More news on Sweden

While the Red Wings are over in Sweden next fall, hopefully bringing it to the St. Louis Blues, they'll play a game against Färjestad BK, Hakan Loob's old team (and current team. He's the GM). I don't really follow the Swedish Elite League very closely, other than being aware that it exists, and being able to name (but not pronounce) a few of the teams that play in it, but I guess Färjestad is in a sense comparable to Red Wings right now, having won seven championships since 1975, the most recent in 2006.

They're thinking this game will be played September 30th. Swedes against Swedes. Madness. Tickets are being released tomorrow at 10am. The arena only claims to seat 8,250, so if you're interested, you'll want to jump on this fast.

Not much more information can be found here, in English, and here, not so much in English, but Google Translate does a suprisingly passing job on Swedish, I've found.

Also of note - Wings 06 pick Dick Axelsson currently plays for Färjestad. So... yeah. Rock on.

Tonight's first star - MacDonald's Goalposts

Red Wings lose to Islanders, 2-0.

Am I sad? Yes, I'm sad. Am I frustrated? Yes, I'm frustrated. Am I surprised?

Honestly, no. The top team in the league plays the bottom team in the league. The bottom team brings their A game. The top team maybe throws out a solid B+, if they're feeling fiesty. Tell me you haven't heard this story before.

MacDonald deserves the credit for some ridiculous saves. And hitting goalposts instead of the net is a matter of centimeters. There were some ass-ugly stretches, but it's not like the Wings slept the full 60 minutes. They didn't make it as hard for New York as they could have, but they didn't hand them the game on a silver platter, either. I'll give credit where credit is due.

Still. Losing to the Islanders is still losing to the Islanders. Gross.

Happy Birthday Jimmy

On this most historic of days, Jimmy Howard turned 25 and was named Griffin's Man of the Year.

The Griffins organization will present him with "an etched crystal trophy" at the next home game on April 10th in honor of the many, many, community service projects he's been involved with this year. He will also be in the running with 29 other players "for the Yanick Dupre Memorial Award, honoring the overall American Specialty/AHL Man of the Year".

p.s. If you click on the link about the Man of the Year award, you get to see the Wing's prospect in a silly hat posing with a St. Bernard wearing antlers. The picture gets bigger on the homepage. If you can load it. The Griffins site has been acting up for me lately.


San Jose lost to Nashville 3-2 tonight, leaving the Sharks and the Wings tied in points with 107 a piece. Hopefully the Wings can squeak ahead of them tomorrow, not just because it would make me smile for the Wings to stay at the top of the standings (because, believe me, it would), but also because I would get to change the number on my kitchen messageboard from 387 to 388, provided Ozzie is, as everyone says he is, starting in net.

No, this isn't to point out some sort of record that will be tied or beaten tomorrow with a win, other than then being just one behind Dom, but to point out the inherent pathetic-ness of keeping a Chris Osgood All-Time Wins counter going on your wall. I get to watch that number not go up very quickly every time I leave, come back, make food, or go to the bathroom. But, dammit, I still love Ozzie, so I still keep counting. My roommate thinks the whole thing's a laugh-riot.

No doubt as he suits up for what could potentially be the Hasek-passing move into the definitive number 10 spot (390), Ken Daniels will CURSE HIM TO LOSE HIS NEXT 15 GAMES by mentioning it. Ken curses everything. I love him, but if he talked in pregame about the unholy strength of the Wings' lower bodies, by the second period, each and every Red Wing (even the goalie on the bench), Babcock, equipment manager Paul Boyer, former players on other teams, prospects still in Sweden, and Orange Hat Guy would suddenly come down with a case of exploding ankles.

And as we all know, this season Ozzie doesn't need the Daniels Curse to help him let goals in.

Um... but I'm keeping positive thoughts.

On the topic of goalies...

It's been reported that Ozzie will be back between the pipes Friday against his former team, the Islanders.

It still looks weird. And the colors really don't match.


Over in Europe, speculations are being made about a potential comeback in the KHL by Dominik Hasek... He had this to say, as reported in the Edmonton Journal: "I'm healthy now, no aches, no pains, and if I decide to return, I'd just get back to my training regimen." By training regimen I assume he means starving himself like he did while he was still in the NHL.


Seriously Dom, eat a cheeseburger.

Last but definately not least, people are still dwelling on the idea of Roberto Luongo coming to Detroit. This is an even stranger idea to me than Dom making a comeback (which I guess isn't all that strange. This would be possible-return-from-retirement number what now?). It's not impossible, but it is definitely not going to happen until some players retire, regardless of whether or not Luongo's willing to take a pay cut to win the Cup. Personally, I don't want to think about Bobby Lu becoming a Wing any time soon because essentially it involves either half the team leaving for parts unknown, or Nick Lidstrom retiring to clear up cap space, and I am in complete and total denial of that event. It will never happen, and Nick will be here forever (I can dream, right?).

Ugh. Why do all my favorite hockey players have to keep getting old?



Too bad they used the version of the Roy-Ozzie fight with the delusional announcer who thinks Roy won.

... but it turned out alright in the end

Most of last night's game made me want to bang my head against a wall. The Red Wings not-scoring-parade (though it didn't seem like it was for lack of trying) was broken up only by interviews with Sam Gagner's mullet-in-progress and Ethan Moreau's creepy blown pupil. Luckily, the Wings decided it would be fun to score twelve goals in the last thirty-seconds of the game again, so things worked out in the end.

I hope Ericsson can eventually figure out how to score in places other than Edmonton though.

Oh, and it's the day after Tuesday, which means it must be time for another installment of WTF Wednesdays. I think when Lindsay talked me into doing this, she severely over-estimated our ability to come up with weekly content that maintained any sort of level of decent quality, but here goes -

I have a saying. It goes "The only thing weirder than a Finn/goalie is a Finnish goalie." Here to demonstrate is Vesa Toskala. You've probably (or maybe you haven't) already seen him profess his love for his sparkly Mickey Mouse t-shirt and man-purse, but this one was new to me:



I don't actually speak Finnish, so god knows how accurate those subtitles are, but since he actually says "Mitsubishi Colt", I'll trust them.

Am I up early... or am I up late?

Were those refs crappy again? I've heard as much. I don't know. After the first Calgary goal, I only looked up six times.

The first couple of those times, Chris Osgood was doing this thing where he could have had his skate against the little red bar that marks off the rectangle where the other team was aiming the puck, but instead, he... didn't.

And wouldn't you know it - that's where the puck went in. Twice. I think my neighbors in this walls-of-paper building now probably know me as "that girl who yells HOLD THE POST!!!" I'll fit right in with "creepy chick" and "dude who whistles too early in the morning." Why do you do this to me, Ozzie? After I've defended you to everyone I know...

I was going through my old bookmarks this weekend and found this. Bow down in awe and terror at the impressive spectacle that is The Kevin Dineen Card Museum. That, my friends, is devotion. I'm personally a fan of the 94-95 pog, and the primal scream, but adorable Wendy's juniors Dineen also makes me smile. I kind of wish I remembered where I found the link in the first place, but oh well...

Game tonight vs Calgary...

From what I've heard, nothing should be changing in the lineup. Homer and Lilja are both still out with injuries and Ozzie could get the start again.

Personally, I'm not looking forward to this game. Mainly because I still hate Calgary.

In other news, Hossa's brain is functioning properly. I don't know how long it took him to figure it out, but he decided he would rather take a pay cut to stay in Detroit then continue to hop around the NHL making trillions of dollars. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? I honestly want to know what makes this franchise so much more desirable than others. I already have some idea of why, but Detroit has been my team since before I could read, (which was convenient because I never had to figure out how "Yzerman" was pronounced Yzerman; I knew the word before I knew the letters) so I might be slightly biased. Is it the crazy Ilitch family? The management? The continuous winning? All of the above and then some?

Whatever the reasons, high caliber players keep managing to find themselves in Detroit and then decide they never want to never leave. Too bad the rest of the city is booking it out of Motown faster than you can say Hank's full name.

She was about to go all Jedi on Hollweg's ass

Last night Lindsay and I were apparently witness to the first game in Griffins history where no penalties were called (maybe in response to Friday night's game where the worst penalty I have ever seen in my life was called. It wasn't even questionable. There was no question. Helm was a good six feet away. But I digress...)

It was Star Wars night. We had standing room only tickets, there were stormtroopers on the concourse, Darth Vader was walking around... I was kind of dorking out.

Lindsay almost had to be held back from hitting Ryan Hollweg with her $5 plastic lightsaber as he passed us on his way out of the arena. You may remember Ryan Hollweg from such timeless classics as Ryan Hollweg hits Sergei Kostitsyn from behind, Chris Simon tries to kill Ryan Hollweg, and Ryan Hollweg dances like a fool while Shanny laughs at him. I'm not sure where Lindsay developed such a seething, burning hatred for the man (I didn't think she liked the Kostitsyns that much) but there's no arguing with her once she's formed an opinion. Her and her lightsaber were bent on vengance. (If it was vengance against his creeper-stache, I could see where she was coming from.)

I don't know about her sometimes. Oh well. Anything for the Justin Abdelkader bobbleheads.

And that's only my nightstand because none of my shelves get enough light to take a decent picture. Really.

I'm just a dirty complainer like that

I think it's awfully funny (by which I mean not funny at all, but a sad remark on my life and humanity in general) that when the Red Wings aren't sucking hard, I don't really have anything to say about them. It's laziness on my part; I could have written something about what I thought they've been doing right lately, or something about Ozzie getting his game back together, or something about Lilja's injury, or something about... I don't know - Konstantinov, maybe, since it was his birthday yesterday.

But I guess I've fallen into that trap of 'if you don't have anything bitchy to say, don't say anything at all.'

What I want to talk about right now was tonight's game against Atlanta, because I think there's probably a lot to talk about. Sadly, I haven't seen it yet. We had to tape it, and the tape's 160 miles south east of here right now. I was hoping to catch the replay on FSN tonight, but I guess they're playing tennis until six in the morning or something.

All I know of the game was texted to Lindsay's phone by our mom while we were at a Griffins game. Our mommy-play-by-play was pretty sparse, but it included telling us that the crowd was chanting Ozzie's name, to which I had the following response:

"Oh, that's good - wait. Ozzie's starting again? Wait. Isn't this an away game?" I fear I may have missed something truely epic, and for that I'm a little sad.

My tradeoff was getting to witness the unbridled freaking-out joy of a guy down the row from us who took until the middle of the second period to realize that Darren McCarty was playing in front of him.

Guy down the row: "Wait. Holy crap. Is that McCarty? McCarty? McCarty's playing tonight? Darren McCarty? That's McCarty??!?"
Guy next to me: "Dude, yeah. He scored the goal."
Guy down the row: "OMGOMGOMG MCCARTY. Right there. That's Darren McCarty."

He spent the rest of the period grinning like a 12 year old, which made me smile inside. You go to so many Griffins games and you start to forget who it is you're watching down there, people like Helm, and Leino, and Ericsson, and Downey, and Darren freaking McCarty, and it's nice to be reminded that for a $10 student ticket, you get to watch past, present, and potential Red Wings play hockey. Also, on Fridays you can enjoy $1 beers.

I swear I'm not getting paid to plug Griffins games; this is just the most live hockey I've gone to in a year since I was ten, and it's kind of made my semester awesome.

Plus, not having actually seen tonight's game, and not willing to read everything that's already been said about it and regurgitate it in a half-assed game report, it's the closest thing to Red Wings-related information I have anything to say about right now.

We'll call it... a prospects scouting report? So... Leino still holds onto the puck too long, and Jimmy looked alright in the shootout...

(Oh, and the mascot broke his arm sledding down the stairs in the lower bowl. Yeah, I don't know. They have a hydrolics-powered gatling gun that somebody built in their garage out of pvc pipe that shoots hot dogs and t-shirts - it's a dangerous job.)

I guess this is a regular feature now?

Maybe it's a little lame, but you know what? Already for this blog I've drawn Chris Pronger's floppy skates in MS Paint, dedicated half an entry to how much Luke Schenn looks like a young Christian Bale, and contemplated Henrik Zetterberg's horoscope. Lame is what we do here.

So welcome to Wtf Wednesdays. I guess because last week's ice dancing segment was such a hit.

Sadly, I don't have anything that even comes close to touching the awesomeness that was Marian Hossa in that shiny silver shirt. I don't think anything really can. So I'll take a complete shot in the dark here; nothing to lose -

I can't possibly be the only hockey fan who wasn't aware that in juniors, one of Sidney Crosby's nicknames was Baby Legs, can I?

Baby Legs? Yes. Baby Legs. I went "wtf". And I sort of wish I'd known this last May.

Maybe the name is warranted. Here's a video of the then-future first round of the 2008 draft about to watch the Finals at the Joe. Tell me that at 2:50 they're not discussing Sidney Crosby's calves being small compared to someone else's. Because I'm pretty sure they are.



I mean, I know that some athletes probably want to be aware of how other, highly successful athletes are working out and taking care of their bodies, but I'm not sure my first reaction to "I just met Sidney Crosby" would be "Let's check out his fine legs as he's walking away."

But hey, if that's what Stamkos & Friends want to do, well then, who am I to argue?

I chose subtitles...

So yesterday was a pretty good day for hockey. Marty broke the record for most all time wins, and then spent the next eight minutes cutting the mesh out of the net, before enlisting in help from his backup and Shanny. The Wings managed to rally back in the third to keep Philly's losing streak at The Joe alive. The game was, in the immortal words of Chris Osgood, a kerfuffle. It was pretty gross for a while so I decided it would be better to turn the subtitles on my television on and at least get a good laugh out of the horribleness that is Versus.

Unfortunately, "Clarion" and "Host the" couldn't get the puck past "Eight Biron", but thankfully "France and" could. Hank was "a gifted and good fishing hands". "Erik sons" had a pretty good game last night, too.

I was mildly disappointed with the subtitles, I won't lie. Pretty much the extent of the mistakes was name botches, things like the ones above, and others like "now they move back to Alberta", instead of Alberts. But it's ok, because the Wings made the game pretty exciting in the last twenty minutes, so I stopped reading them anyway.

Be sure you check back here later today for another WTF? Wednesday, which should be posted soon.

Ah, yes, Versus. Good call.

The one thing I'd most love to hear from in the intermission of a game where the Red Wings are trailing is, without a doubt, Patrick Roy.

Er... is he drunk, depressed, or hasn't spoken English in eight years? Is anyone else subjecting themselves to this? Lindsay thinks it's a combination of all three.

Is it tomorrow yet?

Currently, the only really exciting thing happening in the NHL is Martin Brodeur tying Patrick Roy's record for all time wins. And let's face it, it only matters to most Red Wings fans because they want to see any trace of Roy on top in the history books destroyed. Hopefully he breaks the record tomorrow, on St. Patrick's Day. That would be beautiful. So congrats, Marty. But try not to get any more shutouts. That would be nice.

Tomorrow's game against the Flyers is on Versus, so we can all look forward to the riveting conversation between Brian and Screaming Keith. But does anyone really listen to what they say? In all my experiences with Versus, the intermissions usually look something like this:
1. Ignore the fools and have a serious discussion with my sister about the evolution of Brian Engblom's hair.
2. Worry about whether or not the Wings will be able to break the "Brian on the right, Wings logo on the right" losing curse (I don't have the actual numbers to back this up, but I've been paying attention, and the team Engblom sits behind on Hockey Central tends to lose the game).
3. Turn the game on silent and watch how badly the subtitles are butchered (I've seen the phrase "a good black slave" before, and during Doc Emerick's call of the 08 Eastern conference finals, something was rendered "MAGICAL MOONPIE MARIAN HOSSA", a name we still sometimes use for sheer ridiculousness)
Repeat.

The last time the Flyers won at the Joe was three weeks after Trisha's second birthday. I wasn't even close to being born yet. Holy crap.

Happy early St. Patrick's Day, Hockeytown. (Good luck Marty. Go beat Roy.)

That's more like it

No, it wasn't perfect, but it wasn't last Saturday, either, or the Saturday before. The world at large will still probably be screaming "GOALTENDING SITUATION" from here until the end of eternity, however impressive a job that might have been for Chris Osgood, and until the Wings get a streak of cohesiveness going, it's just a single isolated game amidst a season of inconsistency.

At the same time, that season of inconsistency has the team sitting at the top of the league, and they won today, so speaking very short-term, there's nothing I can really complain about.

Actually, that game was just a tiny part of a Saturday of great ridiculousness, and I'm exhausted and I don't really have anything else to say at all. So in honor of his return - I made this over spring break because our internet is crappy. It's sunshine and flowers and Marian Hossa. This is what I feel like when the Red Wings win games.


It gets bigger if you click it, but why bother, really? Once you've seen Hossa ice dancing in real life, watching him frolic through a field in MS Paint really doesn't bring the same kind of joy anymore.

Some late-night ramblings

Will Old Man Ilitch ever stop handing out the Stanley Cup rings? It's like he's been throwing them out of an airplane this year. Most of the recipients make sense: the team, the broadcasters, the call-ups on standby during the playoffs, Scotty Bowman, the HHOF, any alumnus who never received a ring, etc. Some, however, still baffle me. Like Kid rock. I guess his could have come from Cheli (they're totally bffs), but it doesn't matter how he got one, it matters that he has one, or was at least holding on to one, and that he almost gave it away to Nickleback this year.


(the story starts around 8:30)



If you live within broadcasting distance of CBC and haven't already, you should try to catch this show every once in a while (5 and 11pm weekdays). It gets our seal of approval, if that means anything. If you don't hate Sean Avery (or even if you do) watch this one too. I laughed.

The Wings play St. Louis tomorrow in an early game at 2pm. Geez I'm going to see far too much of this team this weekend. Griffins vs. Peoria (the Blues' farm club) Friday night, Wings vs. Blues Saturday afternoon, and more Griffins vs. Peoria Saturday night. If it's possible to get sick of hockey, it will probably happen this weekend. But if tomorrow's Griffins game is anything like tonight's, that won't happen. Is it possible to get sick of Darren McCarty scoring shorthanded break-away goals on Manny Legace? I think not.

I sort of felt bad for Manny by the time it was over. He had a few cheers when he first came out (some of them from us) but now he's lost more games than he's won after being sent down to the AHL mid-way through the season. That's gotta suck.

Anyway, the final score was 4-1 Griffins, which I hope is indicative of the outcome of tomorrow's game between their parent clubs. Please?

That was disgusting

It was more kinds of disgusting than I care to think about.

That was like it's your birthday, and you've told your parents all year you want a party at Chuck E. Cheese, but they never gave you a straight answer. You woke up this morning a little wary. By the time you got to the breakfast table, you were worried they didn't even remember your big day.

By lunch, it occurs to you that they're probably avoiding the topic on purpose, because they planned a surprise. You're so excited you can barely stand it.

By mid-afternoon, you've started to worry that there is no party after all. You feel like crying forever, but try to take it like a man. It's just a birthday. You get like 80 of them.

Then, just before dinner time, mom tells you to go put your coat on. Oh-boy! Here it comes! You get in the car, barely able to contain yourself. Speeding down the city streets, you spy the sign in the distance - there it is! That cool-looking mouse with the backwards baseball cap. Oh, you can smell the ball pit from here. Closer.... closer... your mom slows down as she approaches the parking lot entrance... THIS IS GONNA BE SO AWESOME...

Then the car lurches the wrong way, pulls into the left turn lane, and turns into the parking lot in front of the dentist's office. You have six teeth drilled and the hygienist goes easy on the Novocaine. On the way back from the bathroom, you're attacked by ninjas, but your mom doesn't believe you and you're grounded a week for ripping your pants.

You go home. Your parents mistakenly thought it was your brother's birthday and gave him all your presents. Also, your dog died.

Pin this one on the defense, pin it on the goaltending, pin it on whatever the hell you want - at the end of the day, the Red Wings blew another lead, and they blew it fast, and they blew it hard.

I try not to dislike Calgary so much, but then nights like this happen. Cleary appears to be ok, but the night's sluttiness still roused my ire, however hard I was laughing at the sight of four Flames in the box while it happened. (I was laughing pretty hard.) Lindsay's irrational shin-kicking urge hasn't really subsided.

Someday, Jarome... someday...

Game Day Update

Wings-Flames 7pm FSN (...or FSDetroit or FSRedWings or whatever they're calling it this week.)


Hossa is still out, but hopefully will be back Saturday against the Blues. Tonight will be Homer's 800th game and Cleary's 600th. There's not really much else to say about this game, unless you want to delve into my "Why I Hate the Calgary Flames" speech, which is quite long, not really validated, and boring. Mostly it involves this incident (and that entire playoff series), and includes my aspiration of meeting Jarome Arthur-Leigh Adekunle Tig Junior Elvis Iginla in an elevator so I can kick him in the shin to get rid of all my anger built up around this team. (It wouldn't be a particularly hard kick, or be directed so much at him as it would be at the sluts on the team he leads, but it would make me feel better.) That will never happen, so I just go back to seething internally.

On top of all this, Dion Phaneuf is a slut. Not quite a skank, but definitely a slut. I mean, just look at him:



I rest my case.

While you wait for the game to start go have a laugh at the expense of the Nashville Predators.

Go Wings.

Wtf?

Marian Hossa and Pavol Demitra, doing what they do best.



Get well soon, Marian. I miss you out there.

We're still here

Really. I haven't flung myself off a bridge or anything (given the last week or so, could you blame me if I had?). I just haven't been around much. I wish I could say that's because I spent spring break in the Caribbean, but alas. This was just not the case.

It seems a little unfair to the literally tens of readers this blog has surely accumulated (not even counting my mother) that the first post with any actual content in over a week was Tyler Kennedy making sweet, sweet love to his hockey stick. (I... want to make the joke, but I can't for the life of me pick just one direction to take it.)

Because I don't think that anything I have to say about the Detroit goaltending situation at the moment would be enlightening to anyone, all I can offer right now is the following:

- Homer's probably playing again tomorrow. I'm excited.

- Hossa's probably not playing again tomorrow. I'm sad.

- BREAKING NEWS: Alex Ovechkin wears Spongebob Squarepants boxers.

Are you really surprised? I'm not. (anyway, this picture is probably three years old.)

- PUPPIES!!!!

Yeah, that's all I got. Here's to the next week in hockey being much better than the last. Go Wings.

ummmmm.....

The rest of the story is in the comments on the youtube page. It doesn't make it any less weird.

This makes me glad that I'm a Wings fan and not a Penguins fan.

RED WINGS TRADE DEADLINE BREAKING NEWS

Nothing happened. You can go about your business.

More old news...

Jonathan Ericsson and Aaron Downey have been called up, and Darren Helm and Ville Leino were sent back down to Grand Rapids. Hossa and Lebda are back in the lineup tonight. Ericsson is in for Lilja, who ended up with a sore knee and a concussion after his "fight" with Shea Weber. Lilja had this to say about it in the Detroit News: "I remember the first two punches, but the rest I saw on television." Great.

I can't blame him for this, but every time I see Lilja get into a fight and not really throw any punches, my heart sinks, because I can literally feel people being reaffirmed of negative European stereotypes. My first thought wasn't even "Oh crap, I hope Andreas is ok," it was "Oh crap, Don Cherry's gonna cry Chicken Swede."

Oooh, and did he ever.

Sigh.

Support Dan Cleary. Go vote for Harbour Grace.

Whut. the crap. was that?

I don't really think I have anything to say after that game. Honestly, the level of ridiculousness was so high that I spent most of the game laughing. It was either that or cry.

On a dial-up internet connection, I'm not going to try to confirm this, but as of the seventh goal, I think I heard Ken mention that Rafalski and Lidstrom were still even with their plus-minus. Who the hell was at like a -5 to make this happen? I have the mental image of Raffi leaping into the bench in a panic to protect his stats when he thought Nashville was about to score.

This MS Paint job is better than that game was. Think about how sad that is.

Of course, maybe that game never happened. Maybe it was all part of an elaborate acid trip hallucination I'm having. We've changed the channel to what Lindsay tells me is Hockey Night in Canada, but for some reason, all I'm seeing is footage of a lion-fish superimposed over a photograph of Kelly Hrudey dog-sledding. I don't even know.

I'm going to go gorge myself on leftover paczki and hope I never have to sit through another game like that again.