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.