Bahahahaha

After a back-to-back buzzer-beating weekend, I was pretty convinced that the Wings' luck had been all used up and that I would have to sit through the world's most miserable Penguins game I've seen since June, and maybe even ever because at least then I didn't have have to stare at Brian Engblom's mullet during intermission. Though I did have to listen to Pierre Mcguire. It's kind of a lose-lose situation, I guess.

if mcguire and engblom traded hair, my life would pretty much be over

BUT - if the Red Wings are going to keep doing what they just did, I don't really care what network I have to watch it on. They won 3-1, which would have been higher on both sides if both goalies weren't ridiculous (which for Jimmy I was pleasantly surprised and for Fleury I was unpleasantly unsurprised). And speaking of goalies, I'm probably the hundredth person to put this video up, but look me in the eye and honestly tell me you're already sick of watching Howard pull Crosby away from Bertuzzi (which was probably a good thing for Crosby) by his face.



Lindsay got a text message that this was happening, ran away from dance practice to the big screen tv in GV's fieldhouse, right in the middle of a group of kids studying (which made them all leave), and then sat on a table in front of said tv to watch Versus replay it. I'd worry that she's getting a reputation over there as "crazy hockey girl", but it's a big school, so she's probably got another solid year and a half of hijinks left before complete strangers start calling her out on it.

The win has us in 8th spot, four points ahead of Calgary. This is a spectacular day to be a Red Wings fan.

Lets keep winning games. Please.

I always thinks it's really funny to look at which games get picked up by Versus and NBC and then ask "why?" Like last year, when the Devils had to deal with at least two Versus feeds a month because Versus desperately, desperately wanted to be the ones to broadcast Martin Brodeur's record-breaking 603,478,021st win.

I mean, nobody came out and said as much, but it couldn't have been a coincidence. I don't love Versus, but I put hockey on as background noise, whatever the game, and every week, like clockwork, there was Doc talking about how New Jersey was holding its own while Brodeur was on the mend. (Their plan failed, but they dropped everything to show it anyway. And by "dropped everything", I mean "interrupted a Wings game".) No, not a coincidence.

Sort of like I doubt that it's a coincidence that Ken and Mickey aren't calling either of the games the Wings play against the Pens this season.

No, seriously. There's another one in March, on a Monday, picked up by Versus. The league could have scheduled one of them on a Friday night. Instead of playing into NBC's plans to break the network record for most utterances of the words "rematch" and "rivalry".

But I don't care about rivalries or rematches right now. Sure, if the knowledge that they're about to play the Penguins riles the team up into a higher level of play, if the chance at retribution helps them to win, then I want them to play the Penguins every night.

But I'm not playing in this game; I'm watching (or, more accurately, listening, because aside from not particularly wanting to watch the NBC feed, I'll be driving back up to Grand Valley for the better part of the game), and as much as I want to care that it's the Penguins my team's about to play, I don't really care who the Red Wings are playing, if it's the Penguins or the Panthers or the Olympus Mons Dust Mites, which are a fictional team I just made up who play in the Martian Senior League - I just want the Wings to win.

I could change my mind about that tomorrow, when I catch NBC humping Sidney Crosby's leg before I hit the road and switch over to Ken Kal. But as I type, I'm watching Calgary rape Edmonton as they bump us out of the eighth spot in the west, so fuck Crosby - my mind's on those two points.

That was spectacular

Ok, so it was preseason, and it didn't really "count" for anything. I don't care. The Wings beat the Pens.

Oh, but Crosby and Malkin weren't there! Yeah? Well neither were Nick Lidstrom, Henrik Zetterberg, Dan Cleary, Valtteri Filppula, or Chris Osgood - we still got it done. And it wasn't close, either.

Man, am I glad I caught the replay.

I just got back from what was apparently some sort of bubble entirely outside the influence of hockey. It was sort of bizarre. Radio stations not coming in, and televisions that only went up to the first twenty channels, and walking into restaurants just as the last fleeting seconds of Red Wings live postgame reports faded into blackness... and I was cruising the internet on this, which isn't so much a complaint as it is me passing the hilarity of my sad life down to you. This is what happens when you use all your college graduation money to buy a Jimmy Howard game-used glove instead of a laptop. I call it "Henrik Zetterberg Dancing With A Giant Ink Monster".

Speaking of Swedes, the Free Press put up the single most mesmerizing thing that I have ever seen in my life yesterday. I can't stop watching it. I fear greatly that it hungers for my soul.

The Wings are playing Farjestad on Wednesday. I admittedly don't know an awful lot about teams in the Swedish elite league (although, according to my dad, I know more than most girls my age should), but from what I've been able to gather, it's the Elitserien equivalent of the Wings lately or the Canadiens. I wish it was being broadcast somewhere I could catch it because it sounds like the kind of carnival of Swedishness that would make for an interesting game.

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.

Take a deep breath. One more to go.

In the newspapers tomorrow, everyone's going to be talking about the epicness of Friday's game. I bet Mitch Albom wrote his article three days ago. They're going to mention the same four or five things over and over again to fill an entire sports section, because that's what they get paid to do.

I don't get paid, so I'm not going to sit here and do that. And I'm not going to pretend that I'm excited about a game seven.

Pointing fingers? The refs weren't calling much either way. Chris Osgood had like eight-thousand saves. I don't even know if the Wings had enough shots on Fleury for me to be able to point at his whorishness on this one.

So you can pick your goat, but I'm going with my dad, who made a prediction before the game.

Anyway, the Wings still aren't out of it, and they're pretty good at home. So I'm keeping my positive face on. (at least until game day, when I melt into a puddle of nervous goo.) Someone's winning the Cup by the end of the week, and I like our odds.

I don't know how you're dealing with the frustration, but as for me and Lindsay, we're keeping sane by making fun of Jim Balsillie's name. Maybe that makes us fifteen year old boys, but seriously. Balsillie.

game 6 jitters

I'm not sure if I'm excited or pukey right now. It's sort of how I felt last year. Understandibly.

I hope you haven't jinxed things by making personal celebratory plans, because this thing isn't over yet. Out of five Stanley Cup finals games played at Mellon Arena during the last two years, the Red Wings have only won 2. None of them have been in this series. I don't want this thing to go to seven games, but I'm not going to make the assumption that it won't.

Still... it could be over tomorrow. And if it is, I want to see how many Pens fans stay to boo Hossa.

I don't know where you'll be watching the game, but I can tell you where you won't be. You won't be at Joevision being treated to awesomeness like last year. Two quotes from the Free Press article sort of stuck out as douchey to me. "...the NHL asked NBC and CBC not to allow the Wings to broadcast the game," and "...one of the league's contractual agreements with NBC is that clubs will not hold viewing parties in their arenas".

So, if you weren't sure before, there's your proof that NBC is Satan and Gary Bettman is the antichrist.

Lindsay and I are going to go tye-dye at midnight to keep from worrying about where we may or may not be in 24 hours.

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.

Holy crap

I get terrified every time I see anything I think might injure a Wing like Henrik Zetterberg. I mean, Hank especially. He gets a love-tap from someone half his size and I cover my eyes and yell OH-NO BACK SPASMS!

But I thought this was awesome.

Completely unnecessary, and the result of a bunch of ridiculously cheap shots by a frustrated Penguins team (seriously, Max Talbot, stop being a whore and lay off our goalie), but awesome.

And after seven (now eight) Stanley Cup finals games against them, that kind of end-of-game shenaniganery is just what I've come to expect from Pittsburgh, so it's not like I was entirely surpised.

But seriously, that picture is going up on my wall next to the picture of Franzen punching Malkin in the end-of-game corner-scrum from last year. I think Malkin needs to stop trying to beat up vikings, because it's not working out for him very well at all.

And so it begins (or does it continue?)

The Stanley Cup finals have finally started, and with that the world has jumped on the hockey bandwagon. Every other feed on my Facebook homepage says “Go Wings!” Newspapers are posting hockey news on the front page. Even youtube.com is jumping on for the ride. I’d ask where these people are the other 351 days a year, but I know the answer.

They’re watching football.

As tonight’s game came to a close, I started racking my brain for a word to describe it. Unfortunately, no such word exists, so a long string of adjectives will have to do. It was stressful, gross, fast, amazing, ridiculous, exciting, and above all, (what else?) pukey. But the Wings came out with the win, and that’s all that matters in the end. It was great having Nick and Fabio back on the blueline, and it will be even better when Pavel finally gets healthy.

How long has it been now? Maybe in my brain three minutes without Pavel Datsyuk just feels like ten years, but I’m almost ready to call complete bs on the “bruised foot” thing. Whatever it is, it needs to go away soon; I want the Russian-on-Russian deke-battles I’ve been dreaming of.

Now, onto things that make me irrationally angry. DENNIS-FREAKING-LARUE. Who let him into the Stanley Cup finals? Wasn’t it enough fun last year when O’Halloran ref-ed every other game? It’s a miracle that the Red Wings didn’t end the first period with two game misconducts, five fighting majors for standing too close to Sidney Crosby, and down by nine goals.

But the Wings deserved that win. They killed off two back-to-back penalties, had the better goaltender, and just all out played a better game. I’ve been hearing that all three of the goals they scored were lucky bounces, but clearly these people didn’t see the goal from Justin Abdelkader. He knocked it out of the air and then put it in the net. That doesn’t sound like a lucky bounce to me.

At the rate they’re going, Crosby and Zetterberg are going to end up scheduling a full on cage match for the off-season. The last thing I want to see is those two trying to hurt each other as the series goes on, because as much as I’ve got my money on the Viking, Hank has a history of back spasms that I’d like to keep as history.

And I don’t know. I sort of expected more violence against Hossa. I know there was some, but I was sort of hoping that their retribution-anger would have distracted them from the game, like it did Chicago. Like taking stupid penalties and going WHAAAAREVENGE!! instead of I am going to force him toward the boards and pass the puck across ice to the neutral zone. Maybe tomorrow.

Deja vu all over again

Ha. Take that, you punk kids. The Wings finished them off, and they finished them off without Pavel Datsyuk, without Babcock's giant man-crush Ericsson, and without Nick Lidstrom. They can call the team old, they can call the team European, they can call the team whatever they want, but no one can say the Wings don't have depth. Darren Helm for the win.

I think he still doesn't have any regular season goals.

But now the Wings are playing the Penguins in the finals again and I feel like we just went through this.

That's probably because we did.

I'm not going to lie to you - I am sick of looking at the Penguins. I am sick of commentators fawning over Sidney Crosby, I am sick of yelling at my television for Marc-Andre Fleury to stop being a whore, and I am sick of yinzers in 'Free Candy' t-shirts sitting in lawn chairs burning their Hossa jerseys just to see how high the flames go. I know that this is going to be a different series than it was last year - the teams are different, the bounces won't all go the same way - but for some reason it still feels like I'm about to watch a dead horse being kicked. A dead horse with the overlying threat of the Penguins potentially having their revenge. Maybe I'm the only person who feels this way, but I'm sort of worried that the whole series is going to run like some sort of bizzaro dream-world alternate reality where you're forced to relive your past only you do it wrong and you mess up the future.

The finals haven't even started yet, and I'm already imagining them as being a bad weekend movie on Sci-Fi, or the kind of nightmare you tell your therapist about.

Whatever though. In the end, I don't much care who the Wings play in the finals provided they beat them.

ummmmm.....

The rest of the story is in the comments on the youtube page. It doesn't make it any less weird.

This makes me glad that I'm a Wings fan and not a Penguins fan.

Well that makes me feel better about life

for the time being, anyway.

If you're reading this, I'm sure you know what happened. And you probably feel a little better about life too.

Granted, the Penguins were in a position where I'm not completely shocked they were bowled over. That doesn't matter. I still feel better about life.

12:30 is a god-awful time to start a hockey game. And on a Sunday. Do you have any idea what time I stay up on Saturday night, NBC? No, of course you don't. Because only old people watch network tv, and at 12:30 on a Sunday, old people are just getting back from church and/or Denny's and are ready to spend three sedentary hours watching a professional sport.

My bleary, sleep-deprived eyes didn't matter - the entire city of Pittsburgh told me with riotous boos when Marian Hossa got anywhere near the puck. The sound made me happy to be alive.

It's four in the morning now, and I don't have anything else intelligent to say. Here. Laugh at this picture of Sidney Crosby looking put out:

That is not a happy face. But at least it's a clean-shaven one. I was a fan of many things concerning the 2008 Stanley Cup playoffs, but Sidney Crosby's pedo-stache was not one of them. For one, to be able to grow a pedo-stache you should be reasonably old enough to warrant the 'pedo' moniker. Sidney was not. For another, I am a girl and my playoff beard was coming in less patchy than his was.

So... is Ozzie our backup goalie again? I'm cool with it; if he's going to play better with a little of the pressure taken off him, then by all means Tyfus* for starter. I would just, in a world where people make podcasts about the playoff goaltending situation in the first week of February, like it to be given to me straight. It won't shatter my world or anything. I'm one of those insufferable little fangirls who would support Chris Osgood if his GAA were higher than your school's valadictorian's GPA and he got sent down to the ECHL by the farm team, but if Conklin's our starter for now, I'm willing to pretend I've never looked at his playoff record and roll with it. I am not, however, willing to listen to five different anylists and 10 different bloggers a night try to find some sort of mystical pattern in Mike Babcock's 'wait what's going on here?' goaltending rotation. That just makes me want to hit things.

(*I realize that Typhus is a terrible, contageous disease spread by parasites, which has killed uncounted people over the centuries, but that's what Lindsay's been calling Conklin for the past six weeks or so, and I've sort of grown attatched to it. Tyfus it is.)

Dear NBC,

While I greatly appreciate the potentially seizure-inducing effects of this video, if this is your attempt at convincing people from Detroit to watch the "Game of the Week", you failed.



Unless the demographic you were aiming at was the fifteen crazy fools who think it's fun to be reminded of that horrible game back in November, and in that case, good job. I, however, already hate having to listen to Pierre McGuire and Mike Milbury argue about Detroit's "goaltender situation", and it will only be made worse hearing them yell at each other about which team gets their revenge: Detroit for losing that game at the start of the season, or Pittsburgh for losing in the Finals. I, however, will continue to hope that one day Mike gets sick of Pierre and beats him with his own shoe live on the air.