And Nationwide Arena, like every other arena hosting the Wings during the offseason, has declared their series-long 'war on octopi'. (A much better informed take on the subject than we got from Nashville or Pittsburgh last year.)
But the one that got me was the one bashing Osgood. Michael Arace contends that despite the fact that this is what the bottom of NHL.com looks like:
"Every save he has made, no matter how pedestrian, has brought chants of "Ozzie" from the crowd. Teammates have gone out of their way to praise him. It is as if there is a citywide effort to channel positive thoughts and artificially inflate Osgood's confidence. Why? Osgood is, by any measure, the Wings' weak link, and everybody knows it." He uses the term "shaky".
"...a citywide effort to channel positive thoughts and artificially inflate Osgood's confidence"? Of course there is, are you kidding me? We've watched Ozzie through the good times and the bad, and know perfectly well how good he is at giving up stupid goals for no reason. "Shaky"? Maybe during the regular season. But the regular season is over now. This is the goddamned Stanley Cup playoffs, and at the end of the day, shaky doesn't shut out.
Look, Mike, I'm sorry I haven't been watching the future Calder Trophy-winning goalie carry his team through the season here. I haven't been treated to some boy-wonder who makes every stop look flashy, and has to, because he's on a team struggling for a playoff berth. No, Chris Osgood didn't steal either of those games away from the BJs. He didn't have to.
Dear Columbus - a save is still a save, no matter how "pedestrian". Don't you wish Osgood could have made just a few less?
(I promise you right now that this is the last time you'll ever see me use pedestrian as an adjective in this blog.)
2 comments:
Maybe Oz didn't steal Game 1, but the Wings could have (and probably should have) been down two or three goals in the first ten minutes of that game, yet Ozzie indeed came up with the saves they needed while Detroit's skaters shook out the stupid early on. Right now I should think there are three or four teams whose seasons are on the line (ahem, Columbus, for instance) that wouldn't/shouldn't mind having a "weak link" like Osgood right now.
Of course, the funny thing is, there seems to be a very short memory these days among those who heap praise upon young goalies who come seemingly out of nowhere and carry their teams into playoff berths... so let's take account of some of the recent ones:
Jim Carey? probably still in therapy because apparently someone thought he could single-handedly dismantle the mid 90s Penguin offense...
Jose Theodore? watching from the pine while that Varlamov kid pitched a shutout against NY...
Andrew Raycroft? - where did he end up again? buried under an Avalanche or something...
uh, Casey Price? I just plain feel sorry for him...
Jean-Sebastien Giguere? - riding pine in his "prime" in Anaheim...
and so on and so forth. It'll be interesting to see if Mason has any kind of staying power after this season, let alone the kind Osgood has shown in his career. Yeah, I think the Wings are pretty comfortable with Osgood's pedestrian saves and Stanley Cups.
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