Red Wings 3, Avalanche 2: Post Game Snipes...

• The Wings looked good in the first period. They had a lot of energy and carried the play. They even had a two-goal lead to show for it.
• All that momentum got taken away midway through the second period when Kerry Fraser waved off a Franzen goal on yet another weak call against the Wings. It just blows my mind how regularly this has happened this season. Maybe it’s because I’m sweating games out more than I usually do, but I can’t ever remember this many obnoxiously bad calls going against the Wings at crucial moments.
• Predictably, after the bad call, the Avs started to carry the play and tied up the game shortly thereafter. As much as I missed the Wings during the Olympic break, I did not miss the NHL one bit. I just wish there was some way the Wings could exist in a fantasy world where we didn’t have to deal with Little Gary and his league of crackpots.
• I think Tomas Holmstrom kicked Fraser’s dog over the break or something. Yeah, that must be it.
• The versus announcers said that Datsyuk had been, “Danglelicious all night.” This could be this season’s version of fabulosity. It’s been over a year since that beautiful quote, and I’m proud to say that it’s still a regular part of my vocabulary. In fact, only West Wing quotes and an insult sequence from In the Heat of the Night are in the same range of television-inspired quotations in my life. Make it stick.
• Some intrepid folks on Twitter have begun cobbling together a Beyonce parody for Danglelicious: I’ve joined forces with @mpetrella, @mserven, and @beanie168. Read and enjoy.
• It was weird to see the powerplay convert.
• McCarty made a good argument in favor of NHL participation in the Olympics during the post-game show. Because I needed another reason to love the guy.
  
• That’s all I’ve got. I’m out of mid-season blogging shape after that long break. I’m going to have to get my game legs (fingers?) back.
  

GP Answers:
1. Are the Wings going to come out of the Olympic break as dazed and confused as I am? Or can they continue playing like they did against Ottawa before the break? (That happened this century, right? It’s been a while.)
They looked stunningly good during the first period. It’s amazing how refreshing that is after this season.

2. How will the Wings’ Olympians fare after their short break? Only Rafalski played yesterday so the rest of the team should be in pretty good shape. Honestly, Sweden and Russia getting knocked out early might’ve been the best thing to happen to the Wings in a long time.
Rafalski looked fine. There was some debate about whether he would play or not, but playing yesterday didn’t seem to affect him at all. I wanted Sweden and Russia to do well for the Wings who were playing for their countries, but since I’m neither Swedish nor Russian, my loyalty to the Wings is much stronger. Those extra few days of rest for the Wings’ big guns could pay dividends down the road.

3. Lilja’s slated to make his long-awaited return to NHL action tonight. It should be interesting, to say the least. How is that going to work out for him and the team? It sure would be a shame to have put Maltby out of action for the rest of the season to make room for the old, turnover-machine version of Lilja.
Honestly, I barely noticed him. The boxscore tells me that he played 9:28 and was -1, but aside from a couple of random times, I didn’t see him do much. Then again, I spent most of the third period laughing about song parodies, so it’s possible that I missed something. Kudos to him for working to get back in the NHL though. I probably would’ve just given up and fallen into deep despair after the first two weeks of constant headaches, let alone almost a full year of them.

4. Can Rafalski bring his stellar Olympic play back to the Wings? If he plays like that down the stretch, things are going to be looking happier around here.
He wasn’t spectacular, but he was just fine.

Cookies and Cupcakes for Pavel Datsyuk
He was, of course, Danglelicious.

Tomas Holmstrom gets the Golden Facepalm
A veteran like him should know better than to go out kicking referees’ dogs before important hockey games. Shame on him.

What I Learned:
Nothing compares to Red Wings hockey. For better or for worse.