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.)