Another Lousy Saturday...

I didn’t catch enough of the game tonight to offer any sort of intelligent recap, but I thought I’d share what I saw. There’s really no reason for this other than the fact that I like to commiserate with other like-minded folks.

We arrived at a bar with 1 minute left in the 1st period. I managed to get left behind by my group when they got seated because I had naturally headed straight for the nearest TV. Much to my delight, I had arrived just in time to see the Leafs score their second goal of the night.

I was still feeling pretty good about things, though, because I hadn’t expected to see any of the game at all. On top of that, my friends had saved me a seat that was facing the closest TV with the Wings game on (clearly they know me too well). I got to semi-watch the second period right up to when Jason Williams got hurt. (Speaking of which, like everyone else, I initially assumed that he had blown out his knee. I guess compared to that, it’s actually good news that he broke his leg. Watching the replays makes me shudder though.) At that point, we were asked to move tables to make room for a large party, and we got exiled to a room where they were playing some out-of-conference football game that I could not have cared less about. So I spent the rest of the game leaning sideways out of the booth trying to catch glimpses of the game on the ½ screen that was still in view.

Judging by the final score and the recaps that I’ve read, I guess I didn’t miss much. Apparently, as someone was kind enough to point out in the comments on my GP post, my worst fears came true and the Wings sleepwalked through this one. They’ve got a long history of phoning in games against lowly teams and it’s always been one of my great frustrations with this team. Also, it turns out that Phil Kessel did indeed come into his own as the Leafs’ savior with his first goal of the season.

Also, I never thought I’d be genuinely upset to see Jason Williams go down with an injury. The options for replacing him aren’t particularly appealing if Eaves isn’t ready to go on Wednesday. I never thought the Wings would be facing a shortage of forwards after the three signings they made in August.

Wings vs. Maple Leafs GP...

Wings vs. Leafs @7 PM

1. Despite all of the Wings’ early-season struggles, we can still be thankful that we’re not Leafs fans. They have exactly 2 victories. Two. In 14 games. They actually doubled their win total last night by beating the lowly Hurricanes. The Wings, on the other hand have put together three solid games in a row. They’re in Toronto with all kinds of autograph sessions and media fanfare for Steve Yzerman to play against a weak, Eastern Conference opponent. In other words, this is exactly the kind of game the Wings like to sleepwalk through. Will they decide to show up and not embarrass themselves with a loss to the Leafs? Please, Hockey Gods, make it so.
2. Will Phil Kessel come into his own in his role as savior of the Leafs tonight?
3. With any luck, the Wings have taken their off-day to recalibrate their collective aim. The last game looked like the team dressed 18 versions of Mikael Samuelsson with all of the missed shots they took. How many shots are they going to send wide this game?
4. Every once in a while, Todd Bertuzzi does things that make me smile. Sometimes I even feel like I’m starting to like him. Then he does things like make behind-the-back passes right onto the tape of opposing players in the Wings’ defensive zone that inevitably lead to heart-attack-inducing scoring chances. Is he going to finally set himself on a course that will earn him my good graces, or is he going to continue to be the guy who keeps making me scare my housemates by yelling at the TV all the time?
5. With a win tonight, the Wings can overtake Chicago and Columbus for the Central Division lead (although, the BJs are playing Carolina, so there’s a pretty good chance they’ll walk away with 2 points to stay ahead of the Wings). Am I the only one who finds it ironic that the Central, who pretty much everyone agreed was the best division in the league at the start of the season actually has the lowest first place point total of any one in the league? There’s no way that will stay like that for the whole season, but I thought it was worth pointing out.

On a side note, I really like the look of the Leafs’ official website. I’m a sucker for old-timey photos like the one they use as the background. I probably won’t get to see the game tonight, which is disappointing because I always love a good Original 6 match-up.

Now, it’s off to the Big House for some football and glorious fall weather. Go Blue!

Guess What I Want for My Birthday Cake Next Year...

Now it’s no secret that I’m a fan of baked goods. I’m also quite fond of mocking others’ mistakes. So it should come as no surprise that I’m an avid reader of the blog Cake Wrecks, which is dedicated to showcasing professional cake-making disasters. This morning’s post combined two of my great loves (sports and the aforementioned sweets) for an homage to poorly executed sports-themed cakes, cupcakes, and cookies. Imagine my delight at finding an inconspicuously hockey themed one as I was doing my daily skimming. Take a look at this little beauty:


It’s labeled “competitive sweeping.” If not for that handy handy title, I would have had no idea that it was supposed to be a broom. At first I was trying to figure out what it had to do with sports (curling?), but upon closer inspection I noticed the “Go Pen’s!” written on the cake board. (Although, for the record, I read “Pen’s” as something else. Beware the dangers of improperly placed apostrophes…) We’ll let that slide though, because I think the real genius is the list of player numbers written on what appears to be the broom handle. Now, non-hockey fans who saw the grid-like list were probably calling in Robert Langdon to break the code or running out to play a Pick-6 Lotto number, but I recognized it for what it was: a really lame attempt at a hockey cake.

Based on the sweep talk, I'm assuming that it's circa the Conference Finals this season, but it could date back to last season. Meanwhile, Wings bakers were turning out gems like these:

and

I know which cake I'd like to snack on. I'm just saying, we do things a little better here in Hockeytown.

Wings 2, Sharks 1 (SO): Post Game Snipes...

• For starters, I was shocked that I made it home in time to catch the opening faceoff. It’s not bad considering the fact that I walked out of class at 7:33. Thank you, Budd Lynch ceremony.
• If the Wings had put half of their chances on net instead of shooting wide or high or whiffing on the puck, there’s no way this game wouldn’t have been a blowout. It was like the entire team came down with MikaelSamuelssonitis tonight.
• At one point, Z broke into the zone and made Dan Boyle (I think) look like a fool. Mickey Redmond made the requisite undressing comments.
• At one point on the powerplay, Todd Bertuzzi wound up and fired a slapshot right into a Shark who had laid down to block it approximately 2 feet in front of him. Aside from making me laugh at the thought of it being an assassination attempt, it was an example of really poor shot selection. A couple of steps to either side, and he would’ve had a clear shooting lane.
• The Wings’ penalty kill looked good tonight. The powerplay, not so much.
• I could not believe that the play was not blown dead before Z scored his game-tying goal. It’s about darn time one of those types of calls went the Wings’ way. They’ve gotten burned far too many times on those in recent memory.
• Yep, I still hate overtime. Just in case you were wondering.
• When the game went to a shootout, I was pretty sure that the Wings were going to lose. I’m ever the pessimist, and past performances have given me nothing to be optimistic about. Then, incredibly, both Datsyuk and Zetterberg, amazingly, made dekes and, shockingly, scored. So it turns out that that’s how you score on an NHL goaltender in a shootout, eh? Who would’ve guessed?
• Ozzie looked pretty sharp tonight. And he stopped both of the shots in the shootout. Did someone convince him that Daylight Savings Time switched the calendar to may instead of just setting the clocks back an hour? If so, that anonymous individual is my hero.
  
• When Z scored to end the shootout, FSN showed a replay of the bench’s celebration. Jonathan Ericsson darn near pulled a Happy Hudler face there for a second. I’m probably going to mock him for it at least once more, but it was kind of endearing. I like the enthusiasm.
• The Wings are now tied at 17 points with Chicago (pending the outcome of their game). That’s good for third place in the Central since the Hawks have one more win than the Wings. Both the Wings and the Blackhawks have a game in hand over the division-leading Blue Jackets. See, maybe the Great October Panic of ’09 wasn’t so terrible after all…
  

Cookies and Cupcakes for Henrik Zetterberg and Brad Stuart
Don’t worry, I’ll make a double batch. Stuart gets one because I seem to recall promising them to whichever Wing laid out Dany Heatly. I thought the prize was going to go unclaimed until Stuart stepped up late in the game. However, there’s no way that I could not recognize how well Z played tonight. In tight games like these, your best players have to be your best players, and Z (and Datsyuk, but Hank stole the show) led the way tonight.

Todd Bertuzzi gets the Golden Facepalm
At some point this season, this guy’s going to not miss the net on one of the glorious scoring chances that he gets. Right? He was a shoe-in for this one tonight because he literally made me facepalm at least twice tonight between his turnovers and missed shots.

What I learned:
When you attempt to make a move in the shootout, good things are more likely to happen. (Okay, I already knew that, but it was nice to see the Wings figure it out.)

Wings vs. Sharks GP...

Wings vs. Sharks @7:30 PM

1. San Jose is playing the second game of a back-to-back tonight. Will the Wings seize the opportunity to have a strong start for a change? (And by strong start, I mean not allowing a goal/fantastic scoring chance on the first shift. I’m willing to settle for baby steps.)
2. So, they’ve won two games in a row. Now what? Will they be able to build off of that and start climbing up the standings? The Sharks are well on their way to securing a high playoff seed only to collapse in the post-season, so this will be a good time for the Wings to measure themselves against a team that’s off to a fairly hot start.
3. Ville Leino didn’t do a whole lot last game. I was hoping that he would respond better to Babcock’s message. Aside from his good start in the first couple of games, he’s been fairly forgettable. What is it going to take to get him going?
4. Will Ozzie build on his strong game and start to ease our minds? When he’s on his game, it has a steadying effect on the entire team (not to mention my own nerves) and that’s the kind of presence we all need in net.
5. Khan’s article on Dan Cleary got me thinking about his in ability to hit triple digits in the goals department. Will tonight be the night he finally gets to the milestone?

We’re all feeling pretty happy right about now, so it makes me wonder: what kind of disaster will strike tonight and send us all into the depths of collective panic again? (Yeah, I’m eternally pessimistic. Sorry, it comes with the territory of being a life-long Wings fan.) I’m also going to note that my recap’s Cookies and Cupcakes will most likely go to whichever Wing lays out Dany Heatley. I’m really not a fan of his (except for when he gets points for my one fantasy team…) and I would make no attempt to hide my glee if he were to find himself on the receiving end of a highlight reel check.

Wings 2, Bruins 0: Post Game Snipes...

• This was by far the best game I’ve seen the Wings play so far this season. If they pull off a couple more efforts like that in a row, I might be able to sleep again.
• That being said, aside from a few chances here and there, Boston didn’t look particularly threatening.
• Homer picked up another goal. Words cannot express how happy I am to see him being effective again.
• This is the start of the fifth season Versus/OLN has been covering hockey, and they still can’t figure out how to do a good job. They steadfastly refuse to show replays of penalties and other key plays, but managed to include a brief picture-in-picture shot of Tim Thomas skating to the bench when he was pulled for the extra attacker. I really feel like most people out there have a handle on the concept of how one skates to the bench. Then again, I’m kind of an intellectual snob, so maybe I’m totally off-base.
• While celebrating the Wings’ second goal, it occurred to me to wonder what my housemates think when they hear me cheering and clapping (and sometimes yelling things at the TV) alone in my room all the time.
• I was once again disappointed in Ville Leino. I was hoping he’d come out with some fire after getting benched, but he didn’t make much noise at all.
• The Wings’ defense included the likes of Brett Lebda, Derek Meech, and Doug Janik. And the world didn’t collapse around us.
• At one point, the Versus announcer described Jason Williams as having a “flamethrower of a slapshot.” While I’m not entirely sure what that was supposed to mean, I’ve added it to the list of absurd things I’ve heard come out of the mouths of Versus announcers. coughMastodoniccough
• Z's goal came after he jumped on a puck right off of the faceoff to start a powerplay. That's the kind of little stuff that the Wings hadn't been doing to-date. Nice to see.
• This was only the fourth game in which the Wings have scored first all season. It's also the first time that they've held on to win afterward. I think that stat is the most pleasing out of all of the positives of the game.
  
• The refs seemed content to let things go for most of the night…until the third period. It was like they suddenly decided that they hadn’t met their powerplay quota and had to make up for lost time by calling some cheap stuff. Sure some of their calls were technically interference, but much more obvious incidents had been let go previously. Seriously. Inconsistent officiating is the bane of every hockey fans’ existence.
• With their win tonight, the Wings now have 15 points which is good for 10th place in the Western Conference (It would place them in 7th in the [L]Eastern Conference, for the record. Must be nice, eh?). They’re a whopping two points behind Chicago for the Central Division lead. Maybe, just maybe, the sun will continue to rise.
  

Cookies and Cupcakes for Chris Osgood
It’s hard to post a shutout and not get this award. He made some solid saves when the Wings needed him to, but more importantly, he looked confident while doing so. For whatever reason, the Wings seem to play much better collectively when Ozzie’s on his game.

An Extra Stick Tap for Pavel Datsyuk
Honestly, I don’t know how opposing defensemen are able to sleep the night before they play the Wings just thinking about having to face this guy the next day. Seriously, nobody else in the NHL makes as many guys look utterly foolish as Pav does. And I love every second of it.

Jason Williams gets the Golden Facepalm
This was kind of a tough decision. Nobody really stood out as being particularly horrendous tonight. I decided to go with Williams because of the stupid penalty he took that negated the Wings’ powerplay in the third. It ended up not mattering in the long run, but it still didn’t make me happy.

What I learned:
There's no place like home.

Wings vs. Bruins GP...

Wings vs. Bruins @ 7 PM

1. I’ve been told that the third line looked as fast and tenacious on the ice as they did on paper last game. Will they be able to keep it up?
2. Will Nick Lidstrom take this opportunity to avenge his lost Norris Trophy? Probably not, but it sure would be nice to see him put on a defensive clinic and show Chara that he’s still the best defenseman in the league.
3. How will Ville Leino respond to sitting out on Saturday? So far benching Helm seems to have been effective, so will Uncle Mike’s magic work again on Leino?
4. Was Saturday’s game an isolated effort, or a sign that the Wings have finally decided to show up for this season?
5. The Bruins, like the Wings, have gotten off to a slower than expected start. Which of them is going to show up tonight?
6. I'm not sure why, but the Wings always seem to play their worst when they're on Versus (case in point: the Buffalo game). Will they find it within themselves to not look like a trainwreck in front of a national audience?

I know it’s been said by pretty much everyone else already, but the Wings need to put together a string of wins to pull themselves away from the .500 mark. This team still has the ability to shut other teams down and they need to build on what I’m told was a strong effort on Halloween. It’s November now, and it’s time to get serious.

October Memoir...

Well it’s been quite the rocky month for us Wings fans. This has been by far the most stressful start to the season that I’ve ever lived through. The Wings currently sit at 19th in the league with a grand total of 13 points from 12 games. On the plus side, this is the first time they’ve topped the .500 mark this season, so happy dances for that. I’m still waiting for this season to become fun.

The Wings have had a number of issues throughout the season. They appear, at least in my ever-hopeful mind, to be slowly working through some of them. It’s seemed, so far, that every time they get one problem fixed, another one crops up. If there’s a problem a hockey team can experience, you can bet that the Wings have run into it during this still-young season. Defensive breakdowns, injuries, offensive slumps, injuries, poor goaltending, injuries, lack of chemistry, special teams failures, injuries, lack of effort, and, of course, injuries. If Brad May getting high sticked in the eye by his own teammate while sitting on the bench doesn’t exemplify the way the Wings’ season has gone so far, I don’t know what does. If there had somehow been a defensive zone turnover involved in the play, it would really have summed things up nicely.

I had such high hopes at the start of this season. I really did believe all that stuff I wrote over the summer about the Wings coming out breathing fire and dead set on avenging their loss. Imagine my surprise when they sleepwalked through the Sweden games and came home 0-2. Unfortunately, things didn’t exactly pick up upon their return home. Since I didn’t see the reportedly solid Calgary game, I can count on one hand the number of really solid periods of hockey that I’ve seen the Wings play thus far. Granted, my standards for what I consider to be “solid” are a little higher than the majority of NHL fans, but I’ve been spoiled and I go into every game expecting perfection.

Things have picked up somewhat over the last week or so. Despite the excessive amounts of goals allowed during the Vancouver and Edmonton games, the Wings at least showed a little bit of fire on those nights as they battled back from early deficits. Now the next step will be figuring out how to score the first goal… By my count, they’ve only done this in three games: October 3rd against St. Louis, the 17th against Colorado, and the 24th against Colorado. All three of those games turned out to be losses (one in a shootout), so I think this is the point where I’m supposed to comment on their ability to hold onto a lead or something. I feel like I’ve already done that numerous times, though, so I’m going to move on now.

Despite my excessively critical (and sometimes borderline angry) posts over the course of the last month, I still have high hopes for this team. I really get the sense that they’re getting ready to turn the corner and that come April, we’ll all be looking back and chuckling at the Great October Panic of 2009 (well, maybe not chuckling, but at least not ripping our hair out).

Reason #10,839,426 Why I Love Dangle Dangle...

I decided to check Google Reader one last time before I go to bed tonight, and I came across this Detroit News article in which he delivers the following quote:

"I skate awesome," he said after he helped the Red Wings beat the Calgary Flames, 3-1, on Saturday. "I am like, woosh, but I am still not fast. Everybody skate better than me. I feel like I am flying, but it still looks the same."

I've pretty much been giggling the whole time I've been typing this post (or maybe that's the 12 hours I've put in doing homework today making me slap-happy). It's even more amusing to me because that's exactly how I felt when I went to the free skate at Yost today. I was a little rusty at first (and I discovered about 3 strides in that my skates were in desperate need of sharpening), but no matter how much I felt like I was getting back in the swing of things, there were still 5-year-old girls doing figure skating jumps and fancy spins and 8-year-old boys whizzing by seemingly competing to see who could knock the most adults over (Nice try, sunshines, but you never quite managed to get me. It turns out that I can be surprisingly agile when I need to jump out of the way of falling children.), so I still felt like I was lumbering around in slow motion.

Anyway, Pav never ceases to amuse me, whether it's on the ice or off. This was definitely his best quip in a while, and that move he pulled before setting up Homer's goal last night was pretty slick. I've said it before, and I plan on saying it many times again in the future: I wouldn't want to end up in a dark alley with him. He'd end up with my phone, my keys, my chapstick, and even my pocket lint and I'd never even have a clue. We should all be glad he didn't choose to devote himself to a life of crime. (Except for, of course, being criminally good at being a Red Wing.)

Things I Need to Know...

For those of you who inquired about my cookie-making:



Yeah, they tasted as good as they look. I use sweets to buy people's friendship.

Ok, so since I missed the game last night, I can’t offer a recap. Naturally, the first game I’ve missed all season turned out to be the first one the Wings appear to have shown up to play. I somehow ended up spending a solid hour talking hockey at the Halloween party I was at. I kept checking on the score by texting Google throughout the night, and sometime around 12:30 AM we saw that the score was 2-1 with the game still in progress. Three or four of us spent the next several minutes huddled around my phone repeatedly texting Google (and accidentally Twitter) waiting for a confirmation of the final score. This is why the thought of leaving the state of Michigan breaks my heart. Seriously, do people do things like that in Atlanta? Tampa Bay? Phoenix? I think not.

In other news, my spy costume was mistaken for a detective, a flasher, a gangster, a ninja, and an off-duty stripper. I was a little disappointed that nobody guessed that I was a spy until I realized that that was the whole point of being a spy. It’s possible that I’m the worst costume maker ever, but I like to think that it’s because I’m just the best darn spy around.

Anyway, back to hockey. I watched the highlight reel on NHL.com, but I’ve got some questions that I’d like answered.

1. How did the third line look? Were they as good on the forecheck as I imagined when I saw their names put together?
2. The recaps I’ve read so far have told me that the Wings finally looked like themselves. Is this true?
3. Did Brad Stuart really play as well as folks are saying he did? Is that like a Halloween miracle or something?
4. How disturbing was seeing Brad May take that stick to the eye? Not only did he look like he was in pain, he looked terrified too. Okay, I guess this is more of a rhetorical question.
5. I’ve also been told that Ozzie played well. True or false? Did he make some big saves or did the Wings limit the Flames chances pretty well?