Well, the point streak had to end sometime

First of all, it's been close to a week since we posted, and I have to apologize for that. Thanks to a combination of near-comical technical mishaps and the after-effects of a bona fide chiropractic emergency, this blog has taken a bit of a backseat. But we're back now, and there is hockey to be analyzed.

The last two games were at least as ugly as Ian Laperriere's face. The Wings came out this weekend with one of a possible four points, so I guess it could have been a lot worse, but... no, I guess it couldn't actually have been a lot worse. Not without someone getting injured. (Injured so they'd be out the rest of the season. Someone did get injured, it was Darren Helm, and it was in his delicate, boyish face. I hope his mother has Laperriere's phone number, and I hope she leaves him an angry voicemail. And I hope, having once been voted Denver's Father of the Year, that it tears at his cold, cold heart.)

In other news...

On Friday I got a very exciting package in the mail. At first I thought nothing of it because I've developed a minor addiction to staying up way too late and ordering free crap off the internet without remembering it in the morning, so I assumed it was just a new pen or a Newfoundland tour guide (did you know they have an island literally called "Random Island"? It's apparently a nice place to visit). Then I realized that it was from CafePress and practically ran yelling "HERM TO HOCKEYTOWN!" into our house. I opened the envelope and expected to find the three tiny H2H buttons we ordered, but instead found this:

Somewhere, there is a very confused (and very pregnant) woman who is trying to figure out what the hell H2H stands for. I wish her luck.

I guess success is a hard word to pronounce (EDIT- Now with video)

I wish I could say I'm surprised, but I'm not. The Eurotwins were showing glimmers of their previous magic, Nick Lidstrom practically doubled his goal count, Jimmy was f-ing rediculous, and somehow the Wings still managed to blow a two goal lead with less than five minutes left in the game. Story of the season. Since I couldn't watch the last period of this game, Trisha was kind enough to send me text updates so at least I didn't have to sit through the pain of watching the disappointment unfold:

"LIDSTROM INSURANCE GOAL WHAT ARE YOU DOING AT DANCE THIS IS SPECTACULAR"
"Helm in box for the rest of the game I hope"
"Yep, there it is. 3-4 with a minute and a half"
"Draper missed the empty net, wtf?"
"F***ing Jovo tied it"
"Shane Doan to win. I blame this on Darren Helm"
"At least we got a point? I guess? Why do I keep forgetting that hockey is nothing but pain and heartache?"

In other news, did anyone else hear Andy Brickley say during pregame that Datsyuk and Zetterberg "have tremendous sex"? He was trying for "success". I mean, I know that when the Eurotwins are on the same line a lot of this



happens, but geeze man, watch your Freudian slips on live tv; I almost choked on my baked potato.

Dear Sweet Beautiful Hockey Gods...

When will the shutouts end?

Dwayne Roloson made 16 saves (Yep, just 16. Don't vomit too much) to blank the Wings in the final game of 2010's first road trip. But don't blame it all on the goalie - tonight the Wings were ridiculously out-played.

The first period looked like someone had spiked the gatorade bottles with NyQuil. Double-shots of Viking-strength NyQuil. I wrote it off as jet-lag and hoped they'd snap out of it once they realized they were down two goals at first intermission. I guess somewhere during the win-streak I had forgotten that hope breeds disappointment.

After Babcock pulled Larry Murphy's vote for Calder Trophy winner in the second period, Ozzie finally got some time in net. And boy, did he look rusty. Rusty like the Titanic.

A fitting metaphor for what the Wings did this evening when they hit the ice

That was to be expected though, considering that it's the first time he's played in about ten thousand years (actually, I think he did pretty good for being 36 and coming in more or less cold).

For a minute there, I thought that pulling Howard was the wake-up call that the Red Wings needed, and was going to be the turning point in a come-from-behind win.

And then the Islanders scored while our 4-time Lady Byng winner was in the box for trying to break a guy in half, and I pretty much gave up. Which is what it looked like half the team had done as well; the third period played out less like an attempt to break a shut-out and more like an exercise in damage control. I guess without a period-long concerted effort for either, neither plan pulled through.

As far back as I can remember, scoring goals has never been this big of a problem for the Wings, and this is starting to scare me.

On the bright side, Franzen is skating again and Kronner's ultrasound came back with no signs of a baby, and, maybe more importantly, no signs of damage to his knee.

Ugh. Six-nothing. I'm never watching hockey again.

... until Thursday.

So because two games in a row against Chicago makes me sad, I'm not going to talk about it.

I'm going to talk about other things I hate.

About a week ago, Lindsay found this post on her internet travels. It sparked a little discussion (and a lot of ranting) about what makes a truly obnoxious seat-mate. It's all pretty subjective - some of our death-by-fire game-ruiners might be your colorful ambiance-providers and vice versa. Hell, we couldn't even agree on most of these, and only agreed to include them all because they managed to add up to ten, which is generally the most accepted number of items to put on one of these things. You're probably going to disagree with a few of these.

So with that in mind, here are Hockeytown Static's Top Ten Most Obnoxious People at a Hockey Game:

10. People with whistles. Actually, neither of us have ever been to a hockey game where they were blowing train whistles (which is probably a good thing for the people blowing them), but it's a fear we have for the future.

9. Puckbunnies. Ok, so we're girls - we understand if you want to look good when you go out, even to a hockey game. And we understand if you appreciate the physical attractiveness of the players on the ice - that's biology. Hell, I guess we can even concede to tolerate all the "PUCK ME" and "Lebda your (sic) a hottie!" signs, even if it means that, again, us being girls, among a lot of fans we have to work twice as hard and dress twice as frumpily to prove our credibility.

But when I'm glowing with childlike glee at finally getting a chance to see the players I worshiped as heroes as a child and you push past me and block my view of Lidstrom or Hank or Ozzie during warm-ups so that you can try to slip Jonathan Ericsson your number through the crack in the glass? Bitch, you've crossed a line.

8. The Griffins $1 beer crowd. I've never really had a problem with the people at Van Andel who were there for the hockey and really excited that the beer was just a buck (actually, the best time I've ever had at a hockey game was when the guys in front of us got wasted and two of them nearly went to blows over whether or not Wayne Gretzky was the greatest hockey player of all time). But the arena fills up every Friday night, mainly with people just there to get drunk. They're loud, obnoxious, and usually have no idea what a puck even is, but they can get wasted and eat a whole meal for under $20 (including tickets), so they're there. And while I think it's great that you're having a good time and all, I don't really want to spill beer on me, hit on my sister during second intermission, and then cheer for the wrong team during the shootout.

7. People who stand during THE WHOLE intermission. Not get up and stretch a little. Not head out to the concourse to pee out five dollars worth of dollar beer and then come back a little while later. Not jump up when there's a chance to catch free t-shirts. People who actually stand up right in front of their seats and chat for a solid 15 minutes. I know the intermission entertainment is lame. I don't care. Maybe my kid's out there with his mini-mites team. Maybe my best friend's trying to throw frisbees into the net for a free jersey. Maybe I've got a thing for juggling Elvises. And maybe I paid good money for my $10 standing room only ticket and want to watch the Stormtroopers dance. Sit the hell down, dammit.

6. People who wear jerseys of teams not playing in the game you are attending. We understand that there can be exceptions - like teams that have some kind of personal or geographical tie to one of the teams playing (like wearing a team Sweden or an old Vipers jersey to a Wings game, or a Shane Doan Jets jersey to a Coyotes game), or like a Chiefs jersey (which no hockey game is really complete without). But if you go to a Wings vs. Flames game in Detroit wearing a Crosby 2010 Olympic Team Canada jersey, you are just a prognosticating tool. The roster hasn't even been finalized yet, and obviously you're just doing it to brag, but you've come to the wrong place.

5. That one guy who steals the goal light after the final game at Olympia and makes it into an honest to God lamp. Then they give the lamp away, with no thought at all that maybe in a few years they would have two daughters who pretty much worship the Detroit Red Wings. Thanks, Dad.

4. Grown adults who are at their first hockey game and still don't quite get it. I appreciate your effort sir, but I don't want to sit next to you for three hours while you tell your friend (and their friends are never all that knowledgeable about the game) how it's like football on ice. No, it's not. It's like soccer on crack on ice. But you don't know that, because you don't watch soccer either. And I'm talking about the people who aren't ever going to watch hockey again, who spend third period on their cell phones because they got bored of not being able to follow the puck. You're not obnoxious because you don't know what icing is - you're obnoxious because you're yelling over the hockey-noise, right in my ear, about how you totally almost scored the other night with some hot chick.

3. That guy who spends literally the entire game standing two rows in front of you on his cell phone trying to get the attention of his friend on the other side of the arena. Ok, cool - make sure your buddy knows where you're sitting, have a wave, point him out to the guy you're sitting with - if you can't find each other in less than five actual minutes, give up, because you're not going to pick each other out among the other 8,000 people at Joe Louis Arena wearing red shirts and black baseball caps, half of whom are on their cell phones waving across the ice right along with you. And you don't need to continuously stand up and signal to each other via semaphore during actual game play - cross-arena communication is what the Finns invented texting for. Don't make me spend the entire game with your arms waving around my line of vision, listening to you say "No, over here! Yeah, I'm over here, in section...um... the one like two down from the left goal. No, MY left. Yeah. No, that's not me. I'm waving! Can you see me? Where are you?"

2. People who get drunk enough to fail at insulting the players so epically that I almost don't hate them, but love them for the entertainment. Most of this I've experienced thanks to dollar beer night at Van Andel (why would you yell 'GO BACK TO STATE!' at Jimmy Howard? He went to University of Maine), and is part of the reason I don't like the people who only come for the dollar beers. Can you tell that dollar beer night is a complicated love-hate relationship for me? It confuses my emotions toward alcohol.

1. People who yell "SHOOT!" when there is clearly no shooting lane open. I mean, I get it - it's frustrating when you're stuck watching your team pass the puck to each other at the blue line during a powerplay in the last dying seconds of the game. And sometimes hockey players don't do enough getting the puck to the net (back when he was with the Griffins, Ville Leino, I swear to God, would back-pass on a breakaway. I saw it happen! More than once!) and you want them to shoot - I want them to shoot too. Maybe enough to shout a little encouragement every once in a while. But I can promise you that Nick Lidstrom has a better idea of when to shoot the puck than that drunk guy sitting three rows behind me. So drunk guy three rows behind me yelling "SHOOT IT!" every thirty seconds? Unless your name is Steven Gregory Yzerman, and I know it's not, keep your freaking mouth shut.

Good lord, hockey makes me angry.

blegh

Well, that was a depressing weekend. The Wings lost all 4 of the possible points they could have skated away with in two games against Dallas and Chicago.

I honestly stopped paying attention during the third period of the game against Chicago. I don't know if it was just the game, or it was a combination of the game and the season, or if it was all of that and this wicked caffiene headache (lack of caffiene headache?) I've been nursing most of the day, but at some point around second intermission, I had lost the will to live. The Wings were playing that way too. The defensive coverage was bad, the goaltending was questionable, and the offense was so horrible that it was nonexistant.

On the bright side, there's only about 50 more days until Franzen comes back.
(I might have just vomited on my keyboard after typing that. I don't think I can handle this season anymore. It's just too ridiculous.)

Rejoice - The Wings Have Won!

And then despair because this team seriously can't play a game without somebody limping out early.

when we've cleared out all the Griffins, do we hit the Walleye next?

If the last few games are any indications, Thursday against Tampa Bay is going to involve Brad May scoring a hat trick and at least one player leaving the ice unable to return. I'm not making a guess on which one - I've already lost $10 on Darren Helm this week.

Anyway, it probably angers the hockey gods to bet on player injuries. Andreas Lilja technically won me fifteen dollars last season, but Lindsay refuses to pay up until it's been determined that my winning the bet didn't actually end his career.

Some thoughts on tonight's game:
- My mom spent every second of Kris Newbury's first penalty berating him like a child about doing stupid things his first few seconds on the ice, but when he came out of the box and scored out of nowhere, she got real quiet, real fast.

- Actually, I like Kris Newbury taking penalties if they're all going to result, directly or indirectly, in the Red Wings scoring. I hope Babs sends him out there every shift with the order to hook, trip, grab, slash, and hold everything that moves.

- If you want a cheap laugh, remember what Kris Newbury's face looks like in real life, when he was skating around tonight, and then take a gander at his Griffins roster pic. I mean, he looks better than the in-game picture in person to begin with. The roster pic... he must have insulted that camera's mother. And I know I'm not imagining it, because I overheard two 12 year old boys having a serious conversation about it at a Griffins game.

- I don't really want to think about Jonathan Ericsson right now. At the end of the game, the announcers were hoping it would just be a contusion, but Lindsay saw Mike Serven's (via twitter: @mserven) frame-by-frame of the moment of impact and said it looked pretty bad.

But we got two points! (in regulation, even) so for now I'm happy.

Do you know what that was?

At least they won't smell out of place when they head out to New Jersey this weekend.

Get it? Because the whole state smells like burning garbage. I'm making fun of people to make myself feel better. It's working.

ajsldfjsldfjlsdfjls

Two games. 80 shots on net. No goals. The first double shutout since 1977.

What.

The.

Crap.

Maybe I should have been a little more specific when I said that I wanted to witness Red Wings history when I attended the only two games I was going to get to attend in probably two years.

I'm not really sure how this makes me feel. I don't know if I want to be angry, or if I want to laugh, or if I want to throw myself off the ambassador bridge, or maybe I want to do all three. I had the urge to do all three today, but I don't think jumping off a bridge while laughing angrily at hockey is quite the way I want to go. But I don't even have anything relevant to say about the game yet, except that it was ridiculous. I'm sort of too in shock right now at it having happened in the first place to form an opinion about it.

Seriously, what was that?

Remember how Lindsay wanted to corner Jarome Iginla in an elevator and give him a swift kick in the shins for his team's past transgressions before tonight's game? Her blind hatred of the Calgary Flames has now crossed over into the realm of the comedic. I've spent most of the night whispering "Dion Phaneuf" from across the room and watching her face spasm with disgust.

It's funny in the same way that disallowed goals aren't.

I scored a goal for the Leafs tonight

... didn't everyone?

I suppose, if I had power over these things, that I would have picked a different game to honor Steve Yzerman and Dan Cleary to score goal 100. One where the Red Wings didn't lose 5-1, and go down another forward because Jason Williams broke his leg.

If I were a better blogger, I would have diligently watched the game with my eyes glued to the screen so that I could break down the Wings' play period by period and explain to you exactly what went wrong, but around the third goal against my team, I usually start to zone out and hope that if I just don't look at it directly, it isn't really happening. Like if I don't watch the end of the game or check the scores online, the Red Wings won't have lost. They won't have won, but they'll never have lost. The more games go sour, the more I have this urge, and the more I have this urge, the more I'm convinced that Schrodinger was a hockey fan.

If you put a gun to my head and told my to think of something positive, I'd beg you to pull the trigger say that at least I got a good giggle out of watching Jonas Gustavsson stand next to Ted Lindsay and Johnny Bower to accept his player of the game award, because of how outlandishly tall he looked next to them.

And I'd make a bet on the next forward to get injured but the last time I bet on player injuries, I won five dollars and Andreas Lilja still isn't back in the lineup.

That's not even the worst game the Red Wings have played in the last year. Why does it feel like it was the epitome of gross, and the end of the world besides?

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.

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?

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?

And it's over

I could write something bitter about the cup being stolen from us. Point fingers and blame injuries.

I could write something pseudo-uplifting about how the Wings are still awesome and we'll get 'em next year. (They are still awesome, but that won't help us again for a while.)

I could write something sad about this being another disappointment for an already sad region.

But I think all that's already being covered, so I'll just exercise my womanly right and lock myself in my room for three days with a tub of chocolate ice cream and Abba's 'Winner Takes it All' on repeat, feeling sorry for myself and Marian Hossa.

Ok, not really. For one, it would have to be an awfully big tub of chocolate ice cream to last three days.

Honestly, I'm still not sure how I feel about this. I mean, this is the closest I've ever watched the Red Wings get without them winning it. The last time they made it to the finals without winning, it was 95, and I was asleep, because I was eight. I'm still trying to sort it all out. At this point, I think I'm most disappointed at the fact that that was the last Red Wing game until they go to Sweden next fall.

*sigh* Well, at any rate... at least Gary finally got what he wanted. Cue the Sidney Crosby media extravaganza.

It's not over yet

Today, I was in a car with a close friend of mine, a photographer. He asked me if he could borrow some Wings gear for a photoshoot because he had a model from Ohio who wanted to royally piss off some friends in Pittsburgh. I was all for pissing off people in Pittsburgh.

"But I hope the series isn't over until after this weekend, because that's the only time I have to shoot," he said.

So that game you just puked over? Was what he wanted. And all the anger, pain, and frustration built up within me? Will probably be taken out on him. Maybe that's kind of bitchy of me. But I think our friendship will survive.

You know, for a minute there, you probably could have convinced me that the only reason Crosby stayed down after that slash by Maltby in the third period was to get Wings fans' hopes up that he would be out of the next game.

But I don't think he was thinking that far ahead. I think that was just your average, run of the mill dive.

That game did, in fact, push me over the edge into a curled-into-a-ball wimpering panic, but if you don't want to follow me into the fetal position and actually feel like trying to remain positive, you're well in your rights.

The Wings aren't out of this one yet.

I'll still be spending most of game five trying not to puke.

Are you ready for number four?

I'm sort of riding that fine line between bouncy excitement and curl-up-in-a-ball, wimpering panic right now. The outcome of tonight's game will go about 5,000 miles in determining which way I fall.

Datsyuk might be back in tonight... but then again, he might not. What's wrong with him? "I no score for like 12 games. Is problem." Well no kidding.

I don't think I really need to tell you how important this game is for both teams. A lot of people talk about "momentum" in regard to hockey games, and a lot of times I'm pretty sure it's just another canned response that coaches learn to fill time during interviews between periods because they're not politicians and they don't have anything else to say. But tonight that's exactly what these teams are fighting for - momentum. And I don't want to see what happens if the Red Wings let the Penguins catch their breath.

It was a year ago today. I'd be surprised if the Penguins didn't use the memory of slumping over on the bench in defeat as motivation tonight.

But I'll also be surprised if Hossa doesn't either. And he's scored every one of his playoff goals so far in pairs in game fours.

So here's hoping our team keeps the momentum tonight. Go Wings.

Jason Arnott had a wet and wild night

No, really. That's Jason Arnott.

It seemed like his was the only name Ken mentioned. If nothing else, that meant that at least I didn't have to spend the entire game hearing about Jordan Tootoo. But it also meant that by the time he skated out to take the shootout, it felt like he was destined to score. I spend another night watching the number on my kitchen whiteboard not go up. Lindsay curses Ken Daniels for jinxing the game with his talk of numbers.

It wasn't like it was sixty minutes of pure awfulness, either. There was a lot of good hockey played tonight, against a desperate team. Some defensive idiocy as well, yeah, but up until the end, a lot of good hockey.

And all I'm going to remember is how the Red Wings blew another 2 goal lead. Ugh, how frustrating.

I fricking hate Nashville.

Tonight's first star - MacDonald's Goalposts

Red Wings lose to Islanders, 2-0.

Am I sad? Yes, I'm sad. Am I frustrated? Yes, I'm frustrated. Am I surprised?

Honestly, no. The top team in the league plays the bottom team in the league. The bottom team brings their A game. The top team maybe throws out a solid B+, if they're feeling fiesty. Tell me you haven't heard this story before.

MacDonald deserves the credit for some ridiculous saves. And hitting goalposts instead of the net is a matter of centimeters. There were some ass-ugly stretches, but it's not like the Wings slept the full 60 minutes. They didn't make it as hard for New York as they could have, but they didn't hand them the game on a silver platter, either. I'll give credit where credit is due.

Still. Losing to the Islanders is still losing to the Islanders. Gross.

... but it turned out alright in the end

Most of last night's game made me want to bang my head against a wall. The Red Wings not-scoring-parade (though it didn't seem like it was for lack of trying) was broken up only by interviews with Sam Gagner's mullet-in-progress and Ethan Moreau's creepy blown pupil. Luckily, the Wings decided it would be fun to score twelve goals in the last thirty-seconds of the game again, so things worked out in the end.

I hope Ericsson can eventually figure out how to score in places other than Edmonton though.

Oh, and it's the day after Tuesday, which means it must be time for another installment of WTF Wednesdays. I think when Lindsay talked me into doing this, she severely over-estimated our ability to come up with weekly content that maintained any sort of level of decent quality, but here goes -

I have a saying. It goes "The only thing weirder than a Finn/goalie is a Finnish goalie." Here to demonstrate is Vesa Toskala. You've probably (or maybe you haven't) already seen him profess his love for his sparkly Mickey Mouse t-shirt and man-purse, but this one was new to me:



I don't actually speak Finnish, so god knows how accurate those subtitles are, but since he actually says "Mitsubishi Colt", I'll trust them.

That was disgusting

It was more kinds of disgusting than I care to think about.

That was like it's your birthday, and you've told your parents all year you want a party at Chuck E. Cheese, but they never gave you a straight answer. You woke up this morning a little wary. By the time you got to the breakfast table, you were worried they didn't even remember your big day.

By lunch, it occurs to you that they're probably avoiding the topic on purpose, because they planned a surprise. You're so excited you can barely stand it.

By mid-afternoon, you've started to worry that there is no party after all. You feel like crying forever, but try to take it like a man. It's just a birthday. You get like 80 of them.

Then, just before dinner time, mom tells you to go put your coat on. Oh-boy! Here it comes! You get in the car, barely able to contain yourself. Speeding down the city streets, you spy the sign in the distance - there it is! That cool-looking mouse with the backwards baseball cap. Oh, you can smell the ball pit from here. Closer.... closer... your mom slows down as she approaches the parking lot entrance... THIS IS GONNA BE SO AWESOME...

Then the car lurches the wrong way, pulls into the left turn lane, and turns into the parking lot in front of the dentist's office. You have six teeth drilled and the hygienist goes easy on the Novocaine. On the way back from the bathroom, you're attacked by ninjas, but your mom doesn't believe you and you're grounded a week for ripping your pants.

You go home. Your parents mistakenly thought it was your brother's birthday and gave him all your presents. Also, your dog died.

Pin this one on the defense, pin it on the goaltending, pin it on whatever the hell you want - at the end of the day, the Red Wings blew another lead, and they blew it fast, and they blew it hard.

I try not to dislike Calgary so much, but then nights like this happen. Cleary appears to be ok, but the night's sluttiness still roused my ire, however hard I was laughing at the sight of four Flames in the box while it happened. (I was laughing pretty hard.) Lindsay's irrational shin-kicking urge hasn't really subsided.

Someday, Jarome... someday...

Whut. the crap. was that?

I don't really think I have anything to say after that game. Honestly, the level of ridiculousness was so high that I spent most of the game laughing. It was either that or cry.

On a dial-up internet connection, I'm not going to try to confirm this, but as of the seventh goal, I think I heard Ken mention that Rafalski and Lidstrom were still even with their plus-minus. Who the hell was at like a -5 to make this happen? I have the mental image of Raffi leaping into the bench in a panic to protect his stats when he thought Nashville was about to score.

This MS Paint job is better than that game was. Think about how sad that is.

Of course, maybe that game never happened. Maybe it was all part of an elaborate acid trip hallucination I'm having. We've changed the channel to what Lindsay tells me is Hockey Night in Canada, but for some reason, all I'm seeing is footage of a lion-fish superimposed over a photograph of Kelly Hrudey dog-sledding. I don't even know.

I'm going to go gorge myself on leftover paczki and hope I never have to sit through another game like that again.