Happy Halloween!

Wouldn't that be perfect if we were playing the BJs tonight? Unfortunately, I don't have any Flames in costume, and the only Red Wings-related Halloween picture I can find is wildly inappropriate:


Since, as we just found out, Valtteri Filppula's pimpin' hand ain't strong.

And that's where we stand, before a team that's not afraid of blood, already injury-ravaged, desperately, desperately in need of a win.

I mean it's starting to get ridiculous. I know Babcock's been saying that regardless of the record, this team's been playing better than the blowing-through-the-league teams of th elast couple years, but is that any consolations? Isn't it the most cliched-yet-true saying in all of hockey - good teams find ways to win? I know it's only the end of October, but right now the Wings have not-won more games than they have won, and I'm kind of expecting to see people start to leap from the bandwagon as though it had been set aflame.

Speaking of which, I know what the Red Wings can go as for Halloween.

Let's put down some Flames.

Can we have another game like Tuesday?

We'd like to be able to say something profoundly intelligent about the way the Red Wings played that game in Vancouver, but Trisha was on painkillers at the time, and I was half asleep in a post-midterm haze. And no, neither made the dark, sad portions of the first period any easier to watch, I'm sorry to say.

But it did look like Jimmy Howard had the goddamned game of his life out there. I only wish it didn't take pulling Ozzie to wake the team up (and hopefully pulling Ozzie woke up Ozzie). That was probably the most intense October game I've ever seen. Again, maybe it was the three hours of sleep and the painkillers, but if it could keep us both conscious until 1 a.m., then it had to be pretty good.

Today the Wings are in Edmonton for the second to last game of the road trip, and the world is freaking out about the Swine Flu. I know it's kind of a big deal, but I don't think Gary will have a repeat of 1918 until Sidney Crosby is on a respirator. Still, all the hype (and continued lack of sleep) is giving me trippy mental images of Piet Van Zant's daily lectures about the proper use of hand sanitizer and I somehow imagine the whole team walking around like this:

It looks like the freaking zombie apocalypse. Be careful not to get Swine Flu, Kronner. We can't afford to lose anyone else at this point.

And the road trip continues...

Tonight the Red Wings face off against the Canucks. Here's to hoping that Samuelsson remembers how to not hit the net and the Wings can come out of this road trip with at least a tiny spark of happiness.

Here are the projected lines courtesy of George Malik over at MLive.

"Datsyuk-Zetterberg-Holmstrom
Cleary-Filppula-Bertuzzi (Eaves working in)
Leino-Draper-Williams
May-Helm-Maltby (Abdelkader working in)

The defense remained the same:
Lidstrom-Kronwall
Stuart-Rafalski
Ericsson-Lebda (Meech working in)

Osgood (starting)
Howard"

The top line is still intact, so I'm happy (and maybe tonight they'll actually score a goal that isn't a Nick Lidstrom slapshot that was deflected into the net off Homer's ass...although I'll take that).

And just for fun, here's a little flashback to one of the funnier moments in Wings-Canucks history. There is no better scrum than one that is sparked by a potato based insult.

That was awful

That was so awful.

That was so awful that I might want to go crawl in a little hole right now and never come out again.

And I didn't even watch more than ten minutes of it.

All of those ten minutes were in the Huntington Club at Van Andel Arena during a Griffins signing after a game that thankfully they won. It's not a huge consolation, but a consolation nonetheless. I'll take what I can get.

This game probably makes us the last two people on the entire internet that don't want to tar and feather Jimmy Howard out of town and deal for Luongo at the trade deadline. According to our mother (who, understand, loved how Hasek played and still has a crush on Manny Legace, so take her opinion with that in mind), Jimmy actually had a good game tonight, but a good game is secondary to a team loss. I still have faith in him. I don't know why. I don't actually have anything to back up my lack of desire to throw him under the proverbial bus. Call it a gut feeling. Call it wishful thinking. Call it having delusions. I'm still behind our backup goalie. I just wish the team was, too.

The Wings are just getting all their losses out of the way now, right? So maybe they won't have any stretches later like February from two years ago, or that weekend where the entire central division scored 8 goals a game on them, right?

Game today (and probably a little bit of tomorrow) vs not Jim Balsillie

The little break the Wings have been on since Saturday has felt like an eternity. It's like the off season all over again. I guess on the plus side however, Pavel hopefully has had time to heal from his "cough shoulder sprain cough" and will be back tonight to play the Coyotes in Phoenix. In honor of the first of the season, let's break down the pros and cons of west coast road trips -

The Good:
1. Laughing when the Hockeytown West shows up in droves and out-cheers the home crowd.

2. ... Yeah, pretty much only Hockeytown West.


The Bad:
1. Having to stay up until 2am even when we don't go into an endless shootout against the other team. (Seriously. I'm young, and I still have the sleep schedule of a 20 year old college student, but when I have to have two cups of coffee just to make it to pregame...)

2. No Mickey Redmond.

3. Too much Larry Murphy.

4. Have I ever mentioned that Jim Balsillie's name reminds me of either some round-shaped, Sesame Street-themed, Playskool toddler toy, or something that Family Guy fans would spend three hours giggling at? It used to make me break into hysterics at a mere moment's notice, but lately the joke has been wearing pretty thin and something worries me that tonight we'll be hearing it enough times for me to develop a nervous tick.

5. (and what might be the worst of them all) No more laughing at Gretzky dropping f-bombs from the bench on camera because his team just let Brett Lebda get a hat trick.

No major disrespect meant to Wayne, but I really used to look forward to that.

Sigh. This is what we have to live with until Halloween...

Go Wings.

Disappointing like whoa...

I've read that Joe Sakic was Matt Duchene's favorite player growing up, and consequently found himself rooting for the Avs. Matt Duchene grew up around the same time that we grew up.

The rivalry years.

So you have to wonder if, after rooting so long for the Scoring on Chris Osgood Show, it was extra special that his first NHL goal to made him a part of it.

I'm going to say that had Pavel Datsyuk been in this game, he would have scored. And if Mule had been there, since he likes scoring on the Avs so much, he'd have scored twice. (I contemplated actually keeping track of the games I thought the Wings would win if Franzen was in the line-up but didn't, but it would probably be every game the Wings lose for the next four months, which is unrealistic.) So I'm not faulting the Wings in this. (I'm faulting cruel fate and unmerciful hockey gods.)

The thing I have an issue with... ok, fine. Win the game. Sure. Tie the score a thousand times. Whatever. Be a complete and total whore.

But do you really have to hump Ozzie's face, McLeod?

Yeah, that's ok - Ozzie's coppin' a pretty big feel there himself. Hopefully it makes Cody feel a little dirty later.

A nice change from the ridiculousness of Tuesday

because Tuesday was an awful game. I don't know where the Red Wings were on Tuesday. Not in Buffalo. Maybe HSBC Arena had some kind of wonderful cotton candy for sale, and the Red Wings were all distracted by the smell. I don't know. I wasn't there. I could only watch, horrified, as the entire month of February 08 flashed before my eyes.

At any rate, tonight's game was much better. Not perfect, but better, and with Franzen and Datsyuk out of the line-up, for the moment, I'll take better. Hopefully an ugly loss was what they needed to shape up and this whole winning thing will continue to be a pattern they follow.

But this post wasn't really intended for me to be borderline-condescending toward a hockey team that's done nothing for as long as I can remember but spoil me rotten - this post is to remind everybody that Nick Lidstrom is President of the Universe.



Fo' sho'.

Not a great way to spend a birthday...

I have no words for that game except that it was...well...pukey. And maybe that all the people who lost Versus on their fancy cable packages were lucky. I don't have the energy right now to ramble as I usually do about how at least the top line is finally producing and how it wasn't all the goalie's fault, so I'll just leave you with something funny as a follow up to our post last Thursday. Watch it, laugh at it, and maybe even learn something new if you're still an uneducated fool:

Evacuate the Dance Floor

Saturday's game went better than I expected. Personally, I was a little too busy geeking out because the greatest top line in the history of EVER was reunited to pay much attention to any technical aspects of the game. All that I do know is that maybe Ovechkin and Semin should spend more time practicing and less time at the club.



Or maybe not. I kind of liked them being virtually invisible on the scoreboard.

I might rather have lost

Well, as Scott pointed out in the comments, not all the vikings are very happy today - Johan Franzen is out for at least four months with a torn left ACL.

I would say that the possibility of the Eurotwins being reunited on the top line is the silver lining to this cloud, but that's sort of like saying "I hope they serve cake in prison."

To put this in perspective, if he misses exactly four months to the day, and is back for the February 9th game against St. Louis (and raise your hand if you actually think it'll be four months or less... anyone? Anyone? Beuller?), he'll miss 55 games. I might have actually burst out laughing when I came to that number. It was laugh or cry. I mean, how do you respond to news like that?

You know, the Olympics are in just over four months. Has anybody called Sweden to deliver the bad news?

Winning is nice

Winning is very nice.

I know that between flukey injuries and low goal production, Tomas Kopecky wasn't exactly a perennial favorite among most Wings fans, but he's well liked around our household, and it was a little hard watching him... be a Blackhawk... ugh.

And uh, Brad May. Yeah. Who'da thought?


Today is Henrik Zetterberg's birthday. Fittingly, it's also Leif Ericson Day. Happy vikings!

Ericson spelled with one S looks wrong now. Thanks for that one, Fabio.

Why Chicago Hates Detroit?

After what seems like an eternity (even though it was less than a week) the Red Wings have a game tonight against the Chicago Blackhawks. I have no idea who will be in the lineup because I never believe the speculations online until the game actually starts because Mike Babcock is a crazy fool and no one ever knows what the hell he's going to do next. I do know that Justin Abdelkader won't be there, due to the fact that he was sent back to Grand Rapids. *Insert angry comments from the general fanbase here*

Today I found a blog post where the writer made a list of all the reasons why Chicago hates Detroit. These always make me laugh and this one was no different. Here are the highlights:

10. The Octopus

Throwing octopus on the ice makes about as much sense as Detroit making a bid for the 2020 Olympics.

SERIOUSLY?! I would have thought that by now most people that follow the NHL would have at least grasped the general idea of this tradition by now. If not and you still need some help, go educate yourself. At any rate, we don't care if it "makes sense". We're gonna do it until the oceans run dry.

8. Consistency

While we hate to admit it, every Hawks fans would kill to have a franchise that's in contention for the Cup every single season.

This one actually makes sense.

6. They're...Good

There, we said it. But our Dad can still beat up your Dad. We'll be taking our puck and going home now.

This one he got right too. Except that I'm not really sure what he means by "our Dad can still beat up your Dad". I took it to mean the teams in the early days, and the last time I checked, 8 Stanley Cups are more than three.

4. Arrogance

The Red Wings walk around with the kind of swagger that would make Kanye West sick to his stomach with disgust.

Honestly, I haven't heard any arrogance horror stories about either team - except for maybe Chelios when he was in a bad mood, and that one... sort of falls on both of us. Anyway, there's nothing wrong with having confidence in your ability to be badass on the ice. I bet Blackhawks fans would kill themselves to have their team walk with swagger.

2. The Sweaters

Not to get all fashionista on you, but the Hawks sweater cannot be matched. Especially not by logo that looks like it's from Hot Wheels.

Right again. The Blackhawk's sweater can't be matched...in cultural insensitivity. (Oh wait, I forgot about Cleveland.) I'd much rather have a logo that looks like one of the greatest children's toys ever than one that's potentially racist.

1. Original Six

This rivalry is like a bad marriage that's lasted way too long with a spouse. What's worse is Detroit's put on about 200 pounds with a bad case of acne since the day we met.

Who's about 200 pounds with a bad case of acne?

Lol, he wishes he weighed 200 pounds...

By the numbers: 7 reasons why my life is sad, and 3 foolish Swedes

I am in a thorough state of depression right now:

1. The Tigers. Enough said.
2. The Colorado Avalanche currently have a better record than the Red Wings. Hell, practically the entire League has a better record than Detroit.
3. I can't watch the game on Thursday. I can't even listen to Ken Kal. Grrr.
4. I was the only person in my Geology class who knew that Detroit was on the Detroit River. Four people thought Toronto was the city on the other side of the river.
5. Yesterday I had a dream that Nick Lidstrom signed a 6 year contract extension. I was not happy when I snapped back to the "maybe two more years if he's really feeling awesome" reality of consciousness.
6. Bob Probert got booted of Battle of the Blades before Skank Prime.
7. Last night I found a video about Vladdie that while sort of happy, still was ridiculously sad.

While you all either laugh at me because my life is pathetic, or cry because you feel the same as me, some things in the world aren't quite as depressing.

Take Swedish advertising for example:


If Homer is happy, then so am I. The company this is from sells either crackers or ski equipment, I'm not sure. Do they have your favorite?

WTF Sunday

I know it isn't Wednesday, but this video couldn't wait.



I have never seen anyone so embarrassed by their cell phone in my whole life. Either Steve Yzerman has a secret fondness for Will.i.am, or one of his kids is going to be seeing a lot of his Captain's Face when he gets home.

Hey, for those of you who have CBC

Steve Yzerman's going to be on The Hour on Wednesday at 11pm. I'm pretty sure it replays at 5pm on Wednesday. I have no idea whether or not the interview itself will be very good, but I don't care - it's Steve Yzerman.

There's a chance you'll be able to find it online, too. Lindsay'll post it when she finds it.

I don't know. I'm not worried yet.

Oh. You say I should be? You say that you just watched your team lose two games in their superstars' homeland? That you saw them play ten or fifteen spectacular minutes at a time that were followed by twenty or thirty ridiculously awful ones? That they fell apart faster than tissue paper in the rain? That when you think about your goaltenders, you sort of throw up a little in your mouth?

If that's the case, I can't blame you. But I'm not worried yet.

Last year I was worried. I was worried that they couldn't win a game in regulation, that they couldn't win a game at home, that Marian Hossa was unable to score a single goal, that the Eurotwins being split up would signal the coming of the apocolypse, etc, etc - by the middle of October I was convinced that the Wings would finish last in their division, miss the playoffs, be laughed at by everyone and that Gary Bettman would move the franchise to New Orleans and rename them the Crawdaddies and Henrik Zetterberg would have to wear a picture of a shrimp on his chest while I wept and wept and wept.

In reality, the Wings had a winning record, and were doing pretty good given the ridiculousity of the schedule they opened with and especially given that there is some truth to the Stanley Cup hangover.

So I'm not worried yet. I can't let myself be, or I'd have to check myself into an institution.

Was there anything consistent about the Red Wings' game this weekend besides how they let it fall apart again and again? No. But in those moments before they fell apart, they were beastly. They could have been playing with an empty net for most of the first period today and the score would have been the same by the end.

Did Jimmy Howard let in five goals? Yes. But but most of them were on penalty kills, and he also made some spectacular saves.

Is Brad Stuart still scoring goals for the opposition for no reason other than to make me curl up in a ball and question the existence of god?

I don't actually have a positive for that one - I just wanted to point it out.

No, I could be really worried about what I saw in Sweden this weekend. And if you want to be, I can't blame you. But I'm going to focus on the positive and enjoy something that Wings fans don't often get to enjoy - the anticipation of how awesome the team will be when they finally work out all the kinks and rise to their full potential.

That could be fun, right?

Today it begins

Welcome to the regular season, where the points count and everyday is a new podcast about the goalie situation. I'm excited.

I don't know how excited I am about having to watch the first Wings game of the regular season on Versus though. Somewhere between Screaming Keith (have you ever noticed how every time Keith Jones opens his mouth to talk, he ends up sounding like he's yelling? Don't get so excited, dude, it's just highlights from last season) screaming and there being an interview with Sidney Crosby every commercial break... well, I guess I just shouldn't have jumped the gun and started watching the Chicago game while I was waiting for ours to start, should I have?

From what I understand, Hank's in today, but Chris Osgood still looks undecided.

It's sort of frustrating when you have one goalie who's tied for 10th in all-time wins but you still have wavering regular season faith in him because he's Chris Osgood, and your other goalie has won a single NHL game in his career, and that was four years ago. Goalie situation? What goalie situation? I'm saying goalie situation so much because I'm hoping I can desensitize myself to the blinding stress the phrase causes me before it becomes the only thing anyone can talk about.

Oh. Brian Engblom regrew his... hair.