No coach makes more amusing bench faces than Gretzky

There's a game tonight. I have mixed feelings about it.

On the one hand, after the Red Wings won the last game in a shootout over the St. Louis Blues, I skipped elatedly back to my room, wave after wave of happiness and relief washing over me. Then I stopped and thought about what kind of ass-tastical month my team must be having if I was about to break into song over a shootout win against the St. Louis Blues, and the hockey stress kind of came back stronger.

The good news is tonight I have a really good excuse not to watch the game - it's on FSN Plus, a channel that GVSU's cable service provider decided we didn't need. I'll be listening to Ken Kal via the internet, because nothing gets more French homework done than hockey over the radio. At least Zetterberg's back in the lineup.

My thoughts on what we're walking into? Well, the last time I made predictions before a Phoenix game, the worst ones came true, so I'm not even touching this one with my own opinion. Hank's horoscope has no useful insight today, unless I'm to take that his "lucky numbers" mean that the lines are going to run Helm-Samuelsson-Maltby and Zetterberg-Draper-Hudler, although if they're still playing sucky and Babcock starts pulling names from a hat again, I would not be surprised. Creeped out, maybe, now that I've written it down, but not at all surpised. Maybe somebody who's actually watching this game can fill me in if it happens; it's kind of hard to keep track of line changes when you can't actually see them.

Osgood gets the start again tonight, which I guess means that he'll also be starting in Pittsburgh on Sunday, and... ... I don't want to talk about the goalies right now, so here, have a picture of Wayne Gretzky being pissed off.


Let it give you hope for the near future.