Well that sort of sucked.

I should have written something Thursday night, because it would have been relaxed and upbeat, filled with the joy that comes from beating the Minnesota Wild. It wasn't a perfect game, but it made me forget the fact that with Lebda out, the Wings would technically be out two defensemen and two forwards for the next game, and only let me remember the happy memories - the kind of memories that get soft-lit and put up against bad music, and shown slow motion in montage form.

Alas, it was not to be.

(We'll take the blame for this one, guys. I left my lucky braclet up at school, and in a horrible accident involving a blood pressure cuff, a bag of Smarties, and a Steve Yzerman card, Lindsay messed with the delicate mojo of her lucky hat. Whoops. Our bad.)

Hopefully the more miserable moments of that game (like the Wings' "powerplay" in the third, maybe?) will be outshone in my memory by the good ones.

Like that time the Red Wings killed off a penalty without Nick Lidstrom, who got the puck as he was exiting the penalty box, took it up the ice on a breakaway, and scored like he was fricking Henrik Zetterberg or something. Tell me that wasn't awesome. You can't.

And you really can't fault the loss on Osgood, who still looks like he's well on his way back from whatever dark, dark place he went to during the last couple of weeks.

And then there was Darren Helm, whose stats don't really refelct the fact that he was everywhere last night. McCarty, who was in again on 97.1 for Ken Kal's laryngitis, said he thought Helm was the best player in the league right now with no points. I can see where he might say that, and I think the points'll come soon. I'm going to miss seeing him play live when they finally stop sending him back down to Grand Rapids. He scores goals, he makes assists, he finishes his checks - he's faster than pretty much anybody out there.

And I don't remember where I saw this, but I guess he's been winning an awful lot of face-offs for the Red Wings lately, too. Kris Draper better watch his back.

Colorado? Hopefully by tomorrow the Red Wings are back to playing like the Red Wings for a full 60 minutes.

Oh, here. I got you something.

I know it doesn't look like much, but you have to keep in mind the amount of work and sheer length of time it takes to upload images to Blogger from a dial-up internet connection. Oh yeah. I love you that much.