Saturday, April 3, 2010

Red Wings 3, Predators 4 (OT): Post Game Snipes...

  • This game was right out of the How to Beat the Red Wings textbook. I hate outings like this.
  • Of course, it didn’t help that the Wings completely went to sleep during the second period. I guess they were bound to have a bad effort after they’ve been on such a roll.
  • I really hate these “At least we got a point?!” games. They’re no fun at all.
  • On one shift Shea Weber had both Lilja and Filppula limping after blocking his shots. Ken Daniels (I think it was him.) called Lilja a tripod, which is something I’m just going to leave alone. Surprising absolutely no one, the Predators scored shortly afterward. I really think the boys should be discouraged from trying to block his shots. It rarely works out well.
  • The Preds’ first goal bounced in off of Homer’s stick. They’re second bounced in off of Z’s skate. It was a typical stifling trap game capitalizing on a couple of lucky bounces.
  • Nick Lidstrom wiped out and got walked around for a great scoring chance during the third period. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him do that before. He almost looked human for a fraction of a second there. It was weird.
  • It’s really exciting that Datsyuk is starting to take more shots like the one that sent the game to overtime. We’ve been talking about the need for more shoot all season long, and these last few games have showed why that’s so important.
  • Sixteen seconds into overtime? Seriously? At least they got a point.
  • During the post-game, Mickey York made fun of Barry Trotz’s lack of a neck. Then he called Erat a figure skater. My appreciation for him rose infinitely.
  • In other news, I went to the scavenger hunt this morning. My mom and I teamed up with high hopes for a victory, but we were derailed by a failure in communication. I jumped in the car and yelled for her to drive to Hockeytown Café, which she interpreted to mean Hockeytown Authentics. I was so busy eating the Stanley Cupcake we had made at the bakery that I didn’t notice that we were going the wrong direction until three miles later. Once we finally made it to the right Hockeytown and realized that we had been eliminated, we tried to help my dad and sister by googling things on our phones. It didn’t help. They were busy driving up and down Jefferson in Grosse Pointe. When they finally did find the Timmy’s they were looking for, my dad couldn’t drink the iced coffee fast enough anyway.
  • I’m really in love with the cupcakes we got at the start of the scavenger hunt. They totally made getting up early worthwhile.
  • We seriously debated letting the air out of my dad’s tires and stealing his spark plugs before we left for the scavenger hunt. That would’ve been pretty awesome.
  • Congrats to Sara and Greta for winning the suite tickets. I was really glad that they went to folks that I know.
GP Answers:
1. The Wings need three points to clinch a playoff spot. These two points are huge in terms of securing a place in the postseason and trying to pass Nashville for the fifth seed. Are they going to bring themselves that much closer to where we all know they belong?
Well, they got the one. Now they just need one more victory to guarantee a spot. Or, they could wait for Colorado or Calgary to lose, but I like my first idea better. They still have two games in hand on Nashville, so fifth place isn’t out of the question, but it would’ve been nice to pick up the points in the head-to-head matchup today.

2. Again with the sixty minutes thing. Babcock has pointed out that the last two games haven’t been ideal efforts. Now’s the time to get that sorted out and back on track. Can the boys play a complete game?
The first and third periods weren’t terrible, but the second was a nightmare. Not only was it dominated by Nashville, but it was also boring.

3. Is anyone going to score a goal this time around?
There were plenty of goals to go around. They just didn’t quite fall to the right side. Although to be fair, most of the scoring was technically done by the Wings, as two of Nashville’s goals went in off of Detroit forwards.

4. What ridiculous thing is Bertuzzi going to do in an attempt to score? On Thursday, he spiked the puck into the net, put one in with his skate—an extremely borderline success, and smacked the goalie in the face with his stick. I’m telling you, there’s a header coming.
He didn’t do anything special that I noticed. He did look like he was about to kill Dan Hamhuis at one point. That particular altercation led to Bertuzzi in the box negating a Wings powerplay. I’m still not sure why coincidental minors weren’t handed out there, but I suspect it had something to do with the fact that Bertuzzi was trying to murder someone again.

Cookies and Cupcakes for Pavel Datsyuk
See, Pav? This is why we need more shoot! Aside from that goal, he was all over the ice this afternoon. He set up one goal while sitting on his butt on the ice after falling down. He’s been displaying a lot of Dangle Dangle magic over these last couple of games.

Composite Sticks get the Golden Facepalm
Draper’s broken stick led to one of Nashville’s goals, and later on Franzen’s stick literally disintegrated in his hands to negate a brilliant scoring chance. I have a sneaky suspicion that Mickey Redmond’s going to break into the Wings’ locker room tonight and replace all of their sticks with wood ones.

What I Learned:
There should really be a federal law banning the trap. This goes beyond the scope of the NHL. It needs to be an act of Congress.

No comments:

Post a Comment