Some of them did not disappoint, yesterday.

In Russia’s game, Pavel Datsyuk was one of the best all-around players for the Russian team.  He played directly against Jaromir Jagr for the most part, out with Kovalchuk on even strength, and Malkin and Ovechkin on the power play (what a friggin power play, holy shit.  A Hart Trophy nomination troika).  Datsyuk did an excellent job of shutting down Jagr for much of the game, who ended up with 0 points and 2 SOG, and -2.  Pavel led the Russians in TOI with 20:18 played.  The next player was Malkin at 18:43, whose PP goal he assisted on.  He topped it off with the empty netter.

For the USA, Rafalski has returned to a form that I thought long lost.  He was outstanding, scoring the first 2 goals in the game (and the last 4 for the USA), and almost had a hat trick (for all intent it’s his, because he took the shot and it ricocheted in off Jamie Langenbrunner’s skate, then Brodeur’s stick, and in).  He opened the scoring early, too, only 41 second into the game.  It was also great to see the USA roar back after Eric Staal scored for Canada, to get Rafalski’s second goal of the night about a minute later.  I sent a text to my friend during the game that said “who knew Rafalski could still play like that?” to which was responded “He and Miller won that game,” a statement that I can’t argue against.  Rafalski ended the night 2-1-3, +2, in 21:27 TOI (tied with Ryan Suter).  He had three shots on net, all three of which went in.  He was no slouch defensively, either, though I’ll admit that Canada didn’t have a very good game at all.  A lot of players on that team were just invisible all game long, and the ones who were noticeable were not because of good reasons.  Back to Rafalski, Discher has some more thoughts on his recent play, all of which are far more insightful and articulate than my own.

Sweden and Finland… well, I have to admit I zoned out on this one.  Petrella made the point that nothing could possibly be exciting after watching the end of the USA/Canada game, and to my defense, I’d been up since 7am.  Trying to actually pay attention to a fairly boring hockey game at 1:30am is not easy.

Here are the brackets for the rest of the Olympic tournament.  I really have hopes that Russia will play Sweden.  I think that would be utterly fascinating to watch what basically amounts to half the Red Wings take on Datsyuk and the insane firepower of the Russian team.  And, of course, that would mean that Canada wouldn’t even make it to the gold medal game.  I do fear for Stevie Y if Canada doesn’t make it, however.

Come back later for some H2H updates and information.

In which we talk about Olympics, Kirk Maltby, captaincy, and more with Andy from Fight Night at the Joe, Casey from Winging it in Motown, and Hollis from Motown Wings and Brian.

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Last night Ken Daniels mentioned that Holland was planning to make a move today.  Brad May has been waived, and now that 3pm ET has come and gone, there were no trades, even after much speculation that Lebda or Meech could be going.

Now it comes out that Kirk Maltby might be headed to LTIR with season ending shoulder surgery.

Per Khan:

“Kirk Maltby has been playing with a chronic shoulder (issue) since last June and it’s been progressively getting worse,” Holland said. “Maybe should have had an operation earlier in the year, but given all the injuries that hit us we were in no position to do it.”

Maltby is talking to doctors and his agent to determine what he should do. If he has the surgery, Holland indicated he would be out for two months, the rest of the regular season.

It’s certainly convenient that they’re bringing up surgery talk now, when he’s been playing with it all season, and apparently could have finished out the season with it.  But Lilja is suddenly on his way back and who else are they going to move?  They can’t just waive Lebda or Meech, because either of them would some sort of return value.  So to push the issue with Maltby is the easiest option on the tight deadline that is the Olympic roster freeze.

I am securely in the camp who believes that Maltby has gotten to the point where he deserves to end his career the way he wants.  It already seemed highly unlikely that Holland would bring him back for next season, so it’s unfortunate that this might be it for him.  He’s been a good soldier for the Red Wings, and a great hockey player over his career.  Yeah he’s become redundant in the past few seasons, with guys like Abdelkader and Helm coming up, but he’s always just done his job.  He’s still an asset, at least in terms of chirping and yapping and getting under the other team’s skin.  I’ll be sad when he leaves.

On the other hand, I hope he chooses to go and get the surgery done now, rather than at the end of the season.  For his own health, and to, as Matt put it, “take one for the team.”  It might be his only chance to have a say in how his career ends.

First things, sorry for neglecting the blog for the last few days, though I’m sure not many noticed.  Due to so-called “cost cutting” and saving, my company decided to eliminate my job.  So I’ve joined the not so envious ranks of the unemployed.  It’s been interesting to say the least–vacillating between being pissed off as shit and being really motivated to find something else–better, and infinitely more awesome, where I won’t be bottle-necked.  Ahem.  Anyway, onto the game…

Are we ever going to win another game this season?  Is Chris Osgood ever going to play another game again?  Will we ever win in the shootout?  These are life’s big questions right now.

Goals were as follows:
Detroit: Johan Franzen (pp; Zetterberg, Lidstrom); Jason Williams (Lebda, Holmstrom)
San Jose: Joe Thornton (Wallin, Boyle); Dwight Helminen (Mitchell, Nichol)
Shootout: SJS – Patrick Marleau

= FS Detroit has started doing the digital advertisements on the back glass behind the nets now.  It was funny because there were a ton of people on Twitter who were in an uproar over people “paying good money” for those seats, only to have an ad plastered in front of them.  People, they’re digital.  They’re not actually, physically on the glass, they’re slapped on by FSD for television.  MSG has been doing them for a while, and you really get used to them and start to notice them less.  But, I can see were people are annoyed.  I don’t really care one way or another.

+ The Wings looked like they had more jump than in other games, with some more crashing and banging around than we’ve seen.  I still don’t understand why they can get up for these games against San Jose, which mean nothing in terms of tangible points and standings, but they let teams like Anaheim and Los Angeles walk all over them.  This season seriously makes my brain hurt.

+ Franzen got his first goal since coming back, the first of the game, and on the Power Play.  Shortly before that, he’d sort of whiffed on a shot and it looked like his timing was still a work in progress.  But that PP goal was a beautiful snipe over Nabokov’s glove hand.  Welcome back, Mule.

– Poor Nick, a linesman got dumped over the boards and into Nick’s lap.

= Meech gets a pass for missing on what looked like a stupidly easy shot on an open net, but upon replay it was revealed that his shot was redirected by a Shark player.  Otherwise it really would have gone in.  But he’s right back on my shit-list the minute he screws up again.

– Way to get up a goal about 35 seconds after scoring.  Not exactly the type of shift you’re hoping for after scoring.

+ No shit, Holmstrom beat out Dan Boyle to negate an icing.  Really.  Boyle must have had dead legs, because otherwise there’s no way Homer outskates him.

+ Pavel was really riled up tonight.  He may not have scored, and he did have two giveaways, HOWEVER, he was still everywhere, all over the ice, and playing physical.  He had some chances, played gritty, and was just a beast all around.  Would have been great to see him score–but then again, I want Pavel to score every single game.  Unfortunately the world and the game doesn’t work that way.  He’s still been one of the better Wings forwards, if you ask me, regardless of the lack of goals (so there, Brian).

– Nabokov is usually a sieve.  Why not tonight?  He’s usurped Turco for sole ownership of worst SV% versus the Wings.  Except today he actually had to play fairly well.

+ Williams had a pretty little toe drag on his goal.  I bet you he gets traded tomorrow.  According to Ken Daniels, Holland is definitely making a roster move before the Olympic freeze, and I’ll just bet it’s Williams.  Maybe he just upped his market value?

– I friggin hate the shootout.  We’d have several more wins if it weren’t for finishing the game in such an artificial way.

Kronwall’s out against the St. Louis Blues.  Eaves says he’s “doubtful.”  Holmstrom might not be in, either.  Down 2 fowards and a defenseman.

But I don’t care right now because Johan Franzen is making his glorious and hopefully triumphant return to the lineup tomorrow.

Giddyap.

The Red Wings lost to the Los Angeles Kings in a tough 3-4 game, having blown a 3 goal lead, only to lose.  I’m disappointed in them, and I’m sure a lot of the other blogs will take them to task for their performance.

But I’m not going to.

I want to take a moment and just remind everyone, including myself, that it’s just a game.  There are more important things in life, a sentiment that has been punctuated, deeply, by the loss of Brendan Burke, son of Toronto Maple Leafs and Team USA’s GM, Brian Burke.  Brendan was killed in a car accident on Friday night in Indiana.  It’s a turn of events so unfair that it hurts.

I normally wouldn’t post this type of thing, but similar to Michael at The Production Line, it’s something that can’t be left unmentioned.

Brendan Burke was the subject of an incredible profile written by John Buccigross of ESPN earlier this year.  In it, he told the incredibly courageous story of Brendan deciding to come out as a gay man to his father, the human embodiment of the word ‘truculence’, and to the University of Miami Ohio hockey team and Rico Blasi, for whom he was a student manager.

Brendan’s story struck a deep chord.  Sports are not kind to gay players, particularly not male team sports, hockey highest among them.  Gay slurs are common vernacular these days, supposedly use innocuously as jokes.  There are still people in this world who believe that gay men and women don’t deserve the same rights of marriage, to have or adopt children, or even to exist, as heterosexual people.

I cannot tolerate prejudice against people for characteristics that are unchangeable, and intrinsic to them as a person.  Racism, sexism, homophobia, whatever.  It all just makes me ill.  But the incredibly sad thing is that while we, the American public, have made strides in the last several decades against racism and sexism, there’s almost no movement in terms of gay rights.  There are no current major out sports stars, particularly a player in a team sport.  And you can’t say that doesn’t make a difference, when there are locker rooms and constant physical contact in the context of the game.

Brendan may not have been a star NHL player, but the fact that he chose to stand up and decide to be himself, regardless of the reaction, is extremely inspiring.  And Brian Burke’s reaction was equally impressive, making my impression of the man absolutely skyrocket.  I hope Brendan’s story opened the eyes of the hockey world.  For myself, and several of those I know who also read it, we felt all the closer to Brendan for sharing his struggles.  I believe he could have been a pioneer in the hockey world; that he could have made waves for acceptance and tolerance for gays in the same way his father likes to make a splash in the player market.  That he died so soon was absolutely heartbreaking to me.  Who knows when the next person who is strong enough to come out and be openly gay will come along.  Maybe 5 years, 10, 20?

And, though tragic beyond words, I hope that something good can come of his death, and that people can see what’s more important in life, and that’s acceptance.  For your children and family, your friends, coworkers, classmates, people you pass crossing the street or sit next to on the subway.  I hope it inspires people to be true to themselves and stop hiding in the closet, or behind facades, and for others to be tolerant.  And I hope that gay athletes and hockey players in the NHL can see the courage that a 21 year old kid had, and be strong enough to one day soon come out.

And it’s a reminder that hockey is just a game.  We may tear ourselves up over how our team is playing, feel like the world has ended when we lose in the playoffs, bemoan our place in the standings, but it’s all quickly put into perspective when something like this happens.

The big new is that Leino has been traded to Philadelphia for a 5th round pick (yikes) and defenseman Ole-Kristian Tollefsen.  And apparently OKT has already been waived and will be headed to GR if no one claims him.  Interesting that Holland picked up another defenseman, which is not exactly what they need right now.  I mean, they don’t need anything with Franzen and hopefully Lilja coming back, but McLeod wonders if he could challenge Meech and/or Lebda for a spot on the team.  He’s only played 18 games this season, due to an injured MCL.

Back to Leino, my opinion is good riddance.  We’ve discussed Leino to death on TOV, and I’m perfectly happy to have him gone, and even more thrilled that we didn’t dump him for free.  Philadelphia can deal with him.  Maybe he’ll blossom into the player we all thought he had the potential to be in Philly–sometimes it just takes a different environment or coach, or maybe he’ll be as spectacular of a failure with the Flyers as he was in Detroit.  Here’s what Leino had to say about the trade via the Flyers’ website:

“Sometimes things don’t go as you plan it with your team,” said Leino. “The trade happened, and I am happy to be going to a good team like Philadelphia. I have heard a lot of good things about Philly and I am looking forward to playing and proving myself to Philadelphia. I am pretty happy about this trade.

“I consider myself a skilled player. My talent is more on the offensive side of the rink, but I would like to consider myself as a contributor in the defensive zone, too. I am hoping to produce some offense and help the team get some points and win games.”

So the Wings are ready to get Johan Franzen back, which is the single greatest sentence I’ve typed all season to this point.  Andreas Lilja also says he feels great after playing 2 games in Grand Rapids, and while he’ll likely play a few more, Holland will have to do some shuffling with the roster again in order to make room for him.

Onto the Kings.

They’re on an 8 game winning streak, having ripped it up on their road trip, and continue to be hot.  I’m tired of saying how important these games are for the Wings, but they are.  Calgary is 2 points ahead of Detroit and LA is 9 ahead so a regulation win would be huge.  The Wings need to channel the play they had in San Jose (with the exception of the first period) and just bring it.  Unfortunately Niklas Kronwall is still out with his tweaked knee.

Jimmy Howard is in net again, I believe.  I don’t have much to say other than Get. It. Done.

I’ll be watching some, and be intermittently on Twitter, but I’m having company over so probably not much from me in terms of a game wrap up.