Arby's here I come!

Wings beat Anaheim 7-4 in what ended up being one of the most exciting games that I've seen in a long time. And while thankfully Chris Pronger wasn't in this game, Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf are starting to get to be just as annoying. They're like your annoying little cousin at Thanksgiving dinner that just won't stop poking you because they think it's funny. Well, it's not funny and neither are their constant goals against the Wings.

This game proved that while the Wings still have a long way to go this season in terms of defensive brain farts (coughJonathanEricssoncough), hitting goalposts, and taking bad penalties, the future is still looking bright. Leino looked good, Helm looked, well... fast, and Jimmy now has a mastodonic 5 NHL wins. Also tonight was the first hat trick in over a year. Not that I didn't love Hossa, but he apparently missed the memo on how to put the third puck in the net and just ended up being the ultimate roastbeef tease. Not Henrik Zetterberg. Nothing will be as sweet as walking into Arby's tomorrow holding the boxscore and asking for free potatoes. It's taken a freakishly long time, but it's here now.

Oh thank god.

Looking back on it, that was an exceptional game. Watching it was occasionally painful. Like when the score was tied. Or when the Wings were killing off ten-minute 2-on-8s. Or when Chris Pronger went out of his way to get out of position so he could start jobbing Homer.

But the Red Wings won! And we've been waiting all year for Helm to pull off something like that breakaway goal. Everybody talks about how fast he is, but you don't really realize it until you watch him take off like that. Good lord. That was nothing short of spectacular.

Of course, the giddy jubilation I'm feeling is somewhat tempered by the thought of having to play four to seven games against the Chicago Blackhawks making me throw up a little in my mouth.

Now for some reason we're watching Boston and Carolina go into overtime, prompting the following conversation:

"I totally didn't even know Rod Brind'Amor was still in the NHL."
"Rod the Bod?"
"What?"
"That's what they called him."
"Him? Ew. Why? He's..."
"No one ever called him 'Rod the Face', Lindsay."

Well. They didn't.

Still no coherant thoughts

I waited for something to come, but by now I'm thinking that I just lack the ability to say anything intelligent about last night's game. It's like my whole range of communication has been reduced to a series of grunting noises and expressive faces.

I guess it's for the best. That way if I met Chris Pronger in the street, he would understand what I had to say about him.

Of course, reading this didn't really help with my non-coherent English problem. I'd say something snarky about it, but when Scotty Bowman says he thinks Patrick Roy coaching the Avs is a good idea, my response can only be "What?"

"He's done a good job in junior," Scotty? Really? Didn't he order his son to go to the other end of the ice and beat down the other goalie? I... what?

Game 6 is tomorrow at the ungodly hour of 10pm again. I'd love to be able to make promises to everyone about how the team isn't going to go and lose two straight, but my predictions usually end badly, and anyway, the only promise this blog has been able to keep so far is that the posts would drop in quantity and quality once Grand Valley let out for the summer. I'll believe we've got this series in the bag when the Wings are smiling their way down the handshake line.

Are you pissed? You should be.

I understand that the referees are in the game for a purpose, and that they're important or something.

I just... WHY IS THE OFFICIATING DECIDING THE GODDAMNED SERIES?

I don't just mean that goal that was a goal that somehow wasn't counted as a goal because I guess the ref just didn't feel like calling it a goal because he had indigestion or a bird was in the arena rafters and pooped in his eye or he was staring at Neidermayer's ass or something, I mean the fact that half the goals that were counted as goals this series were powerplay goals too. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that I remember some idyllic time long ago when hockey was played without penalties being called, because I don’t, actually. Refs have been making mistakes since before I was born, and the world keeps turning. But in this series it feels like the officiating is making an extra effort to impact the final outcomes of these games. Now, I’m not saying that if these two teams had been allowed to play 5-on-5 grab-and-grapple hockey for three games that the Wings would be on their way to a sweep or anything. I’m just saying that I want to be able to someday look my children and grandchildren in the eye and tell them, whatever the outcome, that yes, during the 2009 western conference semi-finals, the better-playing team won.

And since that was so ridiculous and it’s already Wednesday in Michigan, you know, when normal people would be sleeping, and not watching hockey games that end like that, unable to yell at the television for fear of waking the rest of their family, who have to get up and work in the morning, you know, like normal people, that call was hockeytownstatic’s WTF Wednesday moment. That and Nick Lidstrom holding back Pronger at the end of the game. Which we laughed at. Really hard. Harder when we figured they weren’t going to hurt each other.

Is that a total cop-out? Maybe. After those two games, I’m not going anywhere near our crappy dial-up internet again for at least a week. I’m stressed enough, and I don’t think my family would understand if I put my fist through the screen screaming I HATE CHRIS PRONGER.

Part of me is almost thankful that it was just over quickly though. I’m a nightowl, but I don’t want to be up until 3 in the morning watching the Ducks wear us down again in overtime.

Dammit, this is so fricking ridiculous. I’m so struck by the ridiculousity of the whole thing that I can’t even tell how angry I am.

Quack quack

Ducks in the second round.

I'll be honest, I have special secret reasons why I was hoping Anaheim would take the first round. And it doesn't have anything to do with having an excuse to get more use out of that masterful ms paint portrait of Chris Pronger.

Lindsay's excited to see how Ken Daniels' playoff beard has been progressing. He's like My Littlest Hobo out there.

This entry doesn't sound very enthused. That's because I'm not enthused. Should I be? Are you? Maybe it's because I haven't gotten to watch the Red Wings play hockey in five thousand years but Lindsay's had Versus running in the background 24-7 and Brian Engblom's hair is stealing all the joy and happiness and puppy dogs and unicorns puking rainbows from my universe. Maybe it's because the Ducks make me want to punch babies. Maybe it's because it's after one in the morning and I'm full of junk food and I've been sorting coins all fricking day in a house with no air conditioning and crappy internet.

I guess I'm just worried that this next series will suck hard. Not because I don't think the Wings can make the Ducks curl up in their locker room stalls and sob quietly to themselves, but because I'm worried that it could eventually come down to injuries. And the Red Wings have some. Maybe.

Maybe.

Because it's the playoffs, it's a secret. Kris Draper's still out with food poisoning, or temporary blindness, or chaffed nipples, or something, we don't know. And I guess Hank has the flu now, but in the playoffs that could mean anything from a bad hangnail to "my arm is on backwards and my femur is poking at my spleen."

And the Ducks have a history of being skanky.

I'm sure I'll feel better about it in the morning.

Not really a game report...

I don’t watch the Ducks very often. The Wings only play them a few times a year, usually around two o’clock in the morning, and spend most of the game bouncing pucks off Holmstrom that never end up counting as goals. The Ducks goal horn sounds like what would happen if Satan (the Prince of Darkness, not the hockey player) tended a Lighthouse of the Damned. Chris Pronger’s legs being so much longer than his torso looks foolish and it pisses me off. There’s a 35% or more chance that someone leaves the game on IR.

So when I’m watching the Ducks, I’m not actually watching the individual players; I’m watching myself, in the reflection of the glare off the glass of the television screen, slowly going insane.

I cite this as the reason why I’m almost happier for this game to be over than I am for the Red Wings to have won the game.

In the first ten minutes, I was calm enough, and the Red Wings were doing well enough, that I was almost ready to admit that for the first time, I had been watching the players on Anaheim, and I saw more than a few playing some damn good hockey.

The feeling didn’t last very long.

No, sadly, from that point out, the game was yet another unbalanced three-speed ceiling fan of emotion, from Getzlaf’s goal all the way until Chris Pronger tried to Jamie Langenbrunner another 2,638,468,234 foot shot past Ozzie in the dying seconds of the game.

It’s also really nice to know that you can still trip, hold, and otherwise interfere with Pavel Datsyuk all you want, no whistle. The officiating is consistent this way, I’ll give it that.

But now I’ll try to move away from the cynical, end-of-the-world, I hate hockey mentality, because the Red Wings won tonight, and no matter how the actual game made me feel, beating the Ducks is still beating the Ducks. So here’s what I walked away from this game with:

• Chris Osgood is absofreakinglutely amazing. It isn't just everyday that the general populace will go along with me when I say this, so I'm getting it in while I can.
• Derek Meech - aside from that part where he looked like he died, I think I like where this is going.
• I shouldn't try to watch hockey after drinking a double-strong caramel macchiato, because my roommate will come in to see why I'm yelling 'NEIDERMAYER' at my tv, then worry about the fact that I'm twitching worse than Nikolai Khabibulin during a shoot-out.
  

Finally, I’m serious about Pronger’s torso-to-legs ratio pissing me off. I’m not sure what it is about them. Maybe it’s jealousy. As a veteran of 15 years of ballet lessons, I know what I’m talking about when I say that someone has long, well-turned out dancer’s legs, and Chris Pronger is one of those people. God. His grand jetes would be spectacular. But… this is Chris Pronger we’re talking about, so he doesn’t leap through the air like a gazelle, he just lifts his elbows and looks foolish. I’ve drawn you a diagram to illustrate, practically to scale, just in case you hadn't noticed it before:

I do these things when I’m up too late at night. So if his eyes are stealing your soul. as they are mine, blame Pacific standard time, not me.