HATTRICK EAVES!!!

This is the first time you've seen a post on this blog within six hours of a game since... probably since Trisha got out of college. There are two reasons for this:

1. This game was a circus festival of awesomosity.

• Patrick Eaves scored a freaking hat trick. I was pretty much expecting him to get the puck on his stick three feet from the empty net, with no one between him and it but air, and then go diving into the corner, but I'm glad he didn't. CURLY. FRIES.
• Babcock dropped the f-bomb on camera. Loud enough for the audio to pick it up.
• The Wings are now the top of the league. Where they should be.
  

2. I was already on the internet. This might be something some of you take for granted, but in our house, we have a dial-up connection, and we only have it on one computer. We have to schedule in a good five or ten minutes just to sign on and get our own blog loaded. And I don't normally go online during hockey games at home.

But today, there was something funky going on with the feed or the cameras - it looked like we were watching the game with frames missing. The game was back and forth enough that it was starting to make me ill, so instead of watching the Red Wings score seven goals, I listened to them doing it while I trolled auction sites for old pictures. Which means that not only do we have this timely (though short) post, but also the WHL trading card gallery of Horrible Hair:

Happy Wednesday.

So this has not only been a really great night for me personally, but also a highly productive one.

The Greatest Hockey Music Ever - Part V

I love Chris Osgood, so we're not discussing tonight's game right now. Instead, here's a little bit of holiday cheer for you to annoy your relatives with. It also happens to be one of my favorite Christmas songs. What that says about me... I'm not sure.

Johnny Bower is a certified badass. He won four Stanley Cups, two Vezina trophies, played all but a scant handful of his 552 games maskless, and when he was in high school, he successfully lied about his age to go overseas and start shooting Nazis.

No, really, I'm still young enough to serve...

He will always be cooler than you are. Only adding to this fact is his 1965 #29 hit on the Canadian charts:

Honky the Christmas Goose.

Recorded by Bower, his son “Little John”, and a choir of children (The Rinky-Dinks), this might just be the single greatest Christmas song in existence. The song tells the harrowing personal journey of Honky, who “got so fat that he was no use” (it never says how. Maybe he was a farm goose being fattened up for holiday dinner. This is already uplifting). Depressed about his bourgeoning weight, Honky begins to take out his frustrations by scaring the bejesus out of unsuspecting townsfolk. Tired of being chased down icy sidewalks by a mutantly rotund, out of control water fowl, holiday purchases scattering to the wind, the townsfolk roast and eat him with cranberry sauce and a walnut dressing Santa Claus rescues him because Rudolf is a useless, cross-eyed idiot who keeps running into Boeing jets.

HUR DUR...

I like this song because it shows us how fat people, like Honky and Santa Claus, can still contribute to society. So don’t worry about all that Christmas pie you’re eating, kids. Johnny Bower says it’s ok to be a porker.

And he knows how to get the ladies

Should you now wish to translate your new favorite song into a last-minute holiday gift, this site sells CD cases.

A Johnny Bower CD comes with the purchase of the case, but you're not actually ordering the CD. You're just ordering the case.

Stay classy, Chicago

The Wings won a game and it was awesome, and then they lost tonight's game and it was gross. I've got something more important to write about.

I can understand, and maybe even accept the "Detroit sucks" chants. That particular phrase has a long history of being chanted by the fans of the Wings' biggest rivals, and if I'm going to get all up in arms about it tonight, I'll have to write out retroactive diatribes on a quarter of the teams in the league.

What I'm upset about is what they did to Chelios.

He put on a Blackhawks jersey, stood up on a Blackhawks ice, in front of God and everybody, professing his Chicago-ness and his love for his hometown team, the team he spent nearly a decade with, and they booed him.

He was expecting it. He was planning for it. He said "let's let bygones be bygones" and waited for it to stop. It kept on. It got louder.

I joke a lot about Chicago fans being unclassy jerks, but I didn't think this was very funny. This went beyond unclassy. I'd actually like to hear what Mickey Redmond was saying about it off-camera, but Redmond's a gentleman and I'm a girl, so I doubt I'd get to hear it from him anyway.


What basis do I have to say this was unclassy? Let's take a look at what classy looks like:

• Last November, Lindsay and I were at a Wings game right in the middle of the vomitrocious stretch of three games (two back to back at home) where Detroit was held scoreless. Joe Louis Arena was hosting the Atlanta Thrashers. The crowd was silent when Slava Kozlov scored, but when Budd Lynch announced the goal over the loudspeaker, we clapped for him, because he was one of ours.
• I don't actually remember whether Wings fans booed Marian Hossa for going to the Blackhawks last season, but I don't remember them doing it. What I do remember was a thread on message board about whether booing was or was not appropriate in that situation, and the posters who yelled at the pro-booing individuals for unclassiness.
• Remember Bob Probert? He didn't end his career with Detroit. In fact, he spend quite a few years throwing punches as a member of the Chicago Blackhawks. But after he retired, if someone at Joe Louis Arena had tried to boo him? The guy next to him would have knocked his lights out. So probably would have Probert.
• This a a hockey blog, so I don't know how many of you even care about basketball, but there's some crossover with the Wings and Pistons fanbases, so I'm counting this as relevant for the sake of this argument. Chauncey Billups of the Detroit Pistons was traded to another team. His first game back at the Palace? The fans gave him a lengthy standing ovation.

We weren't all butterflies and roses to Fedorov the first few times he skated on Detroit ice someone else's jersey, but now I want him to come back for a ceremony at the Joe so the crowd can not boo him and I can add him to this list.

This isn't even about Wings fans being un-realistically classy. Trevor Linden was the heart and soul of the Vncouver Cnaucks; he wore the C, he gave them his best, and then he left. Vanouver didn't boo him in an Islanders jersey. They held up signs saying "Always a Canuck", and "Captain in our hearts". Earlier this season, when Modano, as a Red Wing,went back out on Dallas ice, the fans (and this is a crowd that at the end of the 2008 western conference finals chanted "Let's go Penguins" as the Red Wings awaited the presentation of the Campbell Bowl) didn't boo him. He was the heart and soul of the Dallas Stars, he wore the C, and the fans gave him the cheers he deserved.

Well, Chelios was the heart and soul of the Chicago Blackhawks. He was a hometown boy, one of their own, a fan of the team growing up, and he gave them the best years of his career. The Chicago River flows backwards through his veins. If you cut him, he'd bleed vaguely racist feathers and deep dish pizza (and then you'd be bleeding for making him bleed his own blood). But Chicago didn't care about that tonight -- they seemed much more interested in hurrying things along to screaming through the national anthem and singing the chorus of Chelsea Dagger on perpetual repeat. Chicago didn't care that he was out there on their ice, wearing their sweater, trying to talk about what an honor it was to have played for their organization -- he had been a Red Wing once, and I guess for them hating another team is more important than caring about your own.

By the third period. there were some fans in attendance attempting to turn the tide of the chanting from "Detroit Sucks' to Let's go Hawks"resulting in what sounded like "We Want Socks" (which everyone in my household found incredibly humorous). If those were the real fans, the ones who recognize what Chelios gave their organization and appreciated him for it, then my heart goes out to them. Maybe someday their compatriots will realize that there's more to being a Blackhawks fan than hating the Red Wings.

Loopholes, awesomness, and a little hockey karma

First of all, for the benefit of Lindsay, who I know won't stop pestering me about this until we're in our fifties unless I clear it up right away - when I said I'd write something about every game, I never said how soon after the game the writing would come. At any rate, I have a solid excuse for yesterday - the power went out due to a snow storm, and I spent most of the evening reading comic books by kerosene lamp (no joke - my dad collects them. Our house is brighter during blackouts than any other situation). So here's my make-up work:


To say that I wasn't expecting that game against Montreal would be the truth. It was preceded by a full hour of black and white footage breaking down a rivalry that had already been running full steam a good 300 years before the dinosaurs were water-skiing behind Noah's Ark.

Ted Lindsay angry. TED LINDSAY SMASH!

Is it telling of what time and separate conferences do to a rivalry that they had to go back to the pre-color days to get most of their footage? Probably. But that's sort of beside the point. CBC had this game so hyped up that they pushed Hockey Night In Canada ahead one day to give it national coverage. It seemed just about the perfect opportunity for the Wings to all eat giant, steaming bowls of stupid that morning and herp derp their way through another abysmal loss. They didn't. They won, and it was awesome.

So I was expecting some sort of karmic retribution on Saturday against the Devils - because the day before had been so awesome, because Chris Osgood was in net and there are clearly otherworldly forces conspiring against his surpassing 400 career wins, because I've trained myself to consistently expect the worst - but the worst thing that happened all night was that every goal and fight in the game happened while I was out of the room. Well actually I guess the worst things that happened all night happened to the Devils.

It's a reassuring thought, Santa

And then the Kings were in Detroit this evening.

With about sixteen left to play in the third, I wondered whether it would make me a bad Wings fan to abandon my television before the game was over to take a shower, but then I decided that personal hygiene is more important than subjecting myself to needless pain, and anyway, as Lindsay was quick to remind me, the game had been over since the middle of the second period.

If I had a dollar for of every picture I've saved of Brad Stuart and Jimmy Howard lying side by side, watching their tears freeze to the ice, I'd have enough to go out and buy a nice-looking scrapbook to keep them in.

This is the part where to make myself feel better about my team having lost, I usually post something like Jack Johnson playing baseball with Sidney Crosby, or Anze Kopitar's naked baby pictures, but my heart's not really in it tonight, which I think has less to do with bitterness over the loss and more to do with the fact that I'm falling asleep at my keyboard right now. Oh well. Maybe next game.

Go Wings.

"WTF Thursday" just doesn't have the same ring to it

Ok, nobody can blame me if I don't want to write about last night's game. I wouldn't blame anyone if they didn't want to read about it.

I don't know why I'm surprised every time the Red Wings have a miserable night against the Nashville Predators - it happens nearly every time, even when they eventually come out on top. I guess in some respects I should cut my losses - I didn't have to sit through two and a half periods with the game tied at zero, and, to my knowledge, none of the Red Wings skated off with a concussion that's going to last a year.

Uh, did I sort of promise a Nashville-themed WTF Wednesday and then totally not deliver?

I wish I could bring you something awesome to make up for that (and maybe some of you will find this way more awesomely wtf than I do - I've been hoarding so much hockey-related strangeness on my hard drive the last few years that I'm starting to get a warped view of what's weird and what's actually normal), but all I have is a reader-provided youtube of Taylor Swift plugging the team (even though we've got some sketchy evidence that she might actually back the Penguins) and this poorly done tattoo:

This should slightly upset me as a Red Wings fan, but instead I'm just laughing

Maybe I'd have more if I had the tolerance to research them better, but every time I think about that team, all my brain screams is "vomit vomit train whistles".

That was unpleasant

This blog has gotten some serious writer's block. Take a look at the difference between the post count from 2009 and what we're at so far in 2010, and you'll understand what I mean. As someone who managed to trick a college into letting her actually graduate with a writing degree, I know that the best cure for writer's block is copious amounts of alcohol, lack of sleep, and unlimited high speed internet writing through it even when you have nothing whatsoever to say, which is why for the next two weeks, I'm saying something about every game the Red Wings play, even if it's just three sentences about how [insert team name here] makes me want to throw my fist through a wall.

And judging how stress levels at my new job have been, there's going to be a lot of that.

I can't say I don't wish the Wings would have won that game, but maybe they need to lose a couple every once in a while to remind them to play a full 60 minutes, and I have to say that it's really, really nice after last season for a regulation loss to be a relatively rare occurrence.

I still don't know what was going on with Bertuzzi's no-goal, but whatever. I'm pretty sure I had my eyes closed for that entire replay, because I didn't see any reason to blow the whistle, and last I checked, refs weren't allowed to just arbitrarily stop play. Maybe he had a wedgie in his Toasty Tights and wanted a couple minutes to re-adjust.

I'll leave you with that mental image. Speaking of which - the next game's on Wednesday. I'll have to check and see if I have any Nashville-related wtf-ery lying around.

The Greatest Hockey Music Ever - Part IV

So from what we heard, that game tonight was pretty epic. Unfortunately, as we weren't around to see it, we don't really feel qualified to offer up our opinions, so here's something actually relevant to what we were doing that might entertain you.

In honor of the Great Big Sea concert we just attended, here's the consummate sleeping-your-way-around-the-league song, Helmethead:

Great Big Sea - Helmethead

I'd like to be able to give this one another five paragraph analyzation, but unfortunately (fortunately?) it's sung completely in tune, and lacks both horrific lyrics and a synth solo breakdown.

Enjoy.

My throat still hurts from yelling

I'd like to bitch and moan about sloppy, inconsistent play right now, but I have a feeling that most of my complaints are just me taking out my unrelated frustrations (it's Monday morning right now, and I'm sacrificing my lunch hour (and risking the very real possibility that someone will walk by and yell at me for not working because they don't know I'm on lunch) to go through and edit this post for spelling errors and comma mistakes (of which there will still probably be three)) on whatever is most readily available, and since I don't have any way of watching the Blackhawks right now (SOMETIMES I TAKE OUT MY IRRATIONAL ANGER BY YELLING AT THAT TEAM FOR NO REASON, ALRIGHT?), it's all getting dumped on bad turnovers and powerplays where the Red Wings have no shots on goal.

Oh my god, last night the Red Wings had a powerplay where there were no shots on goal.

Why?

No, no I'm dwelling on the negative again. At the end of the story, however dismally you want to spin it, the Red Wings won.

And I have to tell you - if they're going to use less-than-stellar play to set up dramatic turnarounds as exciting as last night was, fine. They have my blessing. I can watch Zetterberg and Lidstrom score ridiculous, game-changing goals like that every hour of every day for the rest of my life. More please.

Even though every member of the team left the ice limping, somehow no one got substantially injured. So you can all loosen the knot in your stomach and prepare it for copious amounts of turkey.

WTF Wednesday

I wanted to bring this to all of you on Sunday, when I heard about it, but Lindsay reminded me that it would be just as WTF on Wednesday. And it is.

By now a few of you have probably caught wind of Toews and Kane's awful, amazing, awful cell phone commercial, maybe via PuckDaddy's play-by-play. If not - here's the gist:

Jonathan Toews is sitting in an outdoor cafe, spies an attractive lady at the next table, then proceeds to take a picture of her hand (don't ask me - I don't keep track of the Blackhawks' kinky fetishes) with his cell phone, and sends it off to his bff Patrick, who I guess has the magical ability to tell how attractive a woman looks just by getting a cameraphone picture of her fingers. He gives Toews the green light to pursue, and cautions him against using the phone's pick-up line app, presumably because Kane wants to keep all the really bad pick-up lines for himself (tell me he doesn't seem the type). The rest of the commercial is one big steaming pile of increasingly mounting awkwardness, that...

I don't know, maybe I'm the only one. Tell me, ladies, if a stranger sidled up to you at a restaurant and had barely said hello before he whipped out his cell phone, laughed, said "I've got one funny friend", and showed you a picture of a different guy sandwiched between two other girls, would you or would you not expect to presently be invited to some sort of orgy? If Jonathan Toews did that to me, I would be running away, quickly, maybe in search of an officer of the law.

Thankfully, someone besides myself saved the video before it was mysteriously taken off Youtube, so you can watch it here. (If it gets removed again, let us know. We've got your back on this one. The world needs to see this.)

Moral of the story: Ladies (or possibly men), if you ever see someone across the room take a picture of your left hand, run. Run quickly.

Don't mess with Detroit

If I were asked to list my three most hated things this week, I would say:

1) Spiders
2) Getting asked if I know Eminem when people find out where I live
3) People who live outside the Metro area and insult the city of Detroit.

Three things about life I truly love might be:

1) The corner of 8 Mile and Shadyside
2) Tim Hortons Iced Capps (made with chocolate milk, obviously)
3) When large groups of people band together for a common cause. Especially when it entails some fool gettin' told.

It seems like this happens a couple times every year. A journalist sits down at his laptop, considers the vast, rich landscape of possibilities open to him through which to steer his readers, weighs them against his subject matter, his abilities, and his deadline, and goes the lazy man's route - straight through the heart of every man, woman, and child who feels insulted when Detroit's insulted too. And then those men, women, and children who have internet access assemble to give him the what for.

You might want to read the first couple paragraphs of this sparklingly brilliant work of journalism before continuing. Ahem.

"Muggy with a chance of murder"? How dare he mock southeast Michigan's relentless summer humidity. Until you've lived here, you just don't understand the indignity of watching your carefully flat-ironed coif spring up a frizz-halo three inches in every direction from your head. He's clearly balding. And heartless.

In all honesty though, I write about this because it angers me. Maybe not this specific article per se - Detroit's been jabbed so many times that Tychkowski's jab didn't even penetrate the scar tissue - but the stereotypes his comments stemmed from rouse my ire. Maybe it's because I spend eight months out of the year a school telling people that 8 Mile really isn't that interesting, and is mostly gas stations, used car lots, and strip clubs. Maybe it's because I've personally felt the effects of the auto industry crumbling, watched friends and family members search endlessly for jobs to no avail, and watched as home foreclosures sprung up around my neighborhood like dandelions. True, the city has its problems, we can't ignore that - but to exploit them for a cheap laugh and a catchy anecdote is to cheapen the experiences of everyone who lives in the Detroit-metro area.

Which, ultimately, is what this article amounted to. Tychkowski was trying to draw on a parallel between the crappyness of his team's play and the crappyness of the city of Detroit. It was just a little flourish of rhetoric wordplay. Removed from its geographical context, the turn of phrase is almost clever. He's probably a bit confused why his article has garnered over a hundred comments of angry backlash. I'm not confused. It's because we get judged on vacation when we tell people we're from the Detroit area. Because we get immediately defensive when we see the name of the city at the start of a news article not written by a local publication. And it's because EdmontonSun.com has a comments feature, whereas network sitcoms, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and the Times Magazine sitting in your doctor's waiting room - all of which have been guilty of laying down the hate on Detroit - do not.

Mickey Redmond was even peeved about this:

"It's completely unnecessary, uncalled for, unrelated to the game of hockey," said Redmond. "If it was an attempt to be humorous, it was a lousy attempt at that. It was not necessary. You're beating up on a city that obviously doesn't need it"

If I used this blog to occasionally disparage against Canada, particularly northern Alberta, I probably wouldn't get publicly told off by the Oilers color guy, which is almost a shame, because our Wikio ratings would go bananas.

Anyway, Tychkowski, you pulled the "lol Detroit sucks" card, and now you're taking the heat for it. I don't know you - you might be a nice guy who feels like a real ass right now (some of those comments had considerably stronger wording than Mickey's), but maybe next time you'll choose your words more carefully. At any rate, you did manage to write one great, succinct, infinitely truthful Detroit-related line the other night - "The Wings are good."

Yes. Yes they are.

Do you know what I love about Henrik Zetterberg?

Everything.


Which is exactly what I loved about the ten seconds following Dan Cleary's goal and the final three seconds of that game.

We haven't posted here in two weeks, and that's unacceptable. When this blog dies, it won't be a slow, languishing death wherein the space between posts gets wider and wider and wider until one day there just aren't anymore. No, if we go, we go with fireworks and explosions and eight page retrospectives and a big drunken party that you'll all be invited to - that's a promise. To keep that promise, I have to sit here tonight and write until I have something resembling a hockey blog assembled.

- The Wings were outplayed for a decent chunk of the game Monday, which was reflected in the score, and the fact that the game went to overtime. This continues a trend. Because it's November, and they're winning most of these games anyway, I feel like I can afford to look the other way for now, and tell myself that everything will work itself out by spring. (I will regret these words eventually.)

- Someone needs to tell Dan Cleary that scoring a goal for his team does not mean that he's in any way obligated to assist the other team in doing the same.

- I'm not sure why Salei decided that jumping on Howard would be in our team's best interests this evening.

- Rafalski made his return in this game. I have no idea how he looked, because my eyes unfocused every time the puck went into our defensive zone.

- Have I mentioned how much I love Henrik Zetterberg?

- Andy Brickley didn't say "tremendous sex" this time, which is always a disappointment.

- The Wings' next game is on Thursday, against the Oilers, again, only this time you don't have to stay up until 2am eastern to catch the end of it.

And because I have nothing more relevant to say, here - have a picture of Wayne Gretzky about to eat his own daughter at a golf tournament. Because the Wings are between games with Phoenix and Edmonton, it's sort of relevant, if you squint, and maybe cross your eyes a little.

This Game Was Ridiculousness

First of all, RIP Orange Hat Guy. It's a rare thing in major league sports when a fan garners as much notoriety as you had, and rarer still that it wasn't for doing something mind-blowingly idiotic in an attempt to draw attention to yourself. All you did was show up to every game in headgear the color of pure, unfiltered awesome. For that you were known, and for that you will be missed.

...


Alright, the Wings won, so I'll be a good sport about this.

Congratulations to Teemu Selanne on tying Bobby Hull for 15th place in all-time goals scored. Actually surpassing him's probably going to be a bigger deal for everybody involved, but Selanne's unlikely to do that against the Red Wings, and I'm not going to find out about it until three weeks after its happened, so this is my only chance. 610 is a heck of a lot of goals to score, but according to the Jets, Selanne's been the "Boss" for the last five hundred and fifty-six of them. Although maybe at some point between then and now he scored enough to take the quote marks off "Boss" so reading it out loud didn't make it sound condescendingly sarcastic.

Who was the old boss I wonder? Was it Tie Domi?


Yeah, I bet it was Tie Domi.

Also tied tonight was the goalie record for most consecutive non-losses in regulation since the lockout (which seems like an awkward thing to keep track of, but whatever). Jimmy tied Ozzie. Do you know what that means?

That means the Red Wings are awesome.

But not so awesome that I don't get to complain about inconsistent play. (When the Red Wings aren't winning games, like the first half of last season, I look back on posts like this one, read what I've written, throw up a little in my mouth at what a spoiled brat I must be to ask for more than two points, and pray to the hockey gods that my idiocy never astrally contributes to the rise of a second Dead Wings era. But this blog hasn't been updated regularly in a while, so I'm risking it.)

There were so many moments in that game that were so spectacular that it gets hard to remember all the awful, cringe-worthy moments that sat between them. Which is part of what makes it frustrating. Howard actually said it best in his post-game interview on Thursday - that when the guys decide to play, they're scary. (I don't know if he actually meant to call the whole team out in front of the media, but... he was saying what we were all thinking.) Can they make the playoffs by only doing the bare minimum required of them to succeed the whole year? Yeah, they can. They showed that they can this week, by pulling points out of games they didn't show up to for the full 60 minutes. But that's not what I want to see all season.

It's like that genius kid you knew in high school who failed all his classes because he was too bored to pay attention. I knew that kid. He never went to college and now he's 25 and (bear with me here) still unemployed, living out of his mom's basement and making me weep for his wasted potential.

The playoffs are college. And if the Red Wings get bored and lose all their regular season games, I'm going to be 24 and curled up in my mom's basement, weeping for their wasted potential.

Why do I start freaking out about this kind of stuff in October? Last October my soul died a little every game the Wings lost, which was almost every game. I would have killed for this October. Forget everything I just said, you guys. I don't care how they do it. Let's be happy for the win.

The next games on Thursday. Thursday. Have you ever woken up on Monday morning, screamed into your pillow because you had to go to school/work, and thought about the endless, unceasing, infinitely long string of hours you have to live through to make it to Friday? Add a day to that. That's how long it is until the next Wings game.

Are the ridiculous schedules a byproduct of having to coordinate 82 games for 30 teams? Is it because of the conference/division system? Is it the network tv slots? Bettman? Is it old? Is it new? Am I imagining it? I'm serious. The scheduling process is, given all the varied aspects of hockey as a game and a business, probably the thing I'm least-informed about, which is stupid, because as a fan, it usually affects me the most directly. If any of you guys have better insight into this, please - enlighten me.

Hockey & Death Glares & Birthdays, Oh My.

Boy, does it feel good to have hockey back (not that I've really been able to enjoy it yet, because I've been running around this semester like a crazy person). But I can honestly say that nothing feels as good as walking up to a pop machine and scaring away the huge guy in the Blackhawks shirt when he catches a glimpse of your Red Wings attire.

That's a lie- This was better:



And since it's Wednesday, I wish I could leave you with a WTF moment. But since I can't, I'll leave you with this:

Today Hockeytown Static turns 24. Well, not the blog, but the main person behind the blog. Happy birthday, Trisha!

Two points to start the year off

Some of you might remember a few years back when Corey Perry promised Pavs that he was "gonna get it too".




Well tonight Pavel got it, and "it" turned out to be the long-missing piece of a Gordie Howe hat trick.


(There's a better quality video on YouTube, but it was the Duck's feed, and no one needs to hear that)

(David Guralnick)

(Which means that he's tied with Gordie Howe now. Awesome.)

It's almost not fair that something this ridiculous happened tonight, because I feel like the internet coverage it's bound to get will far outweigh the four goals and Howard's shutout, which alone would have made this a more spectacular start to the season than I could have hoped for (or would have hoped for, because me thinking positively before the start of a hockey game bodes ill for my team). This game went above and beyond all my long, hockey-starved summer-fed hopes, dreams, and expectations.

Some thoughts on the actual gameplay:

I'll be honest - there were long stretches during that game that I was busy trying to figure out how to fit the circumstances leading up to things like the entire top line hitting the penalty box into a text (because Lindsay was at the Griffins home opener. I swear, every time something like that happens, I have to figure out how to get the story to her in under 200 characters), so I'm pretty sure I missed some important stuff, like whether the Wings were legitimately dominating or if the Ducks had been replaced by Windsor Timbit hockey kids, but if you're coming to this blog for Serious Sports Commentary like what the big smart men do on ESPN, you're in the wrong place anyway.

(And if you're looking for hockey commentary on ESPN, then you're wronger than Darren McCarty in an Avs jersey.)

But most of what I did see I'm excited about. Jimmy looked pretty strong out there, especially in the second period. Dan Cleary was getting knocked around out there pretty good and getting right back on the ice, but that's sort of like saying today ended in a Y. And I like that the Wings were giving back all the physicality that the Ducks dished out.

On the other hand, I don't know if I want that to become a trend. Part of me still hopes that Franzen and his trick knee sit out tomorrow's game in Chicago. And the thought of Henrik Zetterberg spending the season getting cross-checked in the back sort of makes me want to vomit. Ericsson left tonight's game at some point with back spasms. I keep going back to last year's injury list and shuddering. And I still haven't seen Osgood play yet, just watched the preseason box score refresh and hoped the shots on goal stayed significantly higher than the goals allowed. I have a bad feeling that I'm going to be spending the winter banging my head against a wall while he loses games again. I don't know why I couldn't have been a normal kid and had my man-crush on Sergei Fedorov or something.

But whatever. The Wings got their first win on the season tonight, and that fills me with unending joy. Which I should savor while I have the chance, because I think we get to watch the Hawks raise a banner tomorrow night. (You know FSD'll cut to that thing every time they come back from commercial. And then Ken'll have to talk about it. And then I'll die a little inside.)

It's good to have goals

It's cold outside. The top leaves on the skinniest trees are starting to twinge orange. The wind, though not yet icy, brings with it the scent of cold fronts to come. Schools are in session, and summer resort towns up and down Michigan's coasts are rolling up the sidewalks, lining beaches with winter fences, and repricing hotel rooms with off-season rates (supposedly. I'm pretty sure most of them keep the prices up for the fall-foliage tours). The Red Wings are back on Joe Louis Arena ice, and training camp is right around the corner. I'd say, if you asked me, that summer is over.

"This summer, we're going to set the lofty goal of at least 15 [posts]"

Bahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Counting this one, the one where I announced that we had a goal, and assuming that I'm not updating again until well into preseason, this blog has tied last summer's post-count. Which I actually consider a huge success.

The Hockey Music thing was only supposed to be summer filler, but (and I don't know whether this is good or bad news for you) I've decided to continue it until I run out of music to post about, mostly because I already had at least another five posts partially written. Also because I refuse to have tracked down Guy Lafleur's disco album for nothing.

You can expect all that - as well as the usual bitching, erratic posting, gross humiliation of plastic figurines, and speculations as to whether Jimmy Howard ever had a set of Spiderman footie pajamas that you've probably come to expect from this blog - within the next month, as Lindsay and I crawl out of our air-conditioned, hockey-deprived cocoons to rediscover the endless cycle of joy and heartbreak that comes with being a Red Wings fan.

Say hello to your newest Red Wing

His name is Mike. He likes dogs



big hair



Willa Ford



crying



And possibly Marty Turco



which could get a little complicated next season, what with him being a Blackhawk now.

A lot of people seem to have mixed feelings about his coming to Detroit, but it's been my experience that the more sad-eyed, hockey-scarred old men the Red Wings have on the team, the further they get in the playoffs, so you can tentatively throw my name on the list of local family members, old friends, and kids who spent their afternoons at his ice rink that comprise his ready-made Detroit-area fanbase.

The Greatest Hockey Music Ever Written - Part III: Dionne and The Puck-Tones

I love Marcel Dionne's story because it's the kind of tragedy that you don't feel completely awful finding hilarious. Probably the saddest part of it is that despite still ranking 4th in all-time goals scored and 5th in all-time points, becoming the third player to reach 700 goals, and remaining the highest scoring French Canadian player in the history of the leauge (no, really. Look it up.), he remains largely unmentioned in discussions of "the greatest players of all time". He's one of the NHL's forgotten superstars.



He's better remembered by Red Wings fans as the guy who wanted out. In 1975, after three years of on and off bickering with coaching staff and management, Dionne moved to the Los Angeles Kings as a restricted free agent. Because during the 1974-75 season he had set a club record of 121 points (on a team which held a winning record for a whopping ten games), the Detroit fans were a little upset. The Kings fan was, understandably, very excited.







Alas, life in Los Angeles wasn't all Dionne had hoped it would be - local interest in hockey, to this day tenuous at best, was still in its infancy, and, as he himself put it, "we didn't have the supporting cast". The Kings were perennial early-round knock-offs, and Dionne became another name in a long list of hockey players to be quoted about wishing they'd never left Detroit. In a last-ditch attempt to motivate his team to a championship, Dionne hatched an elaborate scheme which involved pretending to demand a trade. Then Kings GM Rogie Vachon called his bluff and sent him off the the New York Rangers, who were also in the midst of a long-term Cup drought.

aw man, this shit sucks.

So it's my hope that if he's not going to be remembered for being one of the top scorers in league history, maybe he'll be remembered for Dionne and the Puck-Tones' "Please Forgive my Misconduct Last night".


Recorded by Dionne and his Triple Crown Linemates Charlie Simmer and Dave Taylor, "Please Forgive My Misconduct Last Night" was part of a record produced to help benefit juvenile diabetes research, so I guess it can be somewhat excused that the boys needed professional background singers and probably a little 70s-era auto-tuning to keep them sort of on-key. And we're still not talking "hey these guys are pretty good" on-key, just "well I guess at least this is for a good cause" on-key.

But as much as I love listening to hockey players butcher music, the real beauty of "Please Forgive my Misconduct" is in the lyrics. If you've ever found yourself in a position where you've been too frisky with a lady-friend and needed a creative way to apologize for your forwardness the next day to save the relationship, this is your song. Unless of course she's not a big fan of hockey, or wordplay. I'd quote from them, but I don't even know where to begin. Please just listen for yourselves - this is a song that needs to be experienced.

And actually, it wasn't even released as its own single. It was the B-side to "Hockey Sock Rock" by Phil Esposito and the Ranger Rockers!!! (the triple exclamation points are actually on the album cover) which you can read about here. Unfortunately, the crown jewel of that post, the 1979 Rangers Sasson Jeans commercial, was taken off Youtube recently, so here you go:



Funny story about the Rangers Sasson Jeans commercial - there were two of them. And what the second lacks in Ron Duguay's hair, it makes up for in prancing. Or maybe the right word is mincing.



I hope that if those didn't destroy your world, they made your day.

Whoa, where did June go?

I said we were aiming for fifteen posts this summer. I didn't say they wouldn't all be the last fifteen days before the season opener.


Today is the day before the draft, the day after the NHL awards, and one nerve-wracking week away from free agent frenzy. This is like a sad island of hockey in the middle of a long, hot, hockeyless sea. And yet, I feel as though I have nothing useful to say.

Except that HOLY CRAP NHL AWARDS WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU DONE WITH SPONSORSHIP AND PRODUCT PLACEMENT? The ads were so deeply woven into the fabric of the show itself (they actually had the Gieco caveman running around, antagonizing Mike Green, and they actually had the United States Army present Shane Doan with the King Clancy Memorial Trophy, which sort of seemed strange) that the giant flashing Verizon logo during the first musical number seemed like a sad and desperate cry for attention. Come on, Verizon, you can shell out an extra 500 bucks for a custom graphic of like a cell phone playing hockey or something. But I don't know, maybe they just pasted that onto the Versus feed, since they don't even have Verizon in Canada.

I was expecting Ron McLean to come out with sponsored eyebrows again.

All I know is that after watching the NHL Awards, I don't want to join the army or buy insurance. I just want hockey to be back.

Expect another music post to be up in the next day or so. You might want to start airing the mothball scent off your Marcel Dionne jerseys in anticipation of this one.

Lidstrom's not retiring yet

I got the best email in the world today. It linked to this.

This is jumping around the house in celebration-worthy for three reasons:

1. NICK LIDSTROM IS COMING BACK NEXT YEAR

2. I get to stop having to listen to the analysts on CBC segue from Blackhawks goals to their opinions that Nick Lidstrom is retiring

3. Lindsay is done crying emo tears of sadness on the couch and actually becomes a functioning member of society once more.

If you're not sure how to react to this kind of news, The Triple Deke has suggestions. I'm going to celebrate by blowdrying the tears out of the couch cushions.

The Greatest Hockey Music Ever Written - Part II: We Counted on the Captain

To be honest, I wanted to save this song for later in the summer when I hadn't posted for two months and was sick with heat and tired of Lindsay yelling at me to write something, because I knew it was going to be an easy song to write about - but given recent developments, I felt that the timing was appropriate.

After spending a day and a half in stunned partial-mourning at the news that Steve Yzerman had taken the gm job in Tampa Bay, I began coming to terms and decided that he deserves to be happy, even if happy means opening a chain of Denver sports themed sports bars in Denver (oh god, please no). And while being ok with it doesn't mean I won't fight the urge to vomit every time I see him in another team's colors, his leaving for Florida isn't nearly as emotionally traumatic for me as it was when he retired four years ago. Four years ago, I felt like Yzerman needed more than a banner-raising and a goodbye celebration from the fanbase.

He needed a song.

Which brings us to Dick Fidge's 'We Counted On The Captain'.

Written in commemoration of Yzerman's 22 seasons with the organization, 'We Counted On The Captain' is 3 minutes and 25 seconds of your life that you cannot afford to spend doing anything else.

A lot of the music I went through to pick the songs I wanted to use this summer sort of killed my soul to have to listen to multiple times, but 'We Counted On The Captain' was not one of them. This song has been in my music library for two years now, and I can highly recommend it for blaring out your open windows in parking lots to get funny looks from people and secretly rocking on your iPod earphones when you're surrounded by a bunch of dirty Blackhawks fans. Granted, I come from a belief that any song which opens "In 1983 he was a rookie sensation / Stevie Y was all-star bound" can do absolutely nothing wrong from then on out, so your enjoyment may vary.

One of the real highlights of this tune (aside from the fact that IT WAS WRITTEN ABOUT STEVE YZERMAN) is the synth solo at 1:12 (which is, to my knowledge, the only synthesizer solo EVER composed in honor of the Captain).

And has your love of Yzerman ever built up inside of you such that you felt you had to let it burst forth from your body in a sublime falsetto "STEEE-HEEEE-HEEEEEEEVIE YYYYYY-HIIII!!"? (Don't lie. You know it has.) Then you can sing along at the 2:50 mark.

This song is the first time you'll notice a reoccurring theme in this blog - songs to which my response is "a little cheesy, but it's about the Red Wings, so I can't not love it".

Is it stuck in your head yet? You're welcome.

The Greatest Hockey Music Ever Written - Part I

I know when I made the introductory post to this series, there was an implication that all the music was going to be awful, but we're going to start this thing off with a song that isn't that bad at all (unless you listen to it fifteen times in a row while you're trying to write about it to block out the noise of your family being crazy all around you, in which case it snakes its way into your brain and NEVER COMES OUT AGAIN).

Stompin' Tom Connors was born a poor black child Charles Thomas Connors in New Brunswick in 1936. He spent the bulk of his youth wandering itinerantly and writing spectacular folk songs that, as an American, I have never heard of. His lasting contribution to hockey music occurred in the early 70s:

Stompin' Tom Connors - The Hockey Song

Love it or hate it (and I've actually met people who really, really hate it), it's the consummate hockey song, and we really couldn't write about hockey music without mentioning it.

Of course, if the original really doesn't do it for you, you can try this Swedish version, which is in English with heavy accents, and has Peter Forsberg scoring the first goal instead of Bobby Orr-Hull-Clarke-Whatever. If Don Cherry hasn't heard this yet, I want to be there the first time he does, with a wheelbarrow, so when he shits bricks over its existence I can take them home and build myself a garden shed.

We're not dead

This isn't really a blog entry. This is a notification that in the near future there will be more blog entries.

Last summer we made a grand total of 8 posts. This summer, we're going to set the lofty goal of at least 15 (wow! 15 whole posts! That's more than we made in the whole entire month of January! Gee golly!). This isn't an empty threat, either. This summer Hockeytown Static is bringing you

The Greatest Hockey Music Ever Written

even though by "greatest", we usually mean "most embarrassing to admit we actually have saved to our computer".

So whether it's holiday cheer from Johnny Bower, unintentional (maybe) sexual innuendos from Guy LaFleur, or synthesizer solos in honor of The Captain, we hope you can pull yourself away from the beach often enough to join us.

Todd Bertuzzi's Beard

The Red Wings have made enough deep playoff runs in recent years that the fans have come to understand that each one of their playoff beards has its own personality. Kris Draper's once beat Chuck Norris in a fight. Niklas Kronwall's fights crime while he's sleeping. Johan Franzen's apparently gives him superpowers (thanks for the curly fries, Mule. They were delicious).

But Todd Bertuzzi's sort of looks like you're gazing into the void.

yeah, that's the best picture of it I can find.

And because when I gazed into the void the void gazed back, here's the top ten things hiding in Todd Bertuzzi's beard:

10. The rest of his teeth
They had to go somewhere.

9. Brett Lebda
Because he's very small. And he could fit in there.

8. Mike Ilitch's sanity
I love him, but he's crazy(bread).

7. Jimmy Hoffa
I'm just kidding. Jimmy Hoffa lives in a condo in Vegas with Elvis and Tupac.

6. The lost city of Atlantis
The weight of all those buildings could explain why he hasn't been doing anything overly useful the last few games?

5. Zordon
Maybe he got imprisoned in there by Rita Repulsa or something. That seems logical.

4. Free curly fries
They are delicious.

3. A KFC Double Down
He's got to have something to eat during intermission.

2. Whiskey for Larry Murphy
Is there room for enough of it though?

1. Gordie Howe's dog

Just in case Gordie's been looking for him or anything -- I suggest he start in Todd Bertuzzi's beard. That is an awesome sweater though. You couldn't pull that sweater off like Gordie can.

You think it's more likely there's a stripper in there? Leprechauns? The Art Ross Trophy? That's what the comments are for.


Game 5, the second in a series of four consecutive must-wins for the Red Wings, starts at 10pm eastern. If you happen to actually be at the game, you should throw an octopus or twelve. Scott'll show you how it's done.

Tinfoil Flashmob

I don't have to tell any of you how awful the officiating has been in the eyes of Red Wings fans throughout the second round. After watching what felt like 120 minutes of penalty killing, a group of fans decided to take action against the NHL. The best way to do that? Block the brainwashing with hats made of tin foil. Clearly.

Just that happened before game 3. A handful of Red Wings faithful made and passed out hats before dancing the Hustle to The Hockey Song on the steps of the Gordie Howe entrance.

And Hockeytown Static was there to capture the magic.


And by "capture the magic", I mean Lindsay creeped awkwardly in the shadows near the box office with a digital camera.

I'm the chunky one on the right.

We'd actually like to apologize to everyone involved for showing up seconds before the dancing began, loitering creepily with a video camera and running away as soon as it ended. We were fully prepared to show up early and introduce ourselves to all of you lovely people, but I-96 had other plans. Furthermore, a dinner engagement (which we were also late to) sort of forced us into a dash-and-dine. But let me tell you - having a nice family dinner in a restaurant decked out like we were actually at a Wings game, tinfoil hats and all? Worth everything.

If you'd like to read up any other perspectives of the event, check out the Free Press, Snipe Snipe Dangle Dangle, it_burns_us's LiveJournal, Etched In Cold, and Mlive

The tinfoil itself didn't seem to bother Gary or the refs at all during the game, but the event itself was life-changing. It taught me about myself, about brainwashing, and about how hard it is to do the hustle on non-regulation-sized stairs.