It's about damn time

We updated our links. Don't be offended if you're toward the bottom - I organized it by length of blog name (and it still bothers me that it looks like we need somebody between Babcock's Death Stare and Nightmare on Helm Street. I tried to fix that problem, but I ended up with what looked like a boob with Snipe Snipe Dangle Dangle as the nipple. That plan got the axe pretty fast). Yes, it has occurred to me that I might have some form of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Among the new highlights:
- I'm not actually sure how The Triple Deke, SS,DD, and Babcock's Death Stare (and probably a couple others) didn't make it on here the first time we put links up, because I actually thought they were already here. Strange.
- Fight Night at the Joe - because Norwegians are kind of awesome
- The Winged Wheel has winged wheel-shaped bullet points, which is pretty badass
- The Obstructed View isn't a blog so much as it is a podcast, and definitely worth a listen

If you think we forgot you, chew us out about it in the comments.

(Oh, and for those of you who follow us on Twitter - our tweets will be restricted for the next three weeks. We have dial-up internet, a single phone line, and a mother with a serious addiction to free Zuma on aol games. Yay Christmas break.)

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.

Todd Bertuzzi is as awesome as college is not

I don't actually know if I have words right now for my feelings toward Todd Bertuzzi. Which is unfortunate, because the end of that game was really the only part I remember now. (That and the pukey feeling I got every time I saw somebody go down, since we're pretty much out of bodies right now.) Bertuzzi's surprise repeat awesomeness has overpowered my short-term memory banks.

I do have words for Grand Valley's inability to pick up FS+, stranding me with the Nashville feed on the internet. Most of them I tend to avoid in polite company. Some of you may remember that this is not the first time I have subjected myself to this torture. Tonight was no improvement.

First of all, the Predators are having a mustache contest for prostate awareness. That's right. They're growing porno-tastic facial-hair to encourage men to let complete strangers shove their cold fingers... I mean, I'm all for prostate health, but really, Nashville? Really?

What's more, instead of Red Wings player of the game updates, I was encouraged to vote for my favorite Pred-stache (which is now my new replacement word for "pedo-stache". Even the hockey-ignorant will get the joke).

*gagging noises...*

Alright Bubba, I'll bite. My vote was for Dan Hamhuis because his looks the most well-groomed.

Sadly, my vote counted for nothing, as J.P. Dumont won the contest by a landslide.

I wonder what his prize is. Maybe a free prostate exam...


It turns out that the announcers in Nashville couldn't believe that Bertuzzi had actually saved the game a second night in a row either, since they seemed pretty sure that Zetterberg had scored the goal, but the screams of "HOLY CRAP! HOLY CRAP, TODD, ARE YOU KIDDING ME, OH MY GOD BERTUZZI WHAT THE CRAP!" that were coming from my phone sounded surer than they did.

Let's revisit that moment again, shall we?


Ah... beautiful.

And it was Chris Osgood's 396th career win, which took him 5 weeks to get. Good lord.

Even your mom loves Todd Bertuzzi

Be honest - none of you expected last night's game from Todd Bertuzzi at the beginning of the season. I didn't even expect that from Todd Bertuzzi, and I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt all season.

And what do you do to the guy who just threw your NHL win-count into double-digits? You make him eat your catching glove. We noticed in Grand Rapids that Jimmy was particularly fond of joining goal celebrations, going so far as to skate out to center ice with his arm out hoping that somebody would notice him and give a little love. But even for him, that was a little epic.

There's a running bet between me and my sister (that will probably never be resolved) about why Ozzie wasn't in net. She thinks it's because of his strange and highly vocal love of playing against Nashville.

I think he was in mourning for Tiger Woods' hiatus from golf and was emotionally unable to play.

I love him but he's like a child.

So despite having been performed on a player that already had an injury, I'm calling the voodoo a success. Now all I have to do is find a Martin Erat card and a box of matches, and tonight's game is in the bag.

Because we're playing Nashville again tonight. Train whistles ahoy.

This is a gross season.

You never want to use injuries as an excuse for losing games (in fact, you see hockey players yelling at members of the media for trying to), because good teams find ways around adversity.

At the same time, no amount of yelling on Kris Draper's part is going to bring back Dan Cleary any sooner.

I looked down the Wing's roster today at all the little marks for day-to-day and IR, and if it hadn't been this season's Red Wings I was looking at, I would have laughed until I peed. The only reason I'm not calling injury bullshit on the universe is that, to my knowledge, none of them involved banana peels, sexual escapades, extended chase sequences, or any other three-stooges-type comical accident. So maybe that's where you'll find consolation - the team's just unlucky, they're not actually cursed.

Or maybe they are. Maybe some psychopath Blackhawks fan bought a bunch of Red Wing hockey cards, tied them up with black thread, knotted it seven times, wished a wish of fail over it and stuck it in their freezer (which I have totally never done to the Penguins during the finals).

Yeah, so that's the story I'm going with. "Trisha, can you explain the Wings' lack of offense and responsible defensive coverage against everybody and their mom this season?"

"Voodoo."

Immediate counter-measures are already underway.

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.

A three point weekend that could have been worse

Normally when there's back-to-back games and this blog only covers the second game, it's out of laziness. This time it's out of the fact that I was at a Griffins game and Lindsay was at a dance recital.

And from what I've heard, all I would have had to say about the New Jersey game was "It must have been an improvement from the last one because the Wings got a point and didn't score any goals on themselves".

Oh hey, check that out. It's like we just covered the first game.

On to games the Red Wings have actually won

Some thoughts on last night's win:

- Ugh, that ice was awful. I am so grateful the Pistons are at the Palace.

- Speaking of which, those intermission highlights of the Pistons game were starting to give me disconcerting flashbacks to Vipers games I thought I didn't remember.

- BRENDAN SHANAHAN. Once upon a time, there was a little girl who really loved the Red Wings. A few of them in particular she loved more than others, and among these was one named Brendan Shanahan. He had been constructed out of imported Irish awesomeness and filled with 500 metric shit-tons of 80 carat win. After three lifetimes of playing for the Red Wings, Brendan Shanahan walked off into the night, never to be heard from again. This made the little girl very sad. Until one day, he gave an interview during second intermission of a game between the Red Wings and the Rangers where he looked out from the tv screen and said "thank you Detroit", and it filled the little girl with such diabetically syrup-thick sugary joy that she almost cried.

And guys? That little girl was me.

- If the neighbors weren't wondering about the state of my mental health before, they probably are now after the save on that penalty shot caused me to loudly profess my undying love for Jimmy Howard.

- Hypothetical situation - Sean Avery and Henrik Zetterberg go into a corner. Who comes out with a penalty? Because before last night I would not have said Henrik Zetterberg. I give Sean a solid 7.5 on that dive, though. For a second there, I almost bought it.

- Does Kris Draper hold the record for most empty-net goals in franchise history? If he doesn't, I'd like to know who the hell does.

You know, I think I like this whole "winning games" business. The Wings should do it more often.

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.

Trying to go for three in a row

Tonight we're going to see a match-up of two teams limping through injuries.

For the Red Wings, this means limping harder than last time, because Brian Rafalski's out with... a worrysome back.

In his place, Wings have called up Griffins blueliner Jakub Kindl. Say hi to the people, Jakub.

huh?

Last season he had 6 goals and 27 assists in Grand Rapids. He is two hundred and ten pounds of pure unadulterated awesomeness*.

*Actual purity of awesomeness will vary. Contents may settle during shipping.

He's been pretty good with the Griffins the last few years, and I'm excited that he's getting his shot, but... I'd be more excited if the Wings had less injuries and more wins on the season.

The Oilers are at 9-14-4 right now, unless I utterly fail at counting, but assuming your team is going to beat someone just because they've won more games so far is setting yourself up to weep bitter tears of anguish into your pillow at night. The Wings lost their last game against Edmonton in a come-from-behind-to-toy-with-your-emotions shootout which took place at approximately four in the morning eastern standard time. I think Darren Helm scored his first regular season goal that night, even though CBC still hasn't recognized him for it in their Kia Fantasy Pool (stop being dicks, you guys, I saw it happen).

And unless Mike Babcock's been changing his mind last minute again (what? no, that never happens...), it'll be Howard in net again tonight.

Let the ridiculousness commence. Go Wings.