Darren McCarty makes everything better

Well, that was a... game. I guess. But I was probably setting myself up for disappointment. I've had this hope since October that when Franzen took to the ice again for a game there would be a flood of relief, a big flood, like the kind of flood that sweeps houses away and causes billions of dollars in property damage and untold emotional pain - the kind of flood where the government steps in to provide aid and talks about passing some kind of budget bill allowing for the funds to start building levies so it never happens again. Like one minute you're walking down the street, and then you're like "hey, what's that noi-" and then you're under like 20 feet of water. Relief water. Delicious relief water.

There was no sudden flood of delicious relief water. There was like... a relief water drinking fountain. And there was a line.

And now I'm cursed with the burden of having to compare every mustache I see for the rest of my life with The Mule's epic nose-beard.

I shouldn't be excited about the Red Wings "at least getting a point". Last season I was peeved when the team had the audacity to need to go through overtime and a shootout to beat St. Louis. Yesterday when they hit overtime, there was a fist-pump. And on top of everything, we had to watch the ridiculousness on Versus.

Except I think I can deal with Versus if Darren McCarty keeps being there. Franzen's return only reminded me of how injury-fucked this season has been, so Mac was really the high-point of the night. He seemed a lot more relaxed than the first time he showed up on Versus, and he broke rule number one of unbiased commentating when he proclaimed his undying loyalty to The Organization.

Also, he giggled like a fifteen year old boy when Bill Patrick said "Speaking of enormous loads...", which really made me feel better about giggling like a fifteen year old boy myself. And might have made me giggle harder.

A recap of things you probably already know

Tonight the Wings take on the Blues, in what I'm assuming will be a painfully empty Joe Louis Arena. About three hours ago I got a text practically begging me to buy student rush tickets (if I were home, you better believe I would be there), and rumor has it that only around 12,000 tickets have been sold for this game. If the weather in Detroit is anything like it is up here in the Grand Rapids area, I'm assuming that it's playing a pretty big role in this, but it still worries me.


-As I'm sure you've all heard unless you've been living under a rock, Darren McCarty has officially announced his retirement. Snapshots has a nice compilation of teammate's thoughts on this here.

-On a happy note, Valtter Filppula got the cast on his arm removed, and is on the road to return later this month.

-Ken Holland and Mike Babcock once again won the team competition to raise the most money for the Salvation Army yesterday. Anyone else smell cheating here?

Anyway, hopefully this game will be better than the Sweden games against St. Louis, and the Wings can come out of it with a full two points.

At least we got to see Darren McCarty?

There's not really much to say about last night's game. The penalty kill sucked, Brian Engblom's hair sucked, the final score sucked, and as usual in Nashville, the fans sucked. Or I guess maybe they blew. Because god forbid Jordin Tootoo take a shift without the world being alterted. If I ever find myself in Nashville, I am marching into the Sommet Center with a jug of lighter fluid and a match, and burning everyone's train whistles. In a big, giant train whistle bonfire.

(yeah you best view that shit full-sized.)

I literally watched half the game on mute so I didn't have to listen to it. But the final fwa-eeeeet that they'd all make together as the superheated air of the whistle-fire blew through them? Would be worth hearing.

Also, after martin Erat's hat trick--- oh wait, he only scored two goals? So it wasn't a hat trick then? Well that's good to know. I guess I got a little confused from there having been more hats thrown on the ice for him than there were after Teemu Selanne's actual hat tick against the Wings last season in Anaheim. Maybe they just thought three goals for one team in a game or three points for one player in a game was a hat trick. That's an honest mistake that anyone could make.

I feel bad for the 8 or 10 Nashville fans that actually like hockey.

I'm just a dirty complainer like that

I think it's awfully funny (by which I mean not funny at all, but a sad remark on my life and humanity in general) that when the Red Wings aren't sucking hard, I don't really have anything to say about them. It's laziness on my part; I could have written something about what I thought they've been doing right lately, or something about Ozzie getting his game back together, or something about Lilja's injury, or something about... I don't know - Konstantinov, maybe, since it was his birthday yesterday.

But I guess I've fallen into that trap of 'if you don't have anything bitchy to say, don't say anything at all.'

What I want to talk about right now was tonight's game against Atlanta, because I think there's probably a lot to talk about. Sadly, I haven't seen it yet. We had to tape it, and the tape's 160 miles south east of here right now. I was hoping to catch the replay on FSN tonight, but I guess they're playing tennis until six in the morning or something.

All I know of the game was texted to Lindsay's phone by our mom while we were at a Griffins game. Our mommy-play-by-play was pretty sparse, but it included telling us that the crowd was chanting Ozzie's name, to which I had the following response:

"Oh, that's good - wait. Ozzie's starting again? Wait. Isn't this an away game?" I fear I may have missed something truely epic, and for that I'm a little sad.

My tradeoff was getting to witness the unbridled freaking-out joy of a guy down the row from us who took until the middle of the second period to realize that Darren McCarty was playing in front of him.

Guy down the row: "Wait. Holy crap. Is that McCarty? McCarty? McCarty's playing tonight? Darren McCarty? That's McCarty??!?"
Guy next to me: "Dude, yeah. He scored the goal."
Guy down the row: "OMGOMGOMG MCCARTY. Right there. That's Darren McCarty."

He spent the rest of the period grinning like a 12 year old, which made me smile inside. You go to so many Griffins games and you start to forget who it is you're watching down there, people like Helm, and Leino, and Ericsson, and Downey, and Darren freaking McCarty, and it's nice to be reminded that for a $10 student ticket, you get to watch past, present, and potential Red Wings play hockey. Also, on Fridays you can enjoy $1 beers.

I swear I'm not getting paid to plug Griffins games; this is just the most live hockey I've gone to in a year since I was ten, and it's kind of made my semester awesome.

Plus, not having actually seen tonight's game, and not willing to read everything that's already been said about it and regurgitate it in a half-assed game report, it's the closest thing to Red Wings-related information I have anything to say about right now.

We'll call it... a prospects scouting report? So... Leino still holds onto the puck too long, and Jimmy looked alright in the shootout...

(Oh, and the mascot broke his arm sledding down the stairs in the lower bowl. Yeah, I don't know. They have a hydrolics-powered gatling gun that somebody built in their garage out of pvc pipe that shoots hot dogs and t-shirts - it's a dangerous job.)