Big Red Machine

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.

Sometimes I don’t get this team.  Sloppy game all around and yet we still walk away with the win.  Whatever, I’ll take it.

- For a textbook example of lackadaisical defense, see the first period.  Horrible.   The D got walked around a good 3, 4 times.  They had 18 giveaways, and most of them were egregious.  Absolutely giftwrapped.  The Wings should be thanking the Hockey Gods that the Preds had hands of cement.

+ Jimmy stopped 48 shots, and as many have already said, it was shades of the Kings game in which he faced 51 shots.  He was helped out by a lot posts and again, the Preds’ being unable to take advantage of the several defensive breakdowns that the Wings had.  But he still came up big when called upon, and looked a bit less tired than he had been.

+ Nice goal by J-Wills in his first game back, with his stick down on the ice to pick up the Miller tip right in front.  Sadly, I couldn’t remember what number Jason Williams wears. It took me a good 30 seconds to realize who #29 was.

+ Stuart with ANOTHER save right at the goal line.  That’s at least the 4th time he’s done that this season.

+ Nick is seriously cranking up the offense.  And Pavel is still on a hot streak.  If they can keep it up, watch out.

+ Power play success!  Williams and Lidstrom scored on the PP, and Miller was just mere seconds after the penalty expired.  The Predators took 4 penalties in a row and I had been hoping that the Wings would take advantage of them.

- Of course, then the Wings took 4 penalties in a row, and I swear when Rafalski took that late penalty I wanted to throw myself out the window.  The first thing I thought was GEE, THIS SURE IS FAMILIAR.

- The dreaded 2 goal lead, and when they blew it at about the 6 minute mark in the 3rd, I about died.  Mick had made jokes about 2 goal leads earlier, and I wanted to strangle him.

- I hate that Nashville has a guy on their team with the name Franson.  It confuses me, and then I’m immediately sad.

- Drives me crazy the way the Nashville players came charging over after Kronwall hit Smithson. Kronner knew it was a bad hit, and he stood back, but his teammates come sailing in with no regard to Smithson on the ice.  Similar to when Kronner destroyed Havlat.  Dude, have some respect for your teammate; you have no idea how injured he is.  A guy could be concussed, or worse, and jostling him around on the ice isn’t going to help any.

+ Filppula got stung with Shea Weber’s rocket of a shot and limped off to the bench. Thank God he was back the next shift.  I don’t think I could have dealt with another injury.

Tomorrow (12:30, ugh) the Wings take on the Penguins.  I hate the Penguins and I want to destroy them.  And we still need points, so let’s go, boys.

Well that sucked.

Goals were as follows:
Detroit: Dan Cleary (Rafalski, Lidstrom)
Toronto: Wayne Primeau (Orr, Finger); Phil Kessel (White, Blake); Jeff Finger (Stempniak, Stajan); John Mitchell (pp; Kessel, Beauchemin); Alexei Ponikarovsky (Grabovski, White)

Trying a new format here for my game recap, and it’s going to be my plus/minuses of the game.  Yes, it’s a blatant riff off the +/- stat.  And the hope is that there will be more pluses than minuses.  Unlike tonight.  Ahem.

Pluses
+ Good for Cleary for getting his 100th career goal.  Now that he’s gotten over that milestone hump, here’s to hoping that he can start producing a bit more offensively.
+ There was a nice smattering of Red Wings fans at the ACC, and occasionally got the “Let’s Go Red Wings” chant going.  Unfortunately it was quickly washed out by “Go Leafs Go”
+ The Leafs did a very cool job at the beginning, showing first a montage of past Hall of Fame inductees, and then having several of them introduced.  They lined up to greet the 2009 inductees.  Stevie Y got a huge ovation.  As did Scotty Bowman.
+ I’m putting this under pluses just because I thought it was a cool stat, but apparently the Red Wings and Leafs are 274-274 in career games (ignoring ties which is 93).  So they were touting tonight’s game as the tiebreaker.  (Apparently the tie occurred at the Red Wings opener in the 08-09 season, when they lost their banner raising game to the Leafs)
+ Lidstrom had a very nice hit at one point, driving Ponikarovsky off to the side boards.  You don’t see it very often, so you appreciate it when you do.
+ Well, this is a plus for me, but I had a surprisingly good vantage point from my seat.

Minuses
– I saw a girl wearing a white RBK Edge style Red Wings jersey, with number 7 and Lindsay on the back… and if that wasn’t bad enough, she turned around and there was no logo on the front!  It was totally blank.  No Winged Wheel.  Talk about a jersey foul… I wanted to get a picture to send to Puck Daddy, but didn’t get a chance.
– Speaking of Cleary, he’s -7 on the season so far.
– The defense sucked.  I saw way too much of Lebda (16:35, 1:02 PP) and Ericsson (20:03, 3:58 PK).  Even worse, they were usually paired together.  I had a feeling that Babcock thought that the Leafs’ anemic offense was a good opportunity to give them more ice time.  Too bad that backfired.  Though it wasn’t entirely their fault alone–everyone was a little lackadaisical.
– Along those lines, I felt like they took the Leafs too lightly.  Or they simply didn’t care because it’s an Eastern/Western conference game.  Who knows, but it was unacceptable.
– Honestly, I thought Howard should have, and was going to start tonight’s game.  Along what I personally think is the reasoning for giving Lebda and Ericsson so much ice time, I would have thought it a good chance for Howard to play.
– Jason Williams has a freaking broken leg.  He was bringing the puck into the zone and slide into the end boards with a Leaf player.  It didn’t really make a huge bang on impact, and I was honestly surprised to see him hurt.  I was also very relieved to see it wasn’t Rafalski–it happened on my end, and I could only see the 2 and what was either an 8 or a 9.  This sucks regardless, but I agree with Matt that it would have been much, much worse had it been Raf.
– There was simply not enough established pressure.  Too much cycling and pretty passing on the power play.  The Red Wings outshot the Leafs, but that doesn’t matter when they get outplayed completely like they did tonight.
– Ozzie sucked.  Let’s be honest with ourselves, this was not a good game for him.

Random thoughts on Toronto,  the ACC, and Maple Leafs fans:

More can be found on my Twitter.  I’ll also be posting pictures from my weekend up here in a short bit.

…Patrick Eaves and Jason Williams.

I actually really like the Eaves signing. I was unsure what to think until I heard the terms of the deal: 1 year, $500,000. He’s a right-hand shot, which makes up for Samuelsson’s departure. A former first-round draft pick of the Ottawa Senators, I think most Red Wings fans are hoping that he turns out to be a Dan Cleary type success story. He had 20 goals in 58 games his rookie season, and has seriously tapered off since. He’s had to deal with injuries the past few seasons, and hopefully he get himself back on track in Detroit and rediscover his scoring touch.

Here are his 2008-2009 stats with the Carolina Hurricanes:

Jason Williams on the other hand… well let’s just say he has skeptics in Detroit. He’s a defensive liability, and tends to show up only occasionally. From earlier reports that the Red Wings had offered him a 1 year deal, he didn’t sound overly enthusiastic, which worries me. If he’s not motivated, how often will he bother to show up? I have to wait until I hear the price tag on this before deciding how I feel about this.

Here are his 2008-2009 stats, spent with Atlanta and Columbus: