No word yet on the specifics, including the extent of how long Howard will be out.  Rafalski was put on short term IR and Draper on LTIR.  Injured reserve put Rafalski out seven days at minimum.  The schedule for the Wings is finally picking up too, which means we’re likely to see the Osgood/MacDonald tandem for at least 3 games, I think.  Please correct me if I’m wrong.

My take on this: I’m ok with it.  Let’s not all freak out.  It’s not a severe injury, and 3 games isn’t that many.  And admittedly, the histrionics did calm down a little once we found out it wasn’t anything major with Howard.  But I still don’t understand the fatalism about having Osgood start a couple games.  Give the poor guy a chance to redeem himself.  His play so far this season really hasn’t warranted the sheer vitriol he receives.  He’s 1-1-0 with a 2.49 GAA and a .905 SV%.

It’s up to Osgood to seize the opportunity, but it’s not a foregone conclusion that we’re going to lose the next few games 0-7.

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In a word: unacceptable.  I have nothing good to say about this game.

Goals were as follows:
Detroit: Niklas Kronwall (Bertuzzi, Hudler)
Dallas: Brad Richards (pp; Niskanen, Ribeiro); Loui Eriksson (Richards, Neal); Brenden Morrow (Ribeiro); James Neal (Richards, Daley)

– The forecheck showed up occasionally, but it wasn’t steady, and I’ve still yet to see strong puck possession from this team, outside of the season opener against a weak Ducks team.  It simply didn’t look like anyone was hungry for the puck.

– The turnovers!  Detroit had 9 giveaways and Dallas took the puck back 12 times.  Even The Perfect Human had a turnover.

– Going into this game we all talked about Osgood’s ridiculously good record against Dallas.  Unfortunately, your career record won’t win the game for you.  Sadly, it felt like that’s how the team treated this game.  You can’t pin the entire game on Osgood.  Yeah, 4 goals in 15 shots.  I see that.  But the skaters up front weren’t doing much to help.  This was a team effort in failure.

= So Dallas only got 15 shots on goal, but it makes me wonder if that’s more due to the Stars’ offense more than Detroit’s defense.

– Mule has a concussion after being hit by Mark Fistric.  I don’t know if it was an elbow to the head or what–to be honest, it looked more like a shoulder that jammed upwards from the Dallas feed.  Regardless, this is not good news.

– The power play is just… sterile.

+ I lied, I do have something good to say: Kindl looked good.  He wasn’t too noticeable, but for a rookie that’s always a good thing.  He played quite a bit more than I thought: 19:14, with 4:13 on the power play.  He had 2 shots on net, and finished the game even.  His TOI says a lot about Babcock trusting him with the minutes.  He had a good 3 more minutes than Salei.

= Speaking of TOI, Babcock really rode the workhorses.  Datsyuk played 21:52, Zetterberg 21:35, and Lidstrom played a whole 27:01.  With Franzen out in the first period it makes sense that Pav and Z’s minutes were up, but Nick’s are pretty astounding.  Too bad they ended up -3, -2, and -2, respectively.

– As much as the boys didn’t put in the effort to win for Modano, he wasn’t too fabulous himself, with 0 shots on net.  He did manage to escape with an even +/- in 15:14 TOI, and went 55% in the face-off circle.  I had wondered in the game preview if he was going to look more like a deer in the headlights or a man on the mission.  More the former over the latter, to me.  One thing that stood out to me was twice in one power play he was on the point with Lidstrom and the puck just went sailing between them and out of the zone, forcing everyone to exit and regroup.  A similar thing happened again in a later power play, when one of the other players had to come down and try to corral the puck, but it slide out of reach, past Modano who was hanging out at the boards, and into the neutral zone.  Were some of them errant passes?  Yes, but playing point is more than just cranking bombs from the blueline.

= I also agree with Ted Kulfan that Dallas really could have, and should have done more for their former franchise player.  20 years and all he gets is a minute or so of applause with a little “thank you” on the Jumbotron?  Serven put it best: “I hear no booing. Classy by the Stars fans. VERY classy by the Stars fans. BUT, you get no points for doing the right thing #RedWings”  I know he’s in another uniform now, but that doesn’t and shouldn’t immediately and automatically discount what he’s done for your franchise.

I know it’s only 4 games into the season, which ultimately means nothing, but losing back to back games is not a habit to get into.  The 4-0 season opener win means nothing.  The gutsy 3-2 win against Chicago at their banner raising means nothing.  Two inexcusably awful losses in a row?  That means something.

p.s. as a note on this Saturday’s game, I won’t be around, so no posts from me.  I’ll be in Denver that night to run the Denver half marathon on Sunday.

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Oh hai.  Coincidentally the minute the hockey season started work picked up and I’ve been absolutely slammed during the day, leaving little to no time for previews and recaps.  Thus, I’m getting this out rather earlier than I’d want.

Lineups:
Nothing official out yet, but I can only assume that they’ll run with the same lines that were iced against Colorado.  Ericsson and Abdelkader are still out, Draper has experienced a set back, and Rafalski’s out 3-4 weeks.  Osgood, with his 28-11-4 career record against Dallas, will be in net.  According to Babcock the plan all along was to alternate Oz and Jimmy for the first few weeks due to the schedule, so this is a good chance for Osgood to prove that he’s  ready and able to shoulder  a moderate load this season.  And step closer to career win 400.

What I’m looking forward to:
The headline-maker for Thursday is Mike Modano’s return to Dallas.  This is, coincidentally, the home opener for the Stars.  Modano scored a goal in his first game in a Wings uniform, but hasn’t recorded a point in either of the following 2 games.  It will be an emotional game for him to return to the franchise for which he played 20 seasons and won the Cup in 1999.  I’m sure he’ll be feeling pressure, and the question will be if he comes up big, or wilts a little under it.

Who I’m looking at to have a good game:
Try as he might, Doug Janik didn’t exactly endear himself to Wings fans on Tuesday.  With Rafalski out for a couple of weeks and not much of a timetable on Ericsson, this is a great opportunity for call ups to make a statement about being able to play with the big boys.  The defense has not been very solid so far, so I’d like to see guys like Janik and Kindl step it up.

Also, going back to the Modano point, I’d love to see him channel the emotion of coming into Dallas wearing a different uniform into a productive night.  His line with Hudler and Cleary was -3 after the Colorado game.

Improvements to be had upon last game:
Defense, defense, defense.  Detroit was tagged with 15 giveaways on Tuesday, plus Colorado’s 6 takeaways.  Against Chicago, they totalled 18 turnovers.  Versus Anaheim, 20.  Matt touched on this in his Avs game recap, but they really need to shore up and get back to displaying complete, team defense.  And as a self-proclaimed puck possession team, they should probably hold onto the puck when they have it.

LGRW.

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Here are the lineups for both teams, from Khan (since there’s nothing on the D pairings, I just swapped in Kindl for Ericsson, but who knows how that’ll actually pan out come game time):

What I’m looking forward to:
The Wings were riled up last night, and out to prove that they can still win.  Can they keep up that momentum?  The Wings will have to sit through the banner raising ceremony prior to the game–and I hope it makes them pissed.  Hopefully they can use that as motivation to go out and play spoiler to the Blackhawks’ big night in front of their home, bandwagon crowd.

I’m also looking forward to seeing Turco the first of 6 times.  Will his record with Dallas against Detroit continue now that he’s with Chicago?  He’s 6-12-5(T) against Detroit for his career.

And the power play needs to start cranking, because going 0-6 against the Ducks last night is really rather embarrassing.  It’s easily overlooked thanks to the 4-0 shutout, but I have a feeling they’ll need all gears turning tonight.

Who I’m looking at to have a good game:
Osgood gets his first start of the season in the second game due to back to backs.  This is a good chance for him to go out and prove himself early on and show the naysayers that he can still handle around 20 games this season, so he needs to be sharp.

Kindl also gets his first look at NHL action earlier than anticipated, and while I’m not certain if he’s playing with Lidstrom or not, it’s also good to see him dig in now.

The Ducks were more or less an easy opponent last night, and while Chicago lost practically half their team to Atlanta, it will still be more of a test.  Media types are saying that Chicago is still the team to beat, which is at least true in the fact that they are, like it or not, the reigning champions in the league.  A dominant win would help quiet Hawks bandwagon, and solidify the fact that the Wings are serious this season.

LGRW.

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In the spirit that is the pre-season, this is just going to be a mish-mash of notes and thoughts, rather than a fully fleshed out game recap.

• First up, Mountain Time sucks.  It’s great for the games on the West coast, sure, but for 7pm ET starts?  I live 5 minutes away from work, and I had to book it so I could get home for the puck drop, which is something I really hate to miss.  I’m seriously thinking about coming into work half an hour early on 7pm game days during the regular season.
• Tomas Tatar looks awesome.  I can’t wait until this kid’s gotten some more experience in the AHL and gets the call up.  He’s slick but not enigmatically so.  And from what the Olczyk and Pat Foley from CSN were saying, he didn’t even take warmups prior to the game?
• Jimmy only faced 8 shots, but he looked good.  And before we all start drawing comparisons to Osgood, can I just put out a plea to take the defense into account?  Osgood saw 27 shots in two periods thanks to what sounded like a lot of poor defense.  I’m not saying that Oz couldn’t have played better, or that Jimmy wasn’t the better looking of the two in terms of play, but still.  Some perspective, please.  Let’s see how he plays behind the full roster, please.
• The Mursak goal was a nice instance of being in the right place, in front of the net, and ready to tap in the rebound.
• I love watching Lidstrom bomb pucks from the point and seeing them go in, with Holmstrom’s ass in the goalie’s face.
• Until he shot the waived off goal, I felt like Kronwall had whiffed on about 4 shots from the point in a row.  Here’s to hoping that playing with Nick drags him up to the level we’ve been looking for.
• Ericsson looked a little… confused.  Saw him fumble the puck unnecessarily a few times.
• It’s so great to see the Pav-Z-Homer line out there again.  I see the argument for trying to spread out the scoring if necessary, but they’re just so effective together.
• I think everyone needs a refresher on the “goaltender interference” rule when it comes to being in the crease.  From the way the refs have called it the past few seasons, to even listening to the Chicago pxp guys, you’d honestly think that simply being in the crease was cause to waive off a goal.  I distinctly recall hearing Versus always harping on about Holmstrom’s skates being on the edge of the blue paint as if that were the deciding factor for goalie interference.

For tonight’s game, Khan has the lineup:

Jordan Owens-Valtteri Filppula-Todd Bertuzzi
Drew Miller-Justin Abdelkader-Francis Pare
Jamie Tardif-Cory Emmerton-Jan Mursak
Tomas Tatar-Joakim Andersson-Aaron Downey

Brad Stuart-Jonathan Ericsson
Doug Janik-Brendan Smith
Jakub Kindl-Logan Pyett

Chris Osgood
Thomas McCollum

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Today he was invited to take batting practice with the Tigers (along with Draper, Miller, Chelios, and McCarty), and got to catch a few balls in the bullpen from Justin Verlander.

If you’ve ever read a Helene St. James profile piece on Osgood, you’ll know that one of his “dream jobs” after retiring from hockey is to be a bullpen catcher for the Tigers, in addition to the Mayor of Plymouth, and a spokesperson for Bowflex.

And now Howard’s gotten to the bullpen first, it seems.

Bill Roose:

Verlander, who threw a no-hitter in 2007, praised Howard’s natural ability behind the dish.

“He did a really nice job, especially with breaking balls,” said Verlander, who is 5-4 with a 3.75 ERA this season. “I thought that he would be really good with fastballs, because there isn’t much movement, similar to a puck. But then the breaking balls, he did a much better job then I anticipated. He caught all of them, and that’s not easy to do.

“You see most guys who haven’t caught a breaking ball before and it catches them off guard. He did a great job, but it’s not surprising though; he catches 100-mile-per-hour pucks.”

Well… I don’t know about the mayorship of Plymouth, but I’m sure there’s an opening for a late-night infomercial spokesperson for Bowflex.

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The only plus from Game 3 was Shane Doan getting upended by Jimmy Howard and crashing into the boards, and going out for the remainder of the game.  Except even in the long run, the Coyotes seemed to step it up after it was heard that Doan wasn’t going to return, and the Wings let them.

They really shat the bed on this one, and I’m too irritated to write much more than that.

I WILL say, however, that I am not on board with any of the calls to bring in Osgood.  Look, I’m a huge Osgood supporter, which is no secret around here.  And yes, Jimmy hasn’t been stellar.  He’s let in bad goals both in terms of difficulty and in terms of timing, at least one per game.  But it’s not like the team up front has bailed him out much.  What does annoy me is that he’s letting in softies that, were is Osgood, everyone would be screaming to pull him from net.  If Ozzie had allowed a goal 29 seconds into the game, I know for certain my Twitter feed would have blown up with anti-Osgood tweets.  Jimmy’s getting the benefit of the doubt, I assume, because it’s his first ever playoffs.  At least that’s how I’m looking at it.  The thing is, he needs to make those imperative saves.  And if he doesn’t shore up tomorrow, then yeah, I’ll be wondering if Osgood shouldn’t get his fair shot.

Let’s. Go. Red Wings.

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On to the game.  I DVR’d this and watched it after, but once I realized the result, it felt like kind of a waste.  It certainly was a wasted effort by the Wings.  I, along with many others, I think, thought that Monday’s game was a sign that they were ready to really make a strong push in the remaining games and win those 15 out of 20.  Apparently not.

Goals were as follows:
Detroit: Jason Williams (Zetterberg, Bertuzzi); Henrik Zetterberg (Lilja)
Vancouver: Livonia Native Ryan Kesler (Raymond, Rome); Alex Burrows (D. Sedin, H. Sedin); Kyle Wellwood (Rome); Sami Salo (pp; Demitra, H. Sedin); Mikael Samuelsson (D. Sedin, H. Sedin); Ryan Kesler (pp; D. Sedin, Ehrhoff)

- According to TSN, the Red Wings have had 18 disallowed or waived off goals this season alone.  EIGHTEEN.  In 63 games.  That’s 1 every 3.5 games, or a goal called off in 28.57% of games.  With 19 games left, that means we can look forward to 5.4 more goals disallowed for the rest of the season.  Hooray.

- I realized that there are no Red Wings with 20 goals on the season yet.  That’s a hideously depressing stat.  Datsyuk and Zetterberg have the most, with 17.

- Kronwall  had an atrocious game.  He was in the box for 2 Canuck power play goals, one of them 5 seconds into the PP, and he also indirectly led to another goal after he stepped on the puck and fell in the Canucks’ zone.  The defense as a whole looked sloppy and disorganized, but Kronwall looked particularly out of sorts all game long.

+ Congratulations to Mr. Zetterberg for his 200th career goal!  It was a beauty, too.  He froze Luongo, and patiently waited to shoot in a pretty much open net from the side.  Lovely.  He also tied the game at 2-2, with the last Wings’ goal before Vancouver started running away with the game.

- I felt like there was a plethora of missed passes and pucks bouncing off sticks tonight.  It didn’t help the Wings get any sustained pressure, and towards the second half of the game, it felt like they had a lot of one and done chances.

+ Lilja got his first point back as a Red Wing.

- I was honestly kind of surprised that Howard got pulled.  With the reluctance Babcock has shown to play Osgood, I expected him to stick it out.  But I guess that’s what gut-check time does, and desperate times call for desperate measures.  In this case, it came in the form of Chris Osgood.

- Who didn’t really play fantastic.  He’s an old man coming in cold which doesn’t help, but getting beat by a Mikael Samuelsson no look shot?  Yikes.  Ozzie probably figured Sammy was going to go wide by a country mile, except he actually hit the net.  Do I think he played better than Howard?  He made 10 saves on 12 shots.  Howard had 17 on 21.

- What was with all the Vancouver fans in the Joe?  I heard a lot of “Looooooooo”s through my TV.  It was annoying.

+ I love having the Mule back.  Goals in the past 4 games for Franzen.

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I missed most of the first period while half-paying attention and talking to my mother on the phone. I had intended to go back and re-watch more intently during intermission, but my DVR recording got cancelled. Which was just a sign of things to come, I suppose.

+ I did get to see the Pavel goal, although not the entire play around it.  That was apparently his first goal in 7 games.  He looked dangerous all game long, and was one of the best fowards on the ice.  According to the boxscore he had 1 takeaway, but I saw almost a takeaway per shift in the second half of the second alone.  Babcock said in the post-game scrum that he had the puck on a string quite a bit, and I’d have to agree.  He ended the night with a goal and an assist.

- I don’t know if it was Versus, my cable box, or fuck knows what, but I had zero sound for the 2nd and third periods.  None whatsoever. I would normally rejoice being saved the pain of listening to the horrible announcers on VS, but I can’t deal with dead silence.  I ended up streaming the radio off 97.1, and just suffered through that being about 1:15 behind.

+ Thank God for Patrick Eaves.  He scored 11 seconds after the Coyotes did (yet another goal seen from a mile away).  That’s what it means to have a good shift after a goal against, and the third line of Draper-Helm-Eaves is totally responsible for that happening.  They were great.

+ Wings looked much more awake after Eaves’ goal.  Good sustained pressure by the Wings in the end of the second.

+ Two goals by Nick.  I loved the second one he got, just popped it in a wide open net on the power play from Doan knocking him over during the little scrum that ensued around Howard.  Now that the blue line is getting healthy and stronger, he can focus on offense a little more and not have to cover all the defensive holes.

+ Datsyuk and Zetterberg got a little scrappy, which I loved.  I’m really a fan of the Datsyuk-Zetterberg-Cleary line.  Cleary is more willing to set up in front of the net ala Holmstrom than Bertuzzi is.  He’s also quicker, and is able to keep up with the Eurotwins better.

+ The Wings looked confident; way more than we’d been seeing recently. They looked like they weren’t going to allow the Coyotes push them around.

- And then the wheels fell off.  Complete and utter collapse.  A minute and a half remaining in the game with a 2 goal lead and they blew it.  I don’t even care if it was goaltending, lack of coverage by the D, inability to get the puck out of the zone, whatever.  I’m blaming the whole damn team for not being able to hold on for a minute and a half.  To state the obvious, Nick missing that empty netter was huge.

- Brad Stuart with a -3 tonight.  No one else was worse than -1, and Rafalski was actually +3.  I am really hoping that once Kronwall settles back in, that Stuart can start playing a little more physical.  He had to put that aspect of his game on the backburner with Kronwall out, but now he can start being grittier in front of the net.

– SOG were almost dead even each period with 8 in the 1st, 12 in the 2nd, and 14 and 15 for Phoenix and Detroit, respectively.  OT was telling though, as Phoenix got 3 shots and Detroit just 1.  And Phoenix scored and Detroit didn’t.

= Kronwall had 0 points, went -1, 1 blocked shot, a hit, and giveaway, and took 30 shifts for 21:57.  It was such a relief to see him out there, and not have to worry about a boneheaded play from the likes of Lebda or Meech.  He’ll get his sea legs, so to speak, back quickly I think.

- I was not impressed with Howard.  Not saying that every single goal was his fault, but he looked tired.  According to Left Wing Lock, Osgood is your starter for tonight anyway.

So, the player I’m looking at to have a good game is Osgood.  I said on TOV this week that he needs to STFU.  I just want to see him play, to the best of his ability and not whine about the situation he’s put into, or the end result.  He’s not sitting on the bench for a month straight between starts, so no blaming “rust” this time.

I would also like to not see the Wings blow a 2 goal lead.  Or any lead, for that matter.  Minnesota is creeping up the standing, and the Wings can ill afford to have them making a run.

It’s (yet again) another must-win.

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We also debated Oz/Howard a little on this week’s episode of TOV (keep an eye out for that tomorrow morning), but I know I didn’t make my argument very well, so eh.

Anyway, I have nothing to add to what’s already been said, so go check out The Winged Wheel for a great case for Chris Osgood.

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