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?

Game today (and probably a little bit of tomorrow) vs not Jim Balsillie

The little break the Wings have been on since Saturday has felt like an eternity. It's like the off season all over again. I guess on the plus side however, Pavel hopefully has had time to heal from his "cough shoulder sprain cough" and will be back tonight to play the Coyotes in Phoenix. In honor of the first of the season, let's break down the pros and cons of west coast road trips -

The Good:
1. Laughing when the Hockeytown West shows up in droves and out-cheers the home crowd.

2. ... Yeah, pretty much only Hockeytown West.


The Bad:
1. Having to stay up until 2am even when we don't go into an endless shootout against the other team. (Seriously. I'm young, and I still have the sleep schedule of a 20 year old college student, but when I have to have two cups of coffee just to make it to pregame...)

2. No Mickey Redmond.

3. Too much Larry Murphy.

4. Have I ever mentioned that Jim Balsillie's name reminds me of either some round-shaped, Sesame Street-themed, Playskool toddler toy, or something that Family Guy fans would spend three hours giggling at? It used to make me break into hysterics at a mere moment's notice, but lately the joke has been wearing pretty thin and something worries me that tonight we'll be hearing it enough times for me to develop a nervous tick.

5. (and what might be the worst of them all) No more laughing at Gretzky dropping f-bombs from the bench on camera because his team just let Brett Lebda get a hat trick.

No major disrespect meant to Wayne, but I really used to look forward to that.

Sigh. This is what we have to live with until Halloween...

Go Wings.

Disappointing like whoa...

I've read that Joe Sakic was Matt Duchene's favorite player growing up, and consequently found himself rooting for the Avs. Matt Duchene grew up around the same time that we grew up.

The rivalry years.

So you have to wonder if, after rooting so long for the Scoring on Chris Osgood Show, it was extra special that his first NHL goal to made him a part of it.

I'm going to say that had Pavel Datsyuk been in this game, he would have scored. And if Mule had been there, since he likes scoring on the Avs so much, he'd have scored twice. (I contemplated actually keeping track of the games I thought the Wings would win if Franzen was in the line-up but didn't, but it would probably be every game the Wings lose for the next four months, which is unrealistic.) So I'm not faulting the Wings in this. (I'm faulting cruel fate and unmerciful hockey gods.)

The thing I have an issue with... ok, fine. Win the game. Sure. Tie the score a thousand times. Whatever. Be a complete and total whore.

But do you really have to hump Ozzie's face, McLeod?

Yeah, that's ok - Ozzie's coppin' a pretty big feel there himself. Hopefully it makes Cody feel a little dirty later.

A nice change from the ridiculousness of Tuesday

because Tuesday was an awful game. I don't know where the Red Wings were on Tuesday. Not in Buffalo. Maybe HSBC Arena had some kind of wonderful cotton candy for sale, and the Red Wings were all distracted by the smell. I don't know. I wasn't there. I could only watch, horrified, as the entire month of February 08 flashed before my eyes.

At any rate, tonight's game was much better. Not perfect, but better, and with Franzen and Datsyuk out of the line-up, for the moment, I'll take better. Hopefully an ugly loss was what they needed to shape up and this whole winning thing will continue to be a pattern they follow.

But this post wasn't really intended for me to be borderline-condescending toward a hockey team that's done nothing for as long as I can remember but spoil me rotten - this post is to remind everybody that Nick Lidstrom is President of the Universe.



Fo' sho'.

Not a great way to spend a birthday...

I have no words for that game except that it was...well...pukey. And maybe that all the people who lost Versus on their fancy cable packages were lucky. I don't have the energy right now to ramble as I usually do about how at least the top line is finally producing and how it wasn't all the goalie's fault, so I'll just leave you with something funny as a follow up to our post last Thursday. Watch it, laugh at it, and maybe even learn something new if you're still an uneducated fool:

Evacuate the Dance Floor

Saturday's game went better than I expected. Personally, I was a little too busy geeking out because the greatest top line in the history of EVER was reunited to pay much attention to any technical aspects of the game. All that I do know is that maybe Ovechkin and Semin should spend more time practicing and less time at the club.



Or maybe not. I kind of liked them being virtually invisible on the scoreboard.

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?

Winning is nice

Winning is very nice.

I know that between flukey injuries and low goal production, Tomas Kopecky wasn't exactly a perennial favorite among most Wings fans, but he's well liked around our household, and it was a little hard watching him... be a Blackhawk... ugh.

And uh, Brad May. Yeah. Who'da thought?


Today is Henrik Zetterberg's birthday. Fittingly, it's also Leif Ericson Day. Happy vikings!

Ericson spelled with one S looks wrong now. Thanks for that one, Fabio.

Why Chicago Hates Detroit?

After what seems like an eternity (even though it was less than a week) the Red Wings have a game tonight against the Chicago Blackhawks. I have no idea who will be in the lineup because I never believe the speculations online until the game actually starts because Mike Babcock is a crazy fool and no one ever knows what the hell he's going to do next. I do know that Justin Abdelkader won't be there, due to the fact that he was sent back to Grand Rapids. *Insert angry comments from the general fanbase here*

Today I found a blog post where the writer made a list of all the reasons why Chicago hates Detroit. These always make me laugh and this one was no different. Here are the highlights:

10. The Octopus

Throwing octopus on the ice makes about as much sense as Detroit making a bid for the 2020 Olympics.

SERIOUSLY?! I would have thought that by now most people that follow the NHL would have at least grasped the general idea of this tradition by now. If not and you still need some help, go educate yourself. At any rate, we don't care if it "makes sense". We're gonna do it until the oceans run dry.

8. Consistency

While we hate to admit it, every Hawks fans would kill to have a franchise that's in contention for the Cup every single season.

This one actually makes sense.

6. They're...Good

There, we said it. But our Dad can still beat up your Dad. We'll be taking our puck and going home now.

This one he got right too. Except that I'm not really sure what he means by "our Dad can still beat up your Dad". I took it to mean the teams in the early days, and the last time I checked, 8 Stanley Cups are more than three.

4. Arrogance

The Red Wings walk around with the kind of swagger that would make Kanye West sick to his stomach with disgust.

Honestly, I haven't heard any arrogance horror stories about either team - except for maybe Chelios when he was in a bad mood, and that one... sort of falls on both of us. Anyway, there's nothing wrong with having confidence in your ability to be badass on the ice. I bet Blackhawks fans would kill themselves to have their team walk with swagger.

2. The Sweaters

Not to get all fashionista on you, but the Hawks sweater cannot be matched. Especially not by logo that looks like it's from Hot Wheels.

Right again. The Blackhawk's sweater can't be matched...in cultural insensitivity. (Oh wait, I forgot about Cleveland.) I'd much rather have a logo that looks like one of the greatest children's toys ever than one that's potentially racist.

1. Original Six

This rivalry is like a bad marriage that's lasted way too long with a spouse. What's worse is Detroit's put on about 200 pounds with a bad case of acne since the day we met.

Who's about 200 pounds with a bad case of acne?

Lol, he wishes he weighed 200 pounds...